I wish they wouldn't keep referring to Camilla as "Queen".
Yes, she legally is (now) but she's also really not.
Queen Consort Camilla would be better
King's fancy piece sounds better
Except she’s not very fancy.
FFS, she's 78! And nobody was ever going to stack up in the public's affections against Diana.
She's actually quite good fun though.
Yeah people need to leave this poor woman alone. She makes the king happy and that's basically her job. They should have let him marry her in the first place, it would have saved everyone a lot of grief.
The son of Charles and Camilla would have not secured the monarchy as much as the son of Charles and Diana. The late Queen was right on that
And in other news. The Conservative Party Conference hasn't made the news bulletin at the start of WATO. Oh I lied, it was story 6. After Mme Pelicot and before Gilly Cooper. Tax cuts for everyone from a half empty conference hall is the analysis.
And in other news. The Conservative Party Conference hasn't made the news bulletin at the start of WATO. Oh I lied, it was story 6. After Mme Pelicot and before Gilly Cooper. Tax cuts for everyone from a half empty conference hall is the analysis.
A scrap inheritance tax pledge would have made headlines as I said
I don't want to discourage the Conservatives from promising relief to this country's overburdened taxpayers, but I'm not sure any pledge from an Opposition third in the polls, facing a huge government majority, four years from an election and with a leader who is likely to be gone soon would make any headlines.
And even if some pledges might, a scarcely plausible tax cut promised and not delivered several times before probably wouldn't be it.
The French budget deficit in 2024 was €167bn, 5.8% of GDP, and they can't form a stable government. The British budget deficit was 4.8% of GDP in 2024.
One factor working in Reeves' favour is the mess in France.
However, their total interest cost is lower because they are part of the Eurozone and benefit from its much lower rates.
Not quite. They benefit from the lower interest rates in the EZ because the ECB has much more credibility as a guardian against inflation than the Monetary Policy Committee of the BoE. That is a consequence of some very incompetent decisions in recent times, not least of which was the latest interest rate cut, but it doesn't have to be that way.
In other words their interest cost is lower because they are part of the Eurozone and benefit from its much lower rates. Why that might be so is a different question.
The market prices in an implicit guarantee that German and Dutch taxpayers will be on the hook for French debt. There really isn't anything more too it.
There really is. The delta is largely about inflation and FX expectations, as indeed DavidL mentions. Default risk hardly features, there or here.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
You are not supposed to put municipal household waste into a public litter bin.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
ISTM that if she unwraps it at the depot it is not domestic waste.
Yes she could drive all the way to the Household Waste Recycling Centre ( the tip) having pre booked if pre booking is a requirement and put it in the appropriate container. That is allowed.
It's an opportunity for a bit of good populism now: What happened to Natasha is the latest in a string of “fly-tipping” cases against householders as councils crack down on waste offences:
In February this year, a Hertfordshire widower was fined £500 (later reduced to £100) after an address-labelled box blew from his recycling bin and down the street. A Stoke-on-Trent couple were fined £200 each in May 2024 for placing an envelope (household waste) in a public litter bin. A pensioner from north London was fined after she swept part of her street and put the litter in a bin across the road. An East Sussex woman was issued a £400 fixed penalty notice after putting a bag of household waste into a public litter bin. In another case, a single mother was fined £500 for fly-tipping (later rescinded) after leaving an Ikea cabinet outside her Bournemouth home for people to take for free.
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
Saw this earlier and it’s staggering how the US has changed and how George W could seem like a titan of statesmanship, humanity and sense based on where we are now.
Perhaps nothing so became the man, as the manner in which he left office.
Both on personal level - he and his family invited the Obama family for a personal tour of the Whitehouse. Which started an enduring friendship between various generations of the Bushes and Obamas.
And on a professional level - various people from the Obama administration commented on the actual effort made by the outgoing admin to really hand over things in a good state and to transfer knowledge.
The background was that he was treated like dirt by the Clinton team on his way in, and vowed on his first day to uphold the honour of the office he held on the way out.
Oh sure.
But the way he responded - to take it as a lesson to do better himself - is what is worthy of praise.
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
You are not supposed to put municipal household waste into a public litter bin.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
ISTM that if she unwraps it at the depot it is not domestic waste.
Yes she could drive all the way to the Household Waste Recycling Centre ( the tip) having pre booked if pre booking is a requirement and put it in the appropriate container. That is allowed.
It's an opportunity for a bit of good populism now: What happened to Natasha is the latest in a string of “fly-tipping” cases against householders as councils crack down on waste offences:
In February this year, a Hertfordshire widower was fined £500 (later reduced to £100) after an address-labelled box blew from his recycling bin and down the street. A Stoke-on-Trent couple were fined £200 each in May 2024 for placing an envelope (household waste) in a public litter bin. A pensioner from north London was fined after she swept part of her street and put the litter in a bin across the road. An East Sussex woman was issued a £400 fixed penalty notice after putting a bag of household waste into a public litter bin. In another case, a single mother was fined £500 for fly-tipping (later rescinded) after leaving an Ikea cabinet outside her Bournemouth home for people to take for free.
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
You are not supposed to put municipal household waste into a public litter bin.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
ISTM that if she unwraps it at the depot it is not domestic waste.
Yes she could drive all the way to the Household Waste Recycling Centre ( the tip) having pre booked if pre booking is a requirement and put it in the appropriate container. That is allowed.
It's an opportunity for a bit of good populism now: What happened to Natasha is the latest in a string of “fly-tipping” cases against householders as councils crack down on waste offences:
In February this year, a Hertfordshire widower was fined £500 (later reduced to £100) after an address-labelled box blew from his recycling bin and down the street. A Stoke-on-Trent couple were fined £200 each in May 2024 for placing an envelope (household waste) in a public litter bin. A pensioner from north London was fined after she swept part of her street and put the litter in a bin across the road. An East Sussex woman was issued a £400 fixed penalty notice after putting a bag of household waste into a public litter bin. In another case, a single mother was fined £500 for fly-tipping (later rescinded) after leaving an Ikea cabinet outside her Bournemouth home for people to take for free.
In my neck of the woods, a lady who was due to fly, put her bins and recycling boxes out, 36 hours before collection time.
Was given a multi hundred pound fine for “fly tipping”
One councillor defended the decision, then was upset at receiving large numbers of hostile (not threatening - hostile) emails. Apparently telling someone that they have “acted disgracefully” is “aggressive”.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Ha
Bet Toluene/Benzene combinations are in fashion.
You can probably take a guess that it was something people did back in the ‘90s, and the same people doing it now - except that 2020s cars in Russia are very different from ‘90s cars in Russia!
Putting random fuel in most modern cars will likely screw the engine very quickly!
Benzene/Toluene mixes are very good at giving people cancer.
So good, in fact, that it used to be used to give cancer to lab rats, so it could be studied.
It’s also the reason why no-one makes 180 octane aviation gasoline anymore.
See also some poor bastards in the Italian Army who got sent to Yugoslavia in the 90s. They recalled getting ordered to clean the floor polish of a floor with an odd, sweet smelling liquid….
I worked as a Manager for Safety Kleen in the 1990s. It was very hands on and I would often go out into the warehouse in my suit and move drums around sans gloves to make the place compliant in relation to it's Environmental Permit. Before I went back to my office I would clean my hands in the recycled kerosene product, which after I left I found was, according to a sealed California litigation case on the Raphael Metzger website, full of benzine, toluene and PCBs. I also found banned Trichlorethylene aerosol brake cleaner brilliant for cleaning down my white boards.
I suspect I am on borrowed time.
You never know. I knew a guy who worked for one of the companies making asbestos rope back in the day. He ran their carding machines, and the factory floor was half an inch deep in asbestos dust. Last time I saw him he was in his mid 70s and still apparently OK.
This could get messy, especially if Kemi picks up on it before next year's conference (a subtle reference to her PMQs invariably lagging a week behind the news).
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
GTA6 for those who aren't so much into gaming...
That’s the one!
Hollywood is going to be absolutely stunned by the scale of it.
And in other news. The Conservative Party Conference hasn't made the news bulletin at the start of WATO. Oh I lied, it was story 6. After Mme Pelicot and before Gilly Cooper. Tax cuts for everyone from a half empty conference hall is the analysis.
And in other news. The Conservative Party Conference hasn't made the news bulletin at the start of WATO. Oh I lied, it was story 6. After Mme Pelicot and before Gilly Cooper. Tax cuts for everyone from a half empty conference hall is the analysis.
A scrap inheritance tax pledge would have made headlines as I said
I don't want to discourage the Conservatives from promising relief to this country's overburdened taxpayers, but I'm not sure any pledge from an Opposition third in the polls, facing a huge government majority, four years from an election and with a leader who is likely to be gone soon would make any headlines.
And even if some pledges might, a scarcely plausible tax cut promised and not delivered several times before probably wouldn't be it.
Osborne did deliver his inheritance tax cut
Didn't they more or less stick with Brown's "running scared" IHT programme. Didn't Osborne want the limit to be half a million per parent rather than £325,000 per parent. As I recall with all the twiddly bits added the threshold stands around a hundred thousand (give or take) shy of a million.
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
GTA6 for those who aren't so much into gaming...
That’s the one!
Rockstar's ability to sell me the same product on more than one platform is astounding.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Ha
Bet Toluene/Benzene combinations are in fashion.
You can probably take a guess that it was something people did back in the ‘90s, and the same people doing it now - except that 2020s cars in Russia are very different from ‘90s cars in Russia!
Putting random fuel in most modern cars will likely screw the engine very quickly!
Benzene/Toluene mixes are very good at giving people cancer.
So good, in fact, that it used to be used to give cancer to lab rats, so it could be studied.
It’s also the reason why no-one makes 180 octane aviation gasoline anymore.
See also some poor bastards in the Italian Army who got sent to Yugoslavia in the 90s. They recalled getting ordered to clean the floor polish of a floor with an odd, sweet smelling liquid….
I worked as a Manager for Safety Kleen in the 1990s. It was very hands on and I would often go out into the warehouse in my suit and move drums around sans gloves to make the place compliant in relation to it's Environmental Permit. Before I went back to my office I would clean my hands in the recycled kerosene product, which after I left I found was, according to a sealed California litigation case on the Raphael Metzger website, full of benzine, toluene and PCBs. I also found banned Trichlorethylene aerosol brake cleaner brilliant for cleaning down my white boards.
I suspect I am on borrowed time.
Or bullet proof.
I was told (at an oil company) that you could see the pattern of those who worked on ultra-high-octane aviation fuel during the war, in the pension fund. Apparently there was a big dip in people needing a pension from certain refineries. Enough that they went "stop that shit". In the 1950s.
The context was that, every now and again, someone in the old warbird thing would ask for a batch to be made. And the Refinery guys would always say, hell no.
I was doing work as a consultant for Western Power ( now National Grid) about ten years ago, and a number of people over the years had transferred in from the CEGB. One guy on a course I was running introduced himself from Burry Port, the former home of Carmarthen Bay Power Station. "Aah, Burry Port, I only go there for funerals" said another. My now late uncle had worked there in the 1960s and I asked what they meant. He said in the power plant there was plenty of fibrous asbestos which was used as insulation. He said the stuff was all over the floors like snow and everyone walked through it like they were walking through snow. Some of the apprentices would even have snowball fights.
However frustrating we find "Elf and Safety" we have come along way since before the Health and Safety etc At Work Act of 1974.
Miracle fibre. Everyone used it for pipe lagging, back in the day.
This could get messy, especially if Kemi picks up on it before next year's conference (a subtle reference to her PMQs invariably lagging a week behind the news).
This case could be about to get really ugly for the government.
Memories of when Blair’s government did something similar that stopped a trial.
"Shabana Mahmood criticised for ‘never hearing of someone being called Jihad’ Critics fear Home Secretary’s comments put British Arabs at risk from ‘retaliatory abuse’ following Manchester attack"
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
GTA6 for those who aren't so much into gaming...
That’s the one!
Rockstar's ability to sell me the same product on more than one platform is astounding.
BBC Archive has a great video of them from 1996. It's so quaint compared to now:
Saw this earlier and it’s staggering how the US has changed and how George W could seem like a titan of statesmanship, humanity and sense based on where we are now.
Perhaps nothing so became the man, as the manner in which he left office.
Both on personal level - he and his family invited the Obama family for a personal tour of the Whitehouse. Which started an enduring friendship between various generations of the Bushes and Obamas.
And on a professional level - various people from the Obama administration commented on the actual effort made by the outgoing admin to really hand over things in a good state and to transfer knowledge.
The background was that he was treated like dirt by the Clinton team on his way in, and vowed on his first day to uphold the honour of the office he held on the way out.
Oh sure.
But the way he responded - to take it as a lesson to do better himself - is what is worthy of praise.
Absolutely! A mixed record as President, perhaps understandably given the circumstances, but fundamentally a good man.
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
Going back to films, the other half of Hollywood's problem is production decamping to other US states (as well as abroad).
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
GTA6 for those who aren't so much into gaming...
That’s the one!
Hollywood is going to be absolutely stunned by the scale of it.
means it probably gonna be a phantom menaceish flop
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
I think this is more about technology, than product demand.
It used to be that everything was made in LA because making content required a massive amount of capital and specialist equipment and skills - and those skills were all in LA.
And the fact that LA was insanely expensive didn't really matter, because there simply weren't that many places where everything needed was in the same place.
Now, with AI and ultra fast Internet, and the fact you can film a movie on an iPhone and it looks no different to one shot with a $250,000 movie camera... well, what's LA's role? Why incur the costs?
Who is going to make stuff here, when one can make stuff for a fraction of the cost elsewhere?
It's not that new content isn't being made by Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, MGM, etc. It's that it isn't being made in LA.
"Shabana Mahmood criticised for ‘never hearing of someone being called Jihad’ Critics fear Home Secretary’s comments put British Arabs at risk from ‘retaliatory abuse’ following Manchester attack"
Spoke to a load of people in the movie biz at the Bruce Dickinson party last night. They’re all profoundly pessimistic about Hollywood, LA and the future. Almost nihilistic
As I keep telling my mate in the movie industry, Hollywood has spent the last half decade giving audiences precise what they don't want, being worried about the consequences of that now seems a bit silly. The situation may not be recoverable as young men and women who don't like the content made for the "modern audience" are just wholesale opting out and moving to other forms of media like gaming and streaming.
Do you reckon any of them have yet worked out that the all-time-record worldwide media release is happening at the end of May next year, likely doing a couple of billion dollars in the first week, and that people in the real world are already arguing about holiday dates because of it?
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
What's the alleged offence? is this Flintshire Council, since iirc Wales is all unitaries.
It was a litter bin, not a recycling container.
Reforming the regulation of waste collection looks like low-hanging fruit for Mr Starmer (though this is Wales so I assume it is devolved).
It could be unprivatised from the middlemen who fly tip by providing a better Council service.
You are not supposed to put municipal household waste into a public litter bin.
So if your dog takes a dump on the pavement you should bag it, pick it up, and place it in the public bin. If your dog takes a dump at home you are supposed to put it in your own black bin and not the bin in the park over the road.
One would have thought cash strapped councils have better things to do with their time.
ISTM that if she unwraps it at the depot it is not domestic waste.
Yes she could drive all the way to the Household Waste Recycling Centre ( the tip) having pre booked if pre booking is a requirement and put it in the appropriate container. That is allowed.
It's an opportunity for a bit of good populism now: What happened to Natasha is the latest in a string of “fly-tipping” cases against householders as councils crack down on waste offences:
In February this year, a Hertfordshire widower was fined £500 (later reduced to £100) after an address-labelled box blew from his recycling bin and down the street. A Stoke-on-Trent couple were fined £200 each in May 2024 for placing an envelope (household waste) in a public litter bin. A pensioner from north London was fined after she swept part of her street and put the litter in a bin across the road. An East Sussex woman was issued a £400 fixed penalty notice after putting a bag of household waste into a public litter bin. In another case, a single mother was fined £500 for fly-tipping (later rescinded) after leaving an Ikea cabinet outside her Bournemouth home for people to take for free.
Aren't these civil penalties so if you disagree you go to the Magistrates to state your case. But the council have the option to cancel the penalty to save the court the burden.
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
Their big problem is that they can’t now turn up and claim compensation as we will know they were correctly burnt as witches (for all the good that does) and so have no grounds for a pardon.
Their big problem is that they can’t now turn up and claim compensation as we will know they were correctly burnt as witches (for all the good that does) and so have no grounds for a pardon.
I'm joining the exodus to the Greens. Only a threat of Farage winning in a constituency I was voting in and a vote for Labour preventing it would change my mind. Mahmood is indistinguishable from Badenoch and Starmer has reverted to the unthinking Zionist of a year ago. This is no longer a recognisable Labour Party. If Labour sleep with the Angels God help the Angels!
I'm going to start donating today in case I weaken.
ZACK's MY MAN!
Mahmood doesn't want to leave the ECHR and doesn't hate sandwiches, so she seems distinguishable to me from Badenoch.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Ha
Bet Toluene/Benzene combinations are in fashion.
You can probably take a guess that it was something people did back in the ‘90s, and the same people doing it now - except that 2020s cars in Russia are very different from ‘90s cars in Russia!
Putting random fuel in most modern cars will likely screw the engine very quickly!
Benzene/Toluene mixes are very good at giving people cancer.
So good, in fact, that it used to be used to give cancer to lab rats, so it could be studied.
It’s also the reason why no-one makes 180 octane aviation gasoline anymore.
See also some poor bastards in the Italian Army who got sent to Yugoslavia in the 90s. They recalled getting ordered to clean the floor polish of a floor with an odd, sweet smelling liquid….
I worked as a Manager for Safety Kleen in the 1990s. It was very hands on and I would often go out into the warehouse in my suit and move drums around sans gloves to make the place compliant in relation to it's Environmental Permit. Before I went back to my office I would clean my hands in the recycled kerosene product, which after I left I found was, according to a sealed California litigation case on the Raphael Metzger website, full of benzine, toluene and PCBs. I also found banned Trichlorethylene aerosol brake cleaner brilliant for cleaning down my white boards.
I suspect I am on borrowed time.
You never know. I knew a guy who worked for one of the companies making asbestos rope back in the day. He ran their carding machines, and the factory floor was half an inch deep in asbestos dust. Last time I saw him he was in his mid 70s and still apparently OK...
So its a legitimate cause for environmental activists.
I mean... that's quite a comment.
There are many other places in the world where that's true; not the least is what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Or many of the wanton ecological crimes of the Chinese government. Or Sudan.
Yet for some reason, Israel seems to be their most common target.
"Shabana Mahmood criticised for ‘never hearing of someone being called Jihad’ Critics fear Home Secretary’s comments put British Arabs at risk from ‘retaliatory abuse’ following Manchester attack"
Men jailed for violence outside Essex asylum hotel ... Williams was jailed for two years and four months, Peagram for two years and two months and Smith for one year and 10 months. Each defendant admitted violent disorder. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgq456gey9o
Twice as long as the chap they were protesting against.
A man whose crimes led to protests outside a hotel in Essex has been jailed for a year for sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and a woman.
Hadush Kebatu was found guilty of touching and trying to kiss the schoolgirl in Epping on 7 and 8 July.
Without going the full Leon, you have to wonder what more the judiciary could do to elect a Reform government.
Sentencing remarks are here. As ever they are models of logic and sense. The only strange thing is that I cannot see a deportation order at end of sentence for Kabatu.
Seems to call out the BS of the Neo Liberal Elite Parties
Hopefully the Greens and Your Party can get a sizeable chunk of seats.
That would become a lot more difficult if a centre left leader was in charge of Lab but fortunately SKS faction has made that impossible so Lab will struggle to get half the number of seats compared to " the worst result ever" the same faction has been banging on about for the last 6 years.
Starmer is going to be unbearably sanctimonious about this at PMQs.
I would be difficult to find someone with less aptitude for politics than Starmer. It would appear however that in their search to beat this record the Tories aced it.
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
How very sad. I had hoped that Millei would concentrate more on how to get Argentinians out of poverty, and to make the country a first world one once more.
Russia doesn’t just have a black-market petrol problem, it also has a counterfeit petrol problem - stuff that looks like petrol, maybe even smells a bit like petrol, but isn’t quite petrol.
Presumably it’s home-made by boiling other hydrocarbons, and no you definitely don’t want to put it in any car, except perhaps an old Lada with carburettors.
Ha
Bet Toluene/Benzene combinations are in fashion.
You can probably take a guess that it was something people did back in the ‘90s, and the same people doing it now - except that 2020s cars in Russia are very different from ‘90s cars in Russia!
Putting random fuel in most modern cars will likely screw the engine very quickly!
Benzene/Toluene mixes are very good at giving people cancer.
So good, in fact, that it used to be used to give cancer to lab rats, so it could be studied.
It’s also the reason why no-one makes 180 octane aviation gasoline anymore.
See also some poor bastards in the Italian Army who got sent to Yugoslavia in the 90s. They recalled getting ordered to clean the floor polish of a floor with an odd, sweet smelling liquid….
I worked as a Manager for Safety Kleen in the 1990s. It was very hands on and I would often go out into the warehouse in my suit and move drums around sans gloves to make the place compliant in relation to it's Environmental Permit. Before I went back to my office I would clean my hands in the recycled kerosene product, which after I left I found was, according to a sealed California litigation case on the Raphael Metzger website, full of benzine, toluene and PCBs. I also found banned Trichlorethylene aerosol brake cleaner brilliant for cleaning down my white boards.
I suspect I am on borrowed time.
You never know. I knew a guy who worked for one of the companies making asbestos rope back in the day. He ran their carding machines, and the factory floor was half an inch deep in asbestos dust. Last time I saw him he was in his mid 70s and still apparently OK.
Engineering student friend of mine was absolutely delighted, just after being awarded his degree, to get a job offer from Turners Asbestos. Equally I knew a chap who'd worked on laying asbestos pipes in Tilbury Power Power Station. He was in a dreadful state; by the time he was fifty he was confined to his house with completely destroyed lungs.
"Shabana Mahmood criticised for ‘never hearing of someone being called Jihad’ Critics fear Home Secretary’s comments put British Arabs at risk from ‘retaliatory abuse’ following Manchester attack"
Saw this earlier and it’s staggering how the US has changed and how George W could seem like a titan of statesmanship, humanity and sense based on where we are now.
Perhaps nothing so became the man, as the manner in which he left office.
Both on personal level - he and his family invited the Obama family for a personal tour of the Whitehouse. Which started an enduring friendship between various generations of the Bushes and Obamas.
And on a professional level - various people from the Obama administration commented on the actual effort made by the outgoing admin to really hand over things in a good state and to transfer knowledge.
The background was that he was treated like dirt by the Clinton team on his way in, and vowed on his first day to uphold the honour of the office he held on the way out.
I don't believe you can be too hard on the Dems after 2000. They were well and truly tucked up by JEB and the Supreme Court.
I genuinely blame Ralph Nader for the Bush Presidency.
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
Bombast, he still said he only wants a diplomatic solution
"Shabana Mahmood criticised for ‘never hearing of someone being called Jihad’ Critics fear Home Secretary’s comments put British Arabs at risk from ‘retaliatory abuse’ following Manchester attack"
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
Bombast, he still said he only wants a diplomatic solution
Starmer is likely already drawing up the treaty to hand them over, with the UK paying Argentina billions per year compensation.
Seems to call out the BS of the Neo Liberal Elite Parties
Hopefully the Greens and Your Party can get a sizeable chunk of seats.
That would become a lot more difficult if a centre left leader was in charge of Lab but fortunately SKS faction has made that impossible so Lab will struggle to get half the number of seats compared to " the worst result ever" the same faction has been banging on about for the last 6 years.
How the flip is the Green Party Conference getting an airing whilst the poor old Tories are not. What's wrong with you all?
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
Bombast, he still said he only wants a diplomatic solution
He could ask his friend Trump to help him out with an invasion.
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
How very sad. I had hoped that Millei would concentrate more on how to get Argentinians out of poverty, and to make the country a first world one once more.
He’s not the libertarian, laissez-faire Messiah beloved of certain gullible PBers, he’s a very naughty boy who has had to be bailed out by the IMF and Trump (tbc).
Seems to call out the BS of the Neo Liberal Elite Parties
Hopefully the Greens and Your Party can get a sizeable chunk of seats.
That would become a lot more difficult if a centre left leader was in charge of Lab but fortunately SKS faction has made that impossible so Lab will struggle to get half the number of seats compared to " the worst result ever" the same faction has been banging on about for the last 6 years.
How the flip is the Green Party Conference getting an airing whilst the poor old Tories are not. What's wrong with you all?
There’s a chance that the Greens will be in government after the next election. There’s no chance the Tories will.
At the Tory gawp show, not even their remaining members could be bothered to listen to Mel Stride's "plans" for the economy
You are deliberately lying because you know there was a security glitch getting in.
They could I think should have held the kick off time I think.
My daddy says our conferences these days are all about TV cameras though and not working conferences for members anymore.
My trouble with Shadow Chancellors announcements are that if any are very good they will get stolen by government so can never go into the manifesto.
1. I am not lying. I am commenting on the image presented to me 2. "You know there was a security glitch coming in" - no, I don't 3. If you can't get people in then delay the speech
Don't accuse me of lying. Its not my fault if the conference is confected shit.
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
Bombast, he still said he only wants a diplomatic solution
Starmer is likely already drawing up the treaty to hand them over, with the UK paying Argentina billions per year compensation.
Even Starmer wouldn't be rhat stupid, Farage would trounce him and he might fancy his own Falklands moment of defying Argentina
I've come up with a solution. When legal threat is used like this for stupid trivia, the following action will be taken
1) The officials involved will be arrested by armed police with maximum door smashing, tasering etc. 2) They will be charged with Misconduct in a Public Office. 3) Threatened that if they don't plead guilty then and there, that they will be remanded in custody with no bail, until trial.
If I have an area of expertise (which is highly doubtful) the EPA 1990, and subsequent amendments and allied regulation, would be it.
I don't have a clue what is going on here. I would associate fly-tipping with emptying out the contents of a Transit van onto the lay-by of a dual carriageway, and that comes under the charge of "illegally depositing controlled waste". I can't really see how this woman hasn't conformed to her Duty of Care under the EPA despite the argument proposed by Flintshire Council. I am considering municipal exemptions and householder exemptions for disposing of waste and I cannot see their point. Depositing the wrong waste stream into the wrong container would seem to me to be an operational occupational hazard best resolved by the waste collection organisation.
One wonders if someone collected the rubbish from the bin, was moving it on an open truck and the offending article was blown off onto the roadside?
If they had found ten black bin bags on the A55 with an envelope with her name in one of them I can see their point. Although normally any threat to prosecute the individual is used as a lever for the householder to dob-in the white van fly-tipper.
It sounds very odd to me, unless of course we are just getting convenient snippets of the story.
I suspect she thought she put it in the bin but missed and/or it blew out and was found in the road nearby
Even so, £75 for dropping an envelope seems disproportionate
Comments
Live. Dame Jilly Cooper dies aged 88 after fall, with Queen paying tribute to 'legend'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cg50q3p94gqt
I've read and I don't see a tribute by Brian May or any other member of Queen.
They backed off:
https://www.dailypost.co.uk/news/north-wales-news/council-bin-police-drop-envelope-32599720
“The officer told us he was dropping the charges as the whole thing had ‘snowballed’ - which we took to mean the council didn’t want the bad publicity it was generating.
It's an opportunity for a bit of good populism now:
What happened to Natasha is the latest in a string of “fly-tipping” cases against householders as councils crack down on waste offences:
In February this year, a Hertfordshire widower was fined £500 (later reduced to £100) after an address-labelled box blew from his recycling bin and down the street.
A Stoke-on-Trent couple were fined £200 each in May 2024 for placing an envelope (household waste) in a public litter bin.
A pensioner from north London was fined after she swept part of her street and put the litter in a bin across the road.
An East Sussex woman was issued a £400 fixed penalty notice after putting a bag of household waste into a public litter bin.
In another case, a single mother was fined £500 for fly-tipping (later rescinded) after leaving an Ikea cabinet outside her Bournemouth home for people to take for free.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/06/green-councillor-demands-pardon-witches-executed-misogyny/ (£££)
After all, the Conservatives have not been conservative for years, and the Labour Party has not represented labour for even longer.
But the way he responded - to take it as a lesson to do better himself - is what is worthy of praise.
Was given a multi hundred pound fine for “fly tipping”
One councillor defended the decision, then was upset at receiving large numbers of hostile (not threatening - hostile) emails. Apparently telling someone that they have “acted disgracefully” is “aggressive”.
I knew a guy who worked for one of the companies making asbestos rope back in the day.
He ran their carding machines, and the factory floor was half an inch deep in asbestos dust. Last time I saw him he was in his mid 70s and still apparently OK.
They could I think should have held the kick off time I think.
My daddy says our conferences these days are all about TV cameras though and not working conferences for members anymore.
My trouble with Shadow Chancellors announcements are that if any are very good they will get stolen by government so can never go into the manifesto.
Prosecution was dropped after Whitehall meeting chaired by PM’s security adviser, Jonathan Powell
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/06/starmer-aide-overruled-mi5-on-china-spy-case/ (£££)
This could get messy, especially if Kemi picks up on it before next year's conference (a subtle reference to her PMQs invariably lagging a week behind the news).
Hollywood is going to be absolutely stunned by the scale of it.
Everyone used it for pipe lagging, back in the day.
Memories of when Blair’s government did something similar that stopped a trial.
Critics fear Home Secretary’s comments put British Arabs at risk from ‘retaliatory abuse’ following Manchester attack"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/10/04/shabana-mahmood-never-heard-of-name-jihad/
https://youtu.be/7vWSi44ZTSw?si=uPxXJSDvofNbpAL0
It used to be that everything was made in LA because making content required a massive amount of capital and specialist equipment and skills - and those skills were all in LA.
And the fact that LA was insanely expensive didn't really matter, because there simply weren't that many places where everything needed was in the same place.
Now, with AI and ultra fast Internet, and the fact you can film a movie on an iPhone and it looks no different to one shot with a $250,000 movie camera... well, what's LA's role? Why incur the costs?
Who is going to make stuff here, when one can make stuff for a fraction of the cost elsewhere?
It's not that new content isn't being made by Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple, MGM, etc. It's that it isn't being made in LA.
Feb 1974: 31.3 million
2024: 28.9 million
Did this get any notice last month ?
Milei turns to Falklands as Argentina’s troubles mount
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/milei-turns-to-falklands-as-argentinas-troubles-mount/
Argentinian President Javier Milei used his speech at the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday (24 Sep) to relaunch his country’s bid for sovereignty over the Falkland Islands.
Calling them the Islas Malvinas, he said during a fiery speech that ‘I wish to reiterate our legitimate claim in terms of sovereignty over the Malvinas and the surrounding maritime areas that continue to be illegally occupied’...
Kemi Badenoch axes God Save the King from end of Conservative Conference to play pop music
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/kemi-badenoch-god-save-the-king-conservative-conference
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/sep/27/israel-ecocide-gaza-bombs-agricultural-land-genocide
So its a legitimate cause for environmental activists.
D'y'know, I'm actually a bit upset by that. Honestly, what are they doing?
There are many other places in the world where that's true; not the least is what Russia is doing in Ukraine. Or many of the wanton ecological crimes of the Chinese government. Or Sudan.
Yet for some reason, Israel seems to be their most common target.
Why not attack Russia or China?
Oh...
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/babynamesinenglandandwalesfrom1996
gives us all baby names given to children born between 1996 and 2024, for England and Wales.
For "Jihad" we have -
2012 Count 4
2003 Count 4
2002 Count 3
2001 Count 3
2000 Count 4
1998 Count 5
1997 Count 4
So it appears to be a really rare name in this country, at least among those born here.
The reality is that we stopped singing GSTQ at the end of conference in 1997 and it was only brought back in 2021.
It's a weird way to end conference, much better to end it with Abba playing.
Two of three violent disorder perps had records of 15 and 26 convictions, including around not complying with court orders. Not poster children for the Daily T - though I'll have a listen to see what they say.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/R-v-Williams-Smith-and-Peagram.pdf
Kebatu did not cooperate or communicate his own history.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/R-v-Hadush-Kebatu-1.pdf
Would Nigel F & Co support Kebatu's immediate deportation, rather than "wasting our money on keeping him in prison"?
Sounds like fake news to me.
Loving Zack
Seems to call out the BS of the Neo Liberal Elite Parties
Hopefully the Greens and Your Party can get a sizeable chunk of seats.
That would become a lot more difficult if a centre left leader was in charge of Lab but fortunately SKS faction has made that impossible so Lab will struggle to get half the number of seats compared to " the worst result ever" the same faction has been banging on about for the last 6 years.
Equally I knew a chap who'd worked on laying asbestos pipes in Tilbury Power Power Station. He was in a dreadful state; by the time he was fifty he was confined to his house with completely destroyed lungs.
Though at least it is pop music not the Red Flag
Baldwin just replaced Edward VIII with his brother after his divorce
I genuinely blame Ralph Nader for the Bush Presidency.
"Greg Had Mohammed" which shortens to "G Had Mohammed"?
"Dum dum diddle, to be your fiddle.
To be so near, and not to hear you."
I'd like to think it would cause him to continue to try to find peace, even if in a similar (ahem) strong-armed manner around the world.
But I fear he'd just lose interest, including in whatever conflict he was awarded it for.
NEW THREAD
https://x.com/NatashaC/status/1975187152074870892
2. "You know there was a security glitch coming in" - no, I don't
3. If you can't get people in then delay the speech
Don't accuse me of lying. Its not my fault if the conference is confected shit.
"The Winner Takes it All " ?
`'...One of us is crying, one of us is lying
In her lonely bed
Staring at the ceiling
Wishing she was somewhere else instead.." ?