Green PPB. Very Corbynite. ‘Wealth tax now’ stuff.
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All of the above: let's spend more and/or cut taxes with money we don't have.
The Badenoch tale of sandwiches for the proles but something else for herself reminded me of the old apocryphal Thatcher joke, which I'm sure you all know but I'll repeat anyway. Thatcher was asked what food she would like to be served at a Cabinet meeting. Steak, she replied. And what about the vegetables? she was asked. They'll have the same as me, was the reply.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Mentioned in dispatches and commanded a firing squad aren't on Kemi's CV.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Heath’s complete absence of interpersonal skills is an oddity, in a politician.
It was weird, he could inspire real loyalty among some people yet was incredibly rude, I heard first hand how at a party he was seat with women on either side of them, for nearly three hours he just ignored them and spoke to the men at the table whilst not leaving his seat.
Somebody said that he wasn't gay, just very badly damaged by the one lady that got away.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
AMD's share price went up by 23% because of the number of GPUs OpenAI are buying from AMD
But the problem is that OpenAI have committed to spending a trillion on chips & data centres for data centres that don't exist, requiring power that will take even longer to create and spending investors money that also doesn't seem to exist.
Which wouldn't be so funny if I could see a product that people were actually buying in quantities to justify the investment (and they really won't).
Meanwhile tomorrow I know I've got 3 AI generated solutions that are actually based on broken fundamentals - which means I'm going to waste hours explaining the flaws at a simple enough level that management will understand...
I spent several hours this morning 'fixing' access to some servers for a remote developer in India. They put in a VPN ticket cos they said it wasn't working. It wasn't working cos they were trying to reach servers that were decommissioned 2 years ago. They also put in a firewall request to get to the 'right' servers from a terminal server. They put the wrong terminal server in that request.
The question from my management today; "Can we automate this?"
Ummm.......
Automate closing tickets raised by India, with no action required?
You know, there are some really good Indian developers. It's just that they tend to come to the US on H1(B) visas, leaving their less... less... ambitious colleragues back in Kerala or Bangalore.
From my limited experience, and from what others have told me, Indian developers anywhere outside India are generally very good (*). Indian developers in India are ... less brilliant. This makes me wonder if it's a problem of culture in the Indian businesses. Those who can get out of that culture shine. Or only the great ones manage to get out...
(*) And IME great people.
I've worked with good Indian developers in India and in Britain and I've worked with bad Indian developers in India and in Britain. The only Indian developer I worked with who I saw shuffled off a project v. quick was in Britain on an IT visa.
Just watched the Tory Conference. The Shadow Chancellor made his speech in front of the tiniest audience I've ever seen at an event like this. Perhaps the Tory Party really is dead. Is that a good thing?
I really don't know. I'd prefer them to Farage's mob but of the current Parties with their current leaders they wouldn't be in my top three.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
My understanding of this deal is OpenAI has to buy significant amounts of AMD's AI accelerators, and gets the penny shares as a kind of reward when the purchases go through. For AMD getting OpenAI's endorsement is good news, they're seen as very much second-tier in AI hardware behind NVidia.
But I have no idea how AMD is going to come up with a huge extra supply of AI chips. AMD fabs its chips at TSMC who are capacity constrained, and will be for some time to come. AMD already has to split its limited wafer allocation between CPUs, GPUs, chips for XBox and Playstation consoles, etc. AI GPUs are huge and require specialist packaging techniques and High Bandwidth Memory, which is also supply constrained right now.
I thought AMD still used Global Foundries, which was itself an AMD spin out, for a significant proportion (40%?) of their manufacturing?
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
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Oh no. BNP polling 67% then. Shame on this country.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Heath’s complete absence of interpersonal skills is an oddity, in a politician.
It was weird, he could inspire real loyalty among some people yet was incredibly rude, I heard first hand how at a party he was seat with women on either side of them, for nearly three hours he just ignored them and spoke to the men at the table whilst not leaving his seat.
Somebody said that he wasn't gay, just very badly damaged by the one lady that got away.
I think in this day and age you are still allowed to be non-denominated when it comes to sexuality. That seems to have been the Heath picture.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
My understanding of this deal is OpenAI has to buy significant amounts of AMD's AI accelerators, and gets the penny shares as a kind of reward when the purchases go through. For AMD getting OpenAI's endorsement is good news, they're seen as very much second-tier in AI hardware behind NVidia.
But I have no idea how AMD is going to come up with a huge extra supply of AI chips. AMD fabs its chips at TSMC who are capacity constrained, and will be for some time to come. AMD already has to split its limited wafer allocation between CPUs, GPUs, chips for XBox and Playstation consoles, etc. AI GPUs are huge and require specialist packaging techniques and High Bandwidth Memory, which is also supply constrained right now.
I thought AMD still used Global Foundries, which was itself an AMD spin out, for a significant proportion (40%?) of their manufacturing?
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
With Jenrick leading the Tories, the policy differences between them and Reform would be smaller than the policy differences between Starmer 2025 and Starmer 2020.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Heath’s complete absence of interpersonal skills is an oddity, in a politician.
An oddity, perhaps, but it was an oddity shared by the Conservative people of the place where I grew up. It's why I developed my life-long allergy to Conservatives & Conservatism.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Anti trans, anti gay marriage apparently.
They should link up with Reform.
Badly advised to try and compromise with the Gaza Independents social views imo.
I am sticking with Zack
Anyone who doesn't vote Green, the only party led by a gay Jewish man is by definition both homophonic and anti semitic I am told
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
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Oh no. BNP polling 67% then. Shame on this country.
Only cos their not prompting for the anti puff lefties!!
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Anti trans, anti gay marriage apparently.
They should link up with Reform.
Badly advised to try and compromise with the Gaza Independents social views imo.
I am sticking with Zack
Anyone who doesn't vote Green, the only party led by a gay Jewish man is by definition both homophonic and anti semitic I am told
If true, what a stupid muppet Corbyn is. He had a large following, and lots of people on the left who were willing to follow him. Large numbers of those will be repelled by his party being anti-trans and anti-gay marriage.
The supermarket I dashed into is Erewhon . “Erewhon is often called the most expensive grocery store in America, positioning wellness and clean eating as a luxury and status symbol. Patronised by celebrities and influencers….”
I just did the equivalent of nipping into the Connaught for a cuppa
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Anti trans, anti gay marriage apparently.
They should link up with Reform.
Badly advised to try and compromise with the Gaza Independents social views imo.
I am sticking with Zack
Anyone who doesn't vote Green, the only party led by a gay Jewish man is by definition both homophonic and anti semitic I am told
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
Yes, at the bottom end the pension is a pittance, so up-rating it is good. What's needed is to claw it back more effectively at the top end.
Yes, a lower threshold to the 40% tax band for pensioners , for example.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Anti trans, anti gay marriage apparently.
They should link up with Reform.
Badly advised to try and compromise with the Gaza Independents social views imo.
I am sticking with Zack
Anyone who doesn't vote Green, the only party led by a gay Jewish man is by definition both homophonic and anti semitic I am told
If true, what a stupid muppet Corbyn is. He had a large following, and lots of people on the left who were willing to follow him. Large numbers of those will be repelled by his party being anti-trans and anti-gay marriage.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
Former Chief Whip, he knew where all the bodies were buried, he was Chief Whip whilst Bob Boothby was shagging, inter alia, Ronnie Kray.
He was also relatively heavyweight and Powell split the right of the party vote with Maudling enabling Heath to win with the united One Nation centrist wing of the party behind him.
Of course there was the rumour Heath himself used to go cottaging of an evening after a late night vote but stopped after he himself was given a warning by the Whips
With Jenrick leading the Tories, the policy differences between them and Reform would be smaller than the policy differences between Starmer 2025 and Starmer 2020.
Based on the evidence so far Jenrick would try and outflank Farage, from the right
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Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
Oh feck no. We simply do not have the capacity to cope with yet more self indulgent twaddle. Where the hell are the adults?
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
By Socially Conservative do you mean Support Sharia Law?
Anti trans, anti gay marriage apparently.
They should link up with Reform.
Badly advised to try and compromise with the Gaza Independents social views imo.
I am sticking with Zack
Anyone who doesn't vote Green, the only party led by a gay Jewish man is by definition both homophonic and anti semitic I am told
I can't decide if Zack making much more clear what the Green's policy platform is (essentially, Corbyn-esque socialism with strong views on Gaxa) will help or hinder them.
On one side, some of their polling gains will be in the "none of the above" category, who like the sound of a green party.
On the other side, as Corbyn himself showed in 2017, there is a sizeable electorate willing to vote left.
I suspect they go up in the polls. Perhaps overtaking the Tories before long...
Nipped into a supermarket for a quick cheap sandwich and coffee brunch
$29
America is now more expensive than Norway
I drove around the vineyards there a few years ago. Michael Jackson and Ronald Reagan had their ranches out that way. Proper high chaparral country.
I recall my favourite winemaker was Rancho Sisquoc. Excellent Rhone style whites. Huge branded glasses, one of which I still use at home, and at the time it wasn’t overly commercialised (probably is by now). I liked the name too.
To those who would like the Triple Lock to be ended (and I'm not unsympathetic to it as an idea), how would you sell the policy politically?
Many people, when they're not voting against a party, vote on the basis of motivated self-interest. They tend not to vote for parties which they think will make them if not poorer then less well off.
A Margaret Thatcher would go out and make the argument at every opportunity and try to persuade the electorate she was right - she didn't always succeed.
One option might be to say to pensioners - we will continue to keep the basic pension below the personal allowance but you must accept annual rises below the rate of inflation in return.
Jacob Rees-Mogg today sounds awfully like Edward Heath, then.
And the chablis and lobster brought by the valet fits both too.
Jacob Rees Mogg is an engaging and unfailingly polite speaker - most recently seen politely taking on all comers at the Labour Party Conference. He doesn't deserve to be compared to a shit like Heath.
So I can see that several PB Tories also now accept the party is dead.
Anyone left? Please make sure you turn the CCHQ lights out when you leave...
And yet, and yet. Where there are party political orphans, there is a gap in the market.
The Tory question isn't centre or right, that's peripheral, the question is sane or insane.
Whether you are wet or dry, be serious about how you are going to make it work and the compromises needed, and accept that quite a lot of the last 14 years was a departure from that. The bit I saw of Stride's speech was trying to be that, but came across as ham Shakespearean actor, or maybe Frankie Howard, going "ooooo is this fiscal responsibility I see before me".
There is no Ming vase option for the Tories, they need to get serious. No, I don't see that from Jenrick either.
I've been saying this since GE24, they had their odd moments, but ultimately Meloni outflanked Salvini, yes, because of the different electoral circumstances, but also because it came with a dose of sanity. She outflanked just very slightly on the left.
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
I assume it's because the alternative was seen as worse in ideological terms, and/or he was seen as the protégé of a senior, still influential, figure.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
Former Chief Whip, he knew where all the bodies were buried, he was Chief Whip whilst Bob Boothby was shagging, inter alia, Ronnie Kray.
He was also relatively heavyweight and Powell split the right of the party vote with Maudling enabling Heath to win with the united One Nation centrist wing of the party behind him.
Of course there was the rumour Heath himself used to go cottaging of an evening after a late night vote but stopped after he himself was given a warning by the Whips
I had thought that Heath was seen as more right-wing than Maudling at the time of the leadership election. Seems a bit hard to believe in the light of subsequent events. But then John Major was also seen as the rightwing alternative to Hezza and Hurd at the time of Mrs T's defenestration- and now he's Mr Moderate compared to his successors.
"Welsh Labour has removed a social media post linking Reform UK’s Caerphilly Senedd by-election candidate Llŷr Powell to Vladimir Putin, after Nigel Farage’s party threatened legal action."
"Welsh Labour has removed a social media post linking Reform UK’s Caerphilly Senedd by-election candidate Llŷr Powell to Vladimir Putin, after Nigel Farage’s party threatened legal action."
The supermarket I dashed into is Erewhon . “Erewhon is often called the most expensive grocery store in America, positioning wellness and clean eating as a luxury and status symbol. Patronised by celebrities and influencers….”
I just did the equivalent of nipping into the Connaught for a cuppa
lol
The joke is that Whole Foods is 'Whole Wallet', while Erewhon is more like 'Whole Paycheck'.
On the other hand, were I ever to need to start dating again, I'd skip the apps and go to the fresh produce section of Erewhon.
To those who would like the Triple Lock to be ended (and I'm not unsympathetic to it as an idea), how would you sell the policy politically?
Many people, when they're not voting against a party, vote on the basis of motivated self-interest. They tend not to vote for parties which they think will make them if not poorer then less well off.
A Margaret Thatcher would go out and make the argument at every opportunity and try to persuade the electorate she was right - she didn't always succeed.
One option might be to say to pensioners - we will continue to keep the basic pension below the personal allowance but you must accept annual rises below the rate of inflation in return.
Not straightforward, it needs a lot of repetition of major themes. Among them:- - Identifying the three strands of the triple lock and showing how pensions would have fared under each one of them alone. - Comparative figures showing the poverty the triple lock was intended to address and demonstrating that the poverty had been addressed. - Comparative figures showing the income of full time workers on the minimum wage vs pensioners on the smallest basic pension vs pensioners on full state pension. - Acknowledging that people on the smallest state pensions are still in poverty, but so are full time workers on minimum wage.
The supermarket I dashed into is Erewhon . “Erewhon is often called the most expensive grocery store in America, positioning wellness and clean eating as a luxury and status symbol. Patronised by celebrities and influencers….”
I just did the equivalent of nipping into the Connaught for a cuppa
lol
The joke is that Whole Foods is 'Whole Wallet', while Erewhon is more like 'Whole Paycheck'.
On the other hand, were I ever to need to start dating again, I'd skip the apps and go to the fresh produce section of Erewhon.
I thought AMD still used Global Foundries, which was itself an AMD spin out, for a significant proportion (40%?) of their manufacturing?
That's long in the past. Global Foundries didn't have the money to compete with TSMC in the process development race, so they abandoned any attempt to keep up and just quietly produce chips on older nodes now. It's a profitable business, but not much use to AMD who are always looking to use the most advanced node. Which today means using TSMC.
The supermarket I dashed into is Erewhon . “Erewhon is often called the most expensive grocery store in America, positioning wellness and clean eating as a luxury and status symbol. Patronised by celebrities and influencers….”
I just did the equivalent of nipping into the Connaught for a cuppa
lol
The joke is that Whole Foods is 'Whole Wallet', while Erewhon is more like 'Whole Paycheck'.
On the other hand, were I ever to need to start dating again, I'd skip the apps and go to the fresh produce section of Erewhon.
This so reminds me of General Technics in Stand on Zanzibar with their supposedly "healthy" foods that are in fact corrupted under the pressures of over population. What a book that was. Absolutely visionary. Written in 1969 but anticipating the corporate super giants of today, the relative weakness of nation states, the stresses caused by over population and the climate crises that it produces. Brunner was a genius.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
First thing worth noting is that spelling mistakes can be surprisingly hard to notice, particularly if you're focusing on other aspects, like choice of font, etc.
That said, I think it's an example of a modern British malaise whereby junior staff are not encouraged and empowered to correct mistakes - they've not been delegated the authority. The senior people are too busy trying to run everything to answer your question about the spelling. Maybe it's deliberate? A pun you can't spot?
You're so scared of getting in trouble for changing it that you daren't do so, and you just send it on as is.
The end result is that the senior person thinks that everyone junior to them is too stupid to spot a spelling mistake, and so doesn't trust them to do anything. Making the situation worse.
It's like with those cakes where someone ices on the literal text, "Owen with a smiley face in the O". People are just doing exactly what they're told, because they've learned they get in trouble if they try to use their judgement.
AI summary via https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/summarizer The speaker reflects on a past sense of hope experienced during their childhood in the north, contrasting it with the current atmosphere of hopelessness prevalent in society. Over the past five years, they have engaged with individuals across the country, noting a pervasive fatigue and despair among people, particularly parents and children facing hunger and insecurity.
In response to concerns about economic inequality, the speaker advocates for a fair taxation system that targets the wealthiest individuals rather than ordinary workers, such as plumbers and small business owners. They emphasize the stark disparity in wealth accumulation, where some individuals can significantly increase their wealth overnight without effort, highlighting the obscenity of such inequality.
The speaker proposes a 1% wealth tax on the super-rich as a means to address these issues, arguing that it would help fund essential services like healthcare and childcare, ultimately benefiting society as a whole. They challenge the notion that taxing the wealthy would drive them away, pointing out that billionaire wealth has surged during the pandemic while many struggle to meet basic needs.
The speaker calls for collective action to restore hope and equity, urging the audience to join in the effort to create a more just society.
To those who would like the Triple Lock to be ended (and I'm not unsympathetic to it as an idea), how would you sell the policy politically?
Many people, when they're not voting against a party, vote on the basis of motivated self-interest. They tend not to vote for parties which they think will make them if not poorer then less well off.
A Margaret Thatcher would go out and make the argument at every opportunity and try to persuade the electorate she was right - she didn't always succeed.
One option might be to say to pensioners - we will continue to keep the basic pension below the personal allowance but you must accept annual rises below the rate of inflation in return.
I'd simply rebrand it the 'inflation-lock' or something thought up by someone better at marketing than me.
Alternatively I'd keep the "triple lock", but carefully adjust the formula to be the greater of inflation, 0% and the lowest temperature recorded in Scotland over the previous 12 months.
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
First thing worth noting is that spelling mistakes can be surprisingly hard to notice, particularly if you're focusing on other aspects, like choice of font, etc.
That said, I think it's an example of a modern British malaise whereby junior staff are not encouraged and empowered to correct mistakes - they've not been delegated the authority. The senior people are too busy trying to run everything to answer your question about the spelling. Maybe it's deliberate? A pun you can't spot?
You're so scared of getting in trouble for changing it that you daren't do so, and you just send it on as is.
The end result is that the senior person thinks that everyone junior to them is too stupid to spot a spelling mistake, and so doesn't trust them to do anything. Making the situation worse.
It's like with those cakes where someone ices on the literal text, "Owen with a smiley face in the O". People are just doing exactly what they're told, because they've learned they get in trouble if they try to use their judgement.
I once wrote a 35,000 word report at work, days of ruthlessly proof checking, hundreds of hyperlinks checked and rechecked, formatting checked.
Only after I emailed the report to the board did I notice I had spelled my name wrong on the front page.
The supermarket I dashed into is Erewhon . “Erewhon is often called the most expensive grocery store in America, positioning wellness and clean eating as a luxury and status symbol. Patronised by celebrities and influencers….”
I just did the equivalent of nipping into the Connaught for a cuppa
lol
The joke is that Whole Foods is 'Whole Wallet', while Erewhon is more like 'Whole Paycheck'.
On the other hand, were I ever to need to start dating again, I'd skip the apps and go to the fresh produce section of Erewhon.
This so reminds me of General Technics in Stand on Zanzibar with their supposedly "healthy" foods that are in fact corrupted under the pressures of over population. What a book that was. Absolutely visionary. Written in 1969 but anticipating the corporate super giants of today, the relative weakness of nation states, the stresses caused by over population and the climate crises that it produces. Brunner was a genius.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
You are a candidate for the LDs. Shouldn't you be a bit more excited by Davey?
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
Jacob Rees-Mogg today sounds awfully like Edward Heath, then.
And the chablis and lobster brought by the valet fits both too.
Rees Mogg is posher though and with more charm, as well as much more rightwing.
Perhaps we should arrange a PB outing to Heath's grand house and museum, to himself, in Salisbury cathedral close
Good grief, on checking, that is next door to The Wardrobe, the Landmark Trust property which I was looking at the other day with a view to a possible holiday (but turns out to be an attic or at least upstairs flat so mixed pros and cons and we have moved on to other ideas).
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
You are a candidate for the LDs. Shouldn't you be a bit more excited by Davey?
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
Kemi is against ID cards as it is an attack on civil liberties but
Tories to give wider stop and search power in crime hotspots
Under the Conservative proposals, police in 2,000 areas would be able to act without having grounds for suspicion
Officers would be given sweeping powers to stop and search anyone in the 2,000 areas of the country with the highest crime rates under Conservative proposals.
Police will for the first time be allowed to search people without first having grounds for suspicion, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, will announce on Tuesday. The powers would be used in the areas with the highest rates of robbery, theft, burglary, violence, drug dealing and antisocial behaviour.
Police forces would be threatened with funding cuts if they refused to use the powers, which would be combined with an “intensive” deployment of live facial recognition cameras installed on police vans and fixed to lampposts.
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
You are a candidate for the LDs. Shouldn't you be a bit more excited by Davey?
I am. But I am excited by the disruption from the Greens - it is needed. Labour are centre right, so we need a populist left party to replace them.
Narrator: When Liz Truss was Prime Minister the Tories polled as low as 14%
I see @RobertJenrick has been saying the Mini-Budget was unconservative.
What’s really dishonest and unconservative is driving wealth creators and successful companies out of the country with tax rises that actually end up increasing the country's debt.
This is exactly what the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak and Rachel Reeves have done.
Rob is a self-styled critic of the Blairite establishment but has completely failed to take on their false narrative about 2022 or mention the role of the Bank of England. The Bank admit two thirds of the gilt spike was down to their failures on pensions oversight.
Until the Conservative Party is honest about what happened in 2022, they are destined to remain at 16 percent in the polls.
Like or loathe Truss, the Tories fucked themselves over by buying into the false narrative that she 'crashed the economy'. They could never have overturned that narrative, but they could have, and should still be trying to, drive a counter-narrative that the Bank also had huge questions to answer. A combination of Sunkite tribalism and the usual Tory toadying to anyone with money or power prevented this from happening.
Perhaps so.
But it doesn't alter the fact that Truss's economic strategy was another variant of 'spend ourselves rich' profligate bollox.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
I assume it's because the alternative was seen as worse in ideological terms, and/or he was seen as the protégé of a senior, still influential, figure.
The Conservatives had just lost the 1964 election, having been in office for a decade with a succession of elderly leaders, and it was time for a new generation (well, ww2 as opposed to ww1). There were only three candidates and one of those was Enoch Powell, a token candidate. Realistically the choice was Ted Heath against Reginald Maudling.
Bigger question is how Heath got elected as Conservative Party leader in the first place with social skills that poor
Former Chief Whip, he knew where all the bodies were buried, he was Chief Whip whilst Bob Boothby was shagging, inter alia, Ronnie Kray.
He was also relatively heavyweight and Powell split the right of the party vote with Maudling enabling Heath to win with the united One Nation centrist wing of the party behind him.
Of course there was the rumour Heath himself used to go cottaging of an evening after a late night vote but stopped after he himself was given a warning by the Whips
I had thought that Heath was seen as more right-wing than Maudling at the time of the leadership election. Seems a bit hard to believe in the light of subsequent events. But then John Major was also seen as the rightwing alternative to Hezza and Hurd at the time of Mrs T's defenestration- and now he's Mr Moderate compared to his successors.
It's more that Maudling just wasn't very good. If he hadn't tried to play politics in Europe, it's just about possible DeGaulle wouldn't have vetoed our original attempt at accession.
That massive Crimean oil terminal does appear to be still, umm, experiencing operational difficulties, following last night’s unexpected conflagration.
In recent weeks, stung by criticism that she was aloof from her MPs, Badenoch has begun inviting in small groups for lunch. Well, platters of shop-bought sandwiches.
When I pointed out to one invitee that Badenoch famously declared last year that she hated sandwiches (in line with just 1% of the British public), they replied "oh no, the MPs had sandwiches, Kemi had something hot brought in".
Reminds me of the time a guy who was going to America had a first class seat, but after booking he started a relationship, and took his new girlfriend on the trip but booked her in standard class on the same flight.
Astonishingly the relationship didn't last long after that trip to America.
Wasn’t there a story about Heath after a long evening with his team having a tasty late supper served to him but nothing for them? Unlikely as it seems perhaps Heath is the closest comparator to Kemi; prickly, humourless, bad at the talking human stuff. Ted of course did nevertheless manage to win elections..
Yah.
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Heath was just self-centered and utterly lacking in self-awareness.
It's why he played the piano (by himself), sailed a yacht (by himself) and talked so tortuously pompously (by himself).
I used to work in a pub near Salisbury in the mid 90"s. One night Heath came in, with his protection officers and had a drink. Landlord had a small chat, but otherwise they sat in silence. Seemed a rather sad retirement for a man who had once bestride the party and country.
Politics UK @PolitlcsUK · 8h NEW: The BBC has been accused of bias after cancelling Zack Polanski's interview with Laura Kuenssberg during the Green Party conference
Is it because Tory Laura is a homophobic, antisemite?
Surely that is more feasible than some of the stuff thrown at Jezza by his own side in 2019 😆
Advance: Combat 18 Reform UK: National Front Tories: a smeared fly on a windscreen Labour - One Nation Conservatives LibDems - Blairite Labour Greens - Millibandite Labour YourParty - continuity Corbyn
Advance - Never heard of them Reform - BNP Tories - BNP SKS Lab - BNP LDs - Blairite Labour Greens - Corbyn Party Your Party - Socially Conservative Corbyn Pary
Genuinely excited by the Polanski Greens. Some umph into our politics again. Some of what he is saying is bonkers, but its Bonkers with Feeling, which is better than numb bonkers as we get from Starmer & Badenoch
Oh feck no. We simply do not have the capacity to cope with yet more self indulgent twaddle. Where the hell are the adults?
A wealth tax, regardless of whether it is considered good or bad, is a legitimate solution to the trilemma of not enough tax, too much spending, and too much inequality. Reform are also offering solutions, albeit different ones. The adults in the room are still wedded to the neoliberal consensus which no longer works. Until this is internalised by Labour and Conservatives, they will continue to offer adult, grown-up tried-and-tested solutions that no longer work and will be punished accordingly.
"The hundreds of billions of dollars companies are investing in AI now account for an astonishing 40 per cent share of US GDP growth this year... In a way, then, America has become one big bet on AI."
"A credible estimate suggests that A.I. capital expenditures may reach 2 percent of the gross domestic product in 2025, up from most likely less than 0.1 percent in 2022."
It was going to be my factoid of the day.
The problem is not the gross expenditure, as such. The big issue is the incestuous nature of the spend.
Nvidia went up cos OpenAI ordered loads of cards. OpenAI went up cos they got another round of funding, from Nvidia...
OpenAI's value just jumped as they've arranged to buy 10% of AMD at a penny a share.
More infrastructure spend by a software company. None of the spend is by actual customers for AI. It's all just more air in the bubble.
Okay. Let's suppose it is a massive bubble. At some point there are going to be all these data centres stuffed full of GPUs that someone could buy for pennies. What could you do with that compute capacity that would be worth the cost of electricity?
Arms imports by Israel from UK hits record highs - C4 News
Grenade launcers, parts for bombs, parts for Military Planes amongst the imports
More manufacturing jobs for British workers. Something to applaud.
Genocide ok with you?
Genocide is an overused term. It's horrible in Gaza but to my eyes equating what is going on with previous genocides stretches the term too far. Put it this way - if Israel is attempting genocide they are rubbish at it, considering their military potential.
That massive Crimean oil terminal does appear to be still, umm, experiencing operational difficulties, following last night’s unexpected conflagration.
The Tyumen oil refinery, nearly 2,000km from Ukraine, may also now have been hit.
It's a middle-sized refinery that hasn't been hit before.
Ukraine do seem to be stepping up the tempo of their attacks on Russian oil refineries.
It’s almost as if someone just gave them a lot of Storm Shadows to play with
The range of storm shadow is only 250km. I don't think Russian air defences are yet so weak that Ukrainian jets are roaming deep into Russian airspace.
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
First thing worth noting is that spelling mistakes can be surprisingly hard to notice, particularly if you're focusing on other aspects, like choice of font, etc.
That said, I think it's an example of a modern British malaise whereby junior staff are not encouraged and empowered to correct mistakes - they've not been delegated the authority. The senior people are too busy trying to run everything to answer your question about the spelling. Maybe it's deliberate? A pun you can't spot?
You're so scared of getting in trouble for changing it that you daren't do so, and you just send it on as is.
The end result is that the senior person thinks that everyone junior to them is too stupid to spot a spelling mistake, and so doesn't trust them to do anything. Making the situation worse.
It's like with those cakes where someone ices on the literal text, "Owen with a smiley face in the O". People are just doing exactly what they're told, because they've learned they get in trouble if they try to use their judgement.
My international megacorp employer proclaimed the power of one – anyone could stop a change. That went away with takeovers, and our near 100 per cent record of success declined further than you'd think.
That chocolate bar. Understand the process: 1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper 2) Design - a template is made and slogans written 3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print 4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ 5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued 6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes 7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
First thing worth noting is that spelling mistakes can be surprisingly hard to notice, particularly if you're focusing on other aspects, like choice of font, etc.
That said, I think it's an example of a modern British malaise whereby junior staff are not encouraged and empowered to correct mistakes - they've not been delegated the authority. The senior people are too busy trying to run everything to answer your question about the spelling. Maybe it's deliberate? A pun you can't spot?
You're so scared of getting in trouble for changing it that you daren't do so, and you just send it on as is.
The end result is that the senior person thinks that everyone junior to them is too stupid to spot a spelling mistake, and so doesn't trust them to do anything. Making the situation worse.
It's like with those cakes where someone ices on the literal text, "Owen with a smiley face in the O". People are just doing exactly what they're told, because they've learned they get in trouble if they try to use their judgement.
I once wrote a 35,000 word report at work, days of ruthlessly proof checking, hundreds of hyperlinks checked and rechecked, formatting checked.
Only after I emailed the report to the board did I notice I had spelled my name wrong on the front page.
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
Without wishing to defend Mel Pillock, it is completely impossible politically to ditch the triple lock. Eliminating NI, raising income tax, and therefore bringing pensions within the scope of taxable income is a milder way of redressing the balance.
Unfortunately, in this particular climate and against this political backdrop the Tories would be signing their own death warrant (more than they are doing already) by pledging to abolish the triple lock.
I don't like that, but I can accept the political realty. In a similar way that Cameron needed to "share the proceeds of growth" rather than talk about spending cuts until the GFC, because otherwise he would run straight into the Labour line of attack about cutting the NHS/public services which was their trump card from 1997-2008.
There will perhaps come a time and a place when someone will have political cover to abolish it, but that time is not now.
It doesn't have to be abolished, just tweaked very slightly. You could replace 'ax' with 'in' or the whole word with average.
Rebrand it the “quadruple lock”. New condition is “never above the personal allowance”
Conservative party will go in to the next election with a pledge to protect the triple lock (which would keep it in place until at least 2034), a spokesman says.
State pension is exempted from the £47bn in spending cuts set out by Mel Stride in his conference speech just now.
I know I slag off the UK a lot, and with some justification. But this is the contrary view of an American who moved to the UK and stayed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QvVnjiegE
To those who would like the Triple Lock to be ended (and I'm not unsympathetic to it as an idea), how would you sell the policy politically?
Many people, when they're not voting against a party, vote on the basis of motivated self-interest. They tend not to vote for parties which they think will make them if not poorer then less well off.
A Margaret Thatcher would go out and make the argument at every opportunity and try to persuade the electorate she was right - she didn't always succeed.
One option might be to say to pensioners - we will continue to keep the basic pension below the personal allowance but you must accept annual rises below the rate of inflation in return.
I'd simply rebrand it the 'inflation-lock' or something thought up by someone better at marketing than me.
Alternatively I'd keep the "triple lock", but carefully adjust the formula to be the greater of inflation, 0% and the lowest temperature recorded in Scotland over the previous 12 months.
Pensions used to be linked to wages, which was changed by the Thatcher government to inflation, which led to Gordon Brown's much-derided 75p increase, and thus indirectly to the triple lock.
"The Ukrainian project @hochuzhit_com has published a photo of a document with Russian losses over 8 months, from January to September 2025. According to it, total KIA numbers 86,744, roughly 10,843 per month, which is very close to our earlier estimates. Total losses are 281,550"
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIaesrBeqgk
I really don't know. I'd prefer them to Farage's mob but of the current Parties with their current leaders they wouldn't be in my top three.
PS. I like Cleverley. He's quite witty.
Anyone left? Please make sure you turn the CCHQ lights out when you leave...
Reminder: Draw a flaccid cock otherwise an erect one could be mistaken as a clear preference for one of the candidates.
Robert Jenrick complained of ‘not seeing another white face’ in part of Birmingham
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/06/robert-jenrick-complained-of-not-seeing-another-white-face-in-handsworth-birmingham
Apart from the vanishing demographic who have fond memories of Nice Mr MacMillan?
I'll let you know what happens.
I am sticking with Zack
Anyone who doesn't vote Green, the only party led by a gay Jewish man is by definition both homophonic and anti semitic I am told
Nipped into a supermarket for a quick cheap sandwich and coffee brunch
$29
America is now more expensive than Norway
"Vote for Ted. Four days in bed."
It would also show the guy has no values.
The supermarket I dashed into is Erewhon
.
“Erewhon is often called the most expensive grocery store in America, positioning wellness and clean eating as a luxury and status symbol. Patronised by celebrities and influencers….”
I just did the equivalent of nipping into the Connaught for a cuppa
lol
centrist wing of the party behind him.
Of course there was the rumour Heath himself used to go cottaging of an evening after a late night vote but stopped after he himself was given a warning by the Whips
And the chablis and lobster brought by the valet fits both too.
Edible pillows are not for everyone
On one side, some of their polling gains will be in the "none of the above" category, who like the sound of a green party.
On the other side, as Corbyn himself showed in 2017, there is a sizeable electorate willing to vote left.
I suspect they go up in the polls. Perhaps overtaking the Tories before long...
Well I’m stunned !!
Handsworths ethnic mix is hardly a new phenomenon.
I recall my favourite winemaker was Rancho Sisquoc. Excellent Rhone style whites. Huge branded glasses, one of which I still use at home, and at the time it wasn’t overly commercialised (probably is by now). I liked the name too.
To those who would like the Triple Lock to be ended (and I'm not unsympathetic to it as an idea), how would you sell the policy politically?
Many people, when they're not voting against a party, vote on the basis of motivated self-interest. They tend not to vote for parties which they think will make them if not poorer then less well off.
A Margaret Thatcher would go out and make the argument at every opportunity and try to persuade the electorate she was right - she didn't always succeed.
One option might be to say to pensioners - we will continue to keep the basic pension below the personal allowance but you must accept annual rises below the rate of inflation in return.
I think when the Your Party is prompted Greens plus them will be in 2nd
...150 votes to Reginald Maudling's 133 and Enoch Powell's 15...
Maudling was a "wingless wonder" in WWII, and helped cock up the negotiations to join the European Community.
Powell was ... Powell.
https://www.handsworth.bham.sch.uk/
Or here:
https://kingedwardvi.bham.sch.uk/
Bussed in, mind you.
The Tory question isn't centre or right, that's peripheral, the question is sane or insane.
Whether you are wet or dry, be serious about how you are going to make it work and the compromises needed, and accept that quite a lot of the last 14 years was a departure from that. The bit I saw of Stride's speech was trying to be that, but came across as ham Shakespearean actor, or maybe Frankie Howard, going "ooooo is this fiscal responsibility I see before me".
There is no Ming vase option for the Tories, they need to get serious. No, I don't see that from Jenrick either.
I've been saying this since GE24, they had their odd moments, but ultimately Meloni outflanked Salvini, yes, because of the different electoral circumstances, but also because it came with a dose of sanity. She outflanked just very slightly on the left.
1) Ideation - lets hand out Cadbury bars with a slogan on the wrapper
2) Design - a template is made and slogans written
3) Approval - someone signs off the file to print
4) Creation - printer receives the file, pisses himself, fulfils the contract. Box(es) of labels sent to CCHQ
5) Wrappers are removed from Cadbury bars and the new wrapper is applied and glued
6) Slogan chocs packed into boxes
7) Boxes unpacked and the contents put into goody bags for delegates and hacks
At multiple points people had eyeballs on the wrapper. Design, approval, wrapping, distribution
So either: it's deliberate mendacious wrecking. Or the party is grotesquely monumentally stupid.
Even at the last minute once they started bing handed out surely someone would notice not spelt gud and pull them back.
How the hell did this happen?
Perhaps we should arrange a PB outing to Heath's grand house and museum, to himself, in Salisbury cathedral close
Don't worry me and Zack will have your back
On the other hand, were I ever to need to start dating again, I'd skip the apps and go to the fresh produce section of Erewhon.
- Identifying the three strands of the triple lock and showing how pensions would have fared under each one of them alone.
- Comparative figures showing the poverty the triple lock was intended to address and demonstrating that the poverty had been addressed.
- Comparative figures showing the income of full time workers on the minimum wage vs pensioners on the smallest basic pension vs pensioners on full state pension.
- Acknowledging that people on the smallest state pensions are still in poverty, but so are full time workers on minimum wage.
That sort of thing.
That said, I think it's an example of a modern British malaise whereby junior staff are not encouraged and empowered to correct mistakes - they've not been delegated the authority. The senior people are too busy trying to run everything to answer your question about the spelling. Maybe it's deliberate? A pun you can't spot?
You're so scared of getting in trouble for changing it that you daren't do so, and you just send it on as is.
The end result is that the senior person thinks that everyone junior to them is too stupid to spot a spelling mistake, and so doesn't trust them to do anything. Making the situation worse.
It's like with those cakes where someone ices on the literal text, "Owen with a smiley face in the O". People are just doing exactly what they're told, because they've learned they get in trouble if they try to use their judgement.
AI summary via https://ahrefs.com/writing-tools/summarizer
The speaker reflects on a past sense of hope experienced during their childhood in the north, contrasting it with the current atmosphere of hopelessness prevalent in society. Over the past five years, they have engaged with individuals across the country, noting a pervasive fatigue and despair among people, particularly parents and children facing hunger and insecurity.
In response to concerns about economic inequality, the speaker advocates for a fair taxation system that targets the wealthiest individuals rather than ordinary workers, such as plumbers and small business owners. They emphasize the stark disparity in wealth accumulation, where some individuals can significantly increase their wealth overnight without effort, highlighting the obscenity of such inequality.
The speaker proposes a 1% wealth tax on the super-rich as a means to address these issues, arguing that it would help fund essential services like healthcare and childcare, ultimately benefiting society as a whole. They challenge the notion that taxing the wealthy would drive them away, pointing out that billionaire wealth has surged during the pandemic while many struggle to meet basic needs.
The speaker calls for collective action to restore hope and equity, urging the audience to join in the effort to create a more just society.
Alternatively I'd keep the "triple lock", but carefully adjust the formula to be the greater of inflation, 0% and the lowest temperature recorded in Scotland over the previous 12 months.
Only after I emailed the report to the board did I notice I had spelled my name wrong on the front page.
"Screech" might have been a more apt moniker
Or when compared to SKS and KB
Tories to give wider stop and search power in crime hotspots
Under the Conservative proposals, police in 2,000 areas would be able to act without having grounds for suspicion
Officers would be given sweeping powers to stop and search anyone in the 2,000 areas of the country with the highest crime rates under Conservative proposals.
Police will for the first time be allowed to search people without first having grounds for suspicion, Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, will announce on Tuesday. The powers would be used in the areas with the highest rates of robbery, theft, burglary, violence, drug dealing and antisocial behaviour.
Police forces would be threatened with funding cuts if they refused to use the powers, which would be combined with an “intensive” deployment of live facial recognition cameras installed on police vans and fixed to lampposts.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/4e5872ce-6722-4141-89f5-533a99a2bc40
But it doesn't alter the fact that Truss's economic strategy was another variant of 'spend ourselves rich' profligate bollox.
Sod it, here's Wikipedia:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_Conservative_Party_leadership_election
If he hadn't tried to play politics in Europe, it's just about possible DeGaulle wouldn't have vetoed our original attempt at accession.
The alt history of that is quite interesting.
Politics UK
@PolitlcsUK
·
8h
NEW: The BBC has been accused of bias after cancelling Zack Polanski's interview with Laura Kuenssberg during the Green Party conference
Is it because Tory Laura is a homophobic, antisemite?
Surely that is more feasible than some of the stuff thrown at Jezza by his own side in 2019 😆
Thank God he isn't in charge of anything!
"The Ukrainian project
@hochuzhit_com
has published a photo of a document with Russian losses over 8 months, from January to September 2025. According to it, total KIA numbers 86,744, roughly 10,843 per month, which is very close to our earlier estimates. Total losses are 281,550"
https://x.com/Tatarigami_UA/status/1975125211914834145