Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
"@Nigel_Farage Fayaz Khan received an 8 month sentence for illegal entry into the UK. Where are the sentences for the 35,000 migrants who've illegally entered this year?"
They should build large outdoor prisons and incarcerate evry illegal entrant they get their hands on , ie all of them as they provide a taxi service for them.
Just had this from LNER, this didn’t happen when they were in the private sector.
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
Yeah, China is our mate because of Trump
😂
Neither are our mates.
No nation is our ‘mate’
Apart from Australia, NZ and Canada, who I think are pretty staunch mates (two world wars together and counting).
Famously, Australia decoupled from the UK in the middle of WWII, see John Curtin. Australian involvement in the European theatre was less after 1942.
They were still pissed off about Bodyline but the arrival of the Yanks to Europe and the bombing of Darwin it made sense to redeploy to Australia.
At least the Aussies were there at El Alamein.
Once Singapore fell they had to look to their own defences first.
We couldn't help them because we were fighting for survival in Europe and the Med, and had trouble keeping a lid on India.
If we hadn't sent the Prince of Wales and the Repulse on a suicide mission, then Singapore would have been rather better defended. It's a decision of Churchill's that deserves far more approbation.
If the Australian artillery had been allowed to shell the Sultan of Johore's palace, on top of which was a Japanese observation post, and in which were senior Japanese officers, things might have gone better.
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
Yeah, China is our mate because of Trump
😂
We can’t afford to really piss China off . That’s the reality . Out of the EU and with Trump in the WH means the spy case had to implode .
That is the grim truth of the post Brexit world. We cannot afford trade hostility with China or other Asian powers. It is the nineteenth century reversed, and we must kowtow to economic inevitability.
Bollox, far better to be skint and we can get all the local lazy sods making the tat that we currently buy from China
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
Yeah, China is our mate because of Trump
😂
Neither are our mates.
No nation is our ‘mate’
Apart from Australia, NZ and Canada, who I think are pretty staunch mates (two world wars together and counting).
Famously, Australia decoupled from the UK in the middle of WWII, see John Curtin. Australian involvement in the European theatre was less after 1942.
They were still pissed off about Bodyline but the arrival of the Yanks to Europe and the bombing of Darwin it made sense to redeploy to Australia.
At least the Aussies were there at El Alamein.
Once Singapore fell they had to look to their own defences first.
We couldn't help them because we were fighting for survival in Europe and the Med, and had trouble keeping a lid on India.
If we hadn't sent the Prince of Wales and the Repulse on a suicide mission, then Singapore would have been rather better defended. It's a decision of Churchill's that deserves far more approbation.
They'd have been sitting ducks in harbour instead, and sunk at anchor.
The problem was there was no air cover, and the battleships were impotent in Singapore.
The captains gambled they could at least do some damage to the landings in Malaya before they were taken out.
I’m sure calling China a “ threat to national security “ will do wonders for our trade and future deals with them !
Some people need to get real and realize we’re in a new world . The UK has no choice but to suck up to China .
Yes you keep saying this and need to understand repeating bullshit is just verbal diarrhoea.
Every country, pretty much, is a potential threat to national security. Every country, pretty much, is a potential partner.
One would hope that we would have generally good relationships with fellow democracies with whom we share common interests. But there are also times when good relationships those who are not ideologically close to us will be in our interests.
Just to point out that the China spy case yields to advice which often applies in such circumstances. Which is this.
You won't go far wrong if you ignore everything from the politicans (except sometimes the A-G when saying something directly, not when someone else refers to them), and ignore more or less everything from the media.
Pay attention to David Allen Green (Law and Policy Blog) and Joshua Rozenberg and skip the rest.
Beta = lower status male, as opposed to alpha; wimpy, uses oat milk and eats vegan scones at NT cafes as opposed to raw steaks Cuck = cuckoo = allusion to the beta status male's wife being rogered by alpha males, I believe, with ensuing illegitimate offspring (yes, yes, I know, but those of a certain tendency probably don't spend their weekends birdwatching, or at least watching the feathered variety)
It's a very nasty insult when used in person.
Ouch. That’s quite comprehensive.
So presumably swingers who go to dogging sites.
Self-image vs actuality for Pete Hegseth?
(Amusingly, on his "no fatties in the military" speech, they withdrew some Texas National Guard from their invasion of Chicago after some on social media published photos of the cowboy chunkers.
Hegseth isn’t wrong, the old movie stereotype of the cops sitting in their car outside the donut shop does appear to have spread to certain areas of the military.
Those TX National Guard aren’t going to be chasing anyone, isn’t military service supposed to be about discipline and readiness? That bunch of fatties clearly isn’t passing any fitness test.
Here's one of the young MAGA crowd in the Politico story.
That's the advantage of being a MAGA and the world of alternative truths. In his mind he is most definitely the alpha.
The last thing that you can still be rude about - weight. I see a lad who has taken care of his appearance - hair is well cut and under control, he's clean shaven and wearing a nice suit that fits his, admittedly somewhat large, frame.
I'm not sure that's true actually. People are extremely touchy about weight and it's absolutely not acceptable to bring it up in the workplace or as a term of abuse.
That's a big part of the problem with weight - normalisation. It's an exceptionally serious problem that is hushed up - consider all the "no underlying health conditions" stories we saw during COVID and it turned out the patient was obese and their body was already under huge strain.
They might not do it in person but just now on PB people are laughing at this chap because if his weight. They wouldn't about his ethnicity or sex or height. (Actually if he was short some probably would, and that's even less fair).
Those aren't things you can change*. In 99% of cases your weight reflects your behaviour and comparing it to something like height or ethnicity is crass.
*I know, I know.
He doesn't look that old. Mostly fat children are down to their parents. And actually weight is not a simple issue. It certainly isn't as simple as just reflecting behaviour. Environment is important too. As are genetics. I used to run 3 x weekly, 5 or more miles. I was never slim. My body type does not do that. My sister is hugely active - runs and walks most days. She's also not slim.
My wife is never overweight whether she is running a lot (as now) or not (as sometimes happens).
That betrays the usual mistake that people make - that exercise is the way to reduce weight. It takes a significant amount of running/cycling/swimming to burn off a single slice of cake. It's all about diet. 200-300 calories in a pint of beer etc etc.
Anyway, whenever you bring this up you just get a host of excuses and whataboutery with people unable to take personal responsibility. That's why it will take a significant government intervention to solve.
And calories is also a poor measure. Multiple studies suggest that if you consume more calories than 'required' you will gain weight but nothing like the amount expected. And the reverse is also true. A low calorie diet does not mean you will keep losing weight.
The food industry is a lot to blame. Convenience food, heavily processed food (a good guide is any ingredients that you wouldn't use in your kitchen such as calcium carbonate, emulsifiers etc) are the root of all evil. If we only ate meat, veg and fruit we would most likely all be healthy.
Exactly - it's a choice. Those things are available in supermarkets.
So, either we ask people to stop eating crap (won't work) or tax/regulate that stuff into oblivion.
Or restrict NHS care to people with a healthy weight.
And then ban those who do dangerous hobbies from A and E (climbing, abseiling, mountain biking etc)?
Another classic. You'll find someone who eats well and keeps active will have a significantly reduced impact on the NHS over someone who is sedentary and overweight over the course iof their life, even accounting for the odd broken collarbone.
This attitude to keeping healthy is so ingrained in UK culture that it's very difficult to see a sustainable path for the NHS. People like me will start to refuse to pay the tax that supports such an attitude.
So you want the NHS to treat only healthy people? Is that right?
No, you haven't got that right.
I know what you are saying - you think that only people who look after their health deserve healthcare. I think thats rather extreme. We can all look at someone who smokes, drinks too much, takes not exercise and eats a rubbish diet and be annoyed that they might need more healthcare. But they pay taxes too. I would love it if no one was overweight, all took regular exercise and ate a healthy diet. It would be far better for the nation and people would probably be a lot happier too. But we don't live in that world. You come dangerously close to suggesting someone overweight should not get healthcare.
Put them in a ring and dangle a big cake in front of them, run the fat off in a week or two..
Beta = lower status male, as opposed to alpha; wimpy, uses oat milk and eats vegan scones at NT cafes as opposed to raw steaks Cuck = cuckoo = allusion to the beta status male's wife being rogered by alpha males, I believe, with ensuing illegitimate offspring (yes, yes, I know, but those of a certain tendency probably don't spend their weekends birdwatching, or at least watching the feathered variety)
It's a very nasty insult when used in person.
Ouch. That’s quite comprehensive.
So presumably swingers who go to dogging sites.
Self-image vs actuality for Pete Hegseth?
(Amusingly, on his "no fatties in the military" speech, they withdrew some Texas National Guard from their invasion of Chicago after some on social media published photos of the cowboy chunkers.
Hegseth isn’t wrong, the old movie stereotype of the cops sitting in their car outside the donut shop does appear to have spread to certain areas of the military.
Those TX National Guard aren’t going to be chasing anyone, isn’t military service supposed to be about discipline and readiness? That bunch of fatties clearly isn’t passing any fitness test.
Here's one of the young MAGA crowd in the Politico story.
That's the advantage of being a MAGA and the world of alternative truths. In his mind he is most definitely the alpha.
The last thing that you can still be rude about - weight. I see a lad who has taken care of his appearance - hair is well cut and under control, he's clean shaven and wearing a nice suit that fits his, admittedly somewhat large, frame.
I'm not sure that's true actually. People are extremely touchy about weight and it's absolutely not acceptable to bring it up in the workplace or as a term of abuse.
That's a big part of the problem with weight - normalisation. It's an exceptionally serious problem that is hushed up - consider all the "no underlying health conditions" stories we saw during COVID and it turned out the patient was obese and their body was already under huge strain.
They might not do it in person but just now on PB people are laughing at this chap because if his weight. They wouldn't about his ethnicity or sex or height. (Actually if he was short some probably would, and that's even less fair).
Those aren't things you can change*. In 99% of cases your weight reflects your behaviour and comparing it to something like height or ethnicity is crass.
*I know, I know.
He doesn't look that old. Mostly fat children are down to their parents. And actually weight is not a simple issue. It certainly isn't as simple as just reflecting behaviour. Environment is important too. As are genetics. I used to run 3 x weekly, 5 or more miles. I was never slim. My body type does not do that. My sister is hugely active - runs and walks most days. She's also not slim.
My wife is never overweight whether she is running a lot (as now) or not (as sometimes happens).
That betrays the usual mistake that people make - that exercise is the way to reduce weight. It takes a significant amount of running/cycling/swimming to burn off a single slice of cake. It's all about diet. 200-300 calories in a pint of beer etc etc.
Anyway, whenever you bring this up you just get a host of excuses and whataboutery with people unable to take personal responsibility. That's why it will take a significant government intervention to solve.
And calories is also a poor measure. Multiple studies suggest that if you consume more calories than 'required' you will gain weight but nothing like the amount expected. And the reverse is also true. A low calorie diet does not mean you will keep losing weight.
The food industry is a lot to blame. Convenience food, heavily processed food (a good guide is any ingredients that you wouldn't use in your kitchen such as calcium carbonate, emulsifiers etc) are the root of all evil. If we only ate meat, veg and fruit we would most likely all be healthy.
Exactly - it's a choice. Those things are available in supermarkets.
So, either we ask people to stop eating crap (won't work) or tax/regulate that stuff into oblivion.
Or restrict NHS care to people with a healthy weight.
And then ban those who do dangerous hobbies from A and E (climbing, abseiling, mountain biking etc)?
Another classic. You'll find someone who eats well and keeps active will have a significantly reduced impact on the NHS over someone who is sedentary and overweight over the course iof their life, even accounting for the odd broken collarbone.
This attitude to keeping healthy is so ingrained in UK culture that it's very difficult to see a sustainable path for the NHS. People like me will start to refuse to pay the tax that supports such an attitude.
So you want the NHS to treat only healthy people? Is that right?
No, you haven't got that right.
I know what you are saying - you think that only people who look after their health deserve healthcare. I think thats rather extreme. We can all look at someone who smokes, drinks too much, takes not exercise and eats a rubbish diet and be annoyed that they might need more healthcare. But they pay taxes too. I would love it if no one was overweight, all took regular exercise and ate a healthy diet. It would be far better for the nation and people would probably be a lot happier too. But we don't live in that world. You come dangerously close to suggesting someone overweight should not get healthcare.
That's not what I'm saying either.
Then sadly I must conclude that I am too thick to understand your point about an option being to restrict access to healthcare to people with a healthy weight.*
*Incidentally the closest one of my friends came to dying was with a burst peptic ulcer. At the time he was a healthy weight, despite a really unhealthy lifestyle. My MiL also had a terrible lifestyle and died early because of it - her weight was fine.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
In the Edwardian area Royal Mail used private contractors to supplement their own staff. One of my great-grandfathers made quite a good living as a postal contractor.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
Though Ofcom did also recently allow RM to deliver second class post every other weekday under its USO, so with that change it should be able to more easily meet its second class and also its first class delivery targets
Recently took 12 days for a first class card to get from Devon to London.
When I was claiming my pension I twice sent recorded delivery items to the pension provider one 24h and one 48h. Both arrived several days late.
My sister posted my birthday card two days early from about 20 miles away. It arrived 5 days after my birthday.
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
Yeah, China is our mate because of Trump
😂
Neither are our mates.
No nation is our ‘mate’
Apart from Australia, NZ and Canada, who I think are pretty staunch mates (two world wars together and counting).
Famously, Australia decoupled from the UK in the middle of WWII, see John Curtin. Australian involvement in the European theatre was less after 1942.
They were still pissed off about Bodyline but the arrival of the Yanks to Europe and the bombing of Darwin it made sense to redeploy to Australia.
At least the Aussies were there at El Alamein.
Once Singapore fell they had to look to their own defences first.
We couldn't help them because we were fighting for survival in Europe and the Med, and had trouble keeping a lid on India.
If we hadn't sent the Prince of Wales and the Repulse on a suicide mission, then Singapore would have been rather better defended. It's a decision of Churchill's that deserves far more approbation.
Two more ships in Singapore Harbour would have had no effect.
The Japanese attacked by *land* to avoid the formidable naval defences of Singapore.
Churchill was astonished that nothing had been done to improve the land defences. The army had taken a view that since a land attack was impossible, they wouldn’t bother.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
Savvy in terms tying everything up in deniability and process, yes I agree. He is a creature of that world. But he’s not politically savvy, per se, IMHO.
There was a point today where it looked very much like he was worried he’d misstepped - the uncharacteristic “I need to double-check that point” was a bit of a panic moment for him I think. By trying to frame this as a blame the opposition piece and play the politics (clumsily) there is a risk of “misspeaking.”
Yes, I just meant he'd know not to leave himself open to the 'deliberately misleading the House' charge. I didn't watch PMQs though.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
That will be why the role of rabbits has declined in modern warfare...
Just had this from LNER, this didn’t happen when they were in the private sector.
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
Yours sincerely, LNER Data Protection Team
The public run railways are going to be a real problem for Labour.
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
A lot of people and mps do care about the China case and frankly this controversy plus the London Chinese Embassy has made it near impossible for Starmer to do a trade deal
Furthermore , you do know the Speaker is furious about this controversy and the safety of mps
I don’t care and the papers are flogging a dead horse .
You are in denial
It matters to the security of our nation and our mps
Starmer only needs to publish the secret meeting minutes that he now admits Powell attended
That is the only way for this to go away
And you are avoiding answering my question.
Not sure what it is to be fair
It's the one you replied to with a question of your own:
What I don't understand - and none of the reporting has made this very clear - is that the alleged criminal offence happened under the last government. Whatever way the current government defines our relationship with China ought to be irrelevant to whether or not acting for China at the time amounted to espionage (or whatever the precise charge was).
Can anyone explain this to me ?
Simple , they are in teh hot seat now and are lying like champiions. Why did they not just come out and blame the Tories and tell the supposed truth, why deny their secret little meetings. The clowns have form , having pissed away a fortune on Chagos already and now they are cuddling up to the Chinese and helping them establish a monster spy base in centre of London, WTF .
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
Savvy in terms tying everything up in deniability and process, yes I agree. He is a creature of that world. But he’s not politically savvy, per se, IMHO.
There was a point today where it looked very much like he was worried he’d misstepped - the uncharacteristic “I need to double-check that point” was a bit of a panic moment for him I think. By trying to frame this as a blame the opposition piece and play the politics (clumsily) there is a risk of “misspeaking.”
Yes, I just meant he'd know not to leave himself open to the 'deliberately misleading the House' charge. I didn't watch PMQs though.
Starmer isn’t good at politics but he always covers himself legally .
Beta = lower status male, as opposed to alpha; wimpy, uses oat milk and eats vegan scones at NT cafes as opposed to raw steaks Cuck = cuckoo = allusion to the beta status male's wife being rogered by alpha males, I believe, with ensuing illegitimate offspring (yes, yes, I know, but those of a certain tendency probably don't spend their weekends birdwatching, or at least watching the feathered variety)
It's a very nasty insult when used in person.
Ouch. That’s quite comprehensive.
So presumably swingers who go to dogging sites.
Self-image vs actuality for Pete Hegseth?
(Amusingly, on his "no fatties in the military" speech, they withdrew some Texas National Guard from their invasion of Chicago after some on social media published photos of the cowboy chunkers.
Hegseth isn’t wrong, the old movie stereotype of the cops sitting in their car outside the donut shop does appear to have spread to certain areas of the military.
Those TX National Guard aren’t going to be chasing anyone, isn’t military service supposed to be about discipline and readiness? That bunch of fatties clearly isn’t passing any fitness test.
Here's one of the young MAGA crowd in the Politico story.
That's the advantage of being a MAGA and the world of alternative truths. In his mind he is most definitely the alpha.
The last thing that you can still be rude about - weight. I see a lad who has taken care of his appearance - hair is well cut and under control, he's clean shaven and wearing a nice suit that fits his, admittedly somewhat large, frame.
I'm not sure that's true actually. People are extremely touchy about weight and it's absolutely not acceptable to bring it up in the workplace or as a term of abuse.
That's a big part of the problem with weight - normalisation. It's an exceptionally serious problem that is hushed up - consider all the "no underlying health conditions" stories we saw during COVID and it turned out the patient was obese and their body was already under huge strain.
They might not do it in person but just now on PB people are laughing at this chap because if his weight. They wouldn't about his ethnicity or sex or height. (Actually if he was short some probably would, and that's even less fair).
Those aren't things you can change*. In 99% of cases your weight reflects your behaviour and comparing it to something like height or ethnicity is crass.
*I know, I know.
He doesn't look that old. Mostly fat children are down to their parents. And actually weight is not a simple issue. It certainly isn't as simple as just reflecting behaviour. Environment is important too. As are genetics. I used to run 3 x weekly, 5 or more miles. I was never slim. My body type does not do that. My sister is hugely active - runs and walks most days. She's also not slim.
My wife is never overweight whether she is running a lot (as now) or not (as sometimes happens).
That betrays the usual mistake that people make - that exercise is the way to reduce weight. It takes a significant amount of running/cycling/swimming to burn off a single slice of cake. It's all about diet. 200-300 calories in a pint of beer etc etc.
Anyway, whenever you bring this up you just get a host of excuses and whataboutery with people unable to take personal responsibility. That's why it will take a significant government intervention to solve.
And calories is also a poor measure. Multiple studies suggest that if you consume more calories than 'required' you will gain weight but nothing like the amount expected. And the reverse is also true. A low calorie diet does not mean you will keep losing weight.
The food industry is a lot to blame. Convenience food, heavily processed food (a good guide is any ingredients that you wouldn't use in your kitchen such as calcium carbonate, emulsifiers etc) are the root of all evil. If we only ate meat, veg and fruit we would most likely all be healthy.
Exactly - it's a choice. Those things are available in supermarkets.
So, either we ask people to stop eating crap (won't work) or tax/regulate that stuff into oblivion.
Or restrict NHS care to people with a healthy weight.
And then ban those who do dangerous hobbies from A and E (climbing, abseiling, mountain biking etc)?
Another classic. You'll find someone who eats well and keeps active will have a significantly reduced impact on the NHS over someone who is sedentary and overweight over the course iof their life, even accounting for the odd broken collarbone.
This attitude to keeping healthy is so ingrained in UK culture that it's very difficult to see a sustainable path for the NHS. People like me will start to refuse to pay the tax that supports such an attitude.
So you want the NHS to treat only healthy people? Is that right?
Now *there’s* a way to make cost savings at the NHS!
Tbh - there is a grain of truth to that. The NHS is an incredibly effective and cost-efficient system for keeping unwell people alive to a bare-minimum standard. A&E is typically excellent if you're about to die etc etc
But it's supposed to be a health service. It's failing badly at keeping people out of the GP practice, out of the hospital.
NHS is a classic “Well I wouldn’t start from here” problem.
More effort on being proactive about health, as seen where private insurance is prevalent, would be a step in the right direction. I have private insurance and get a checkup and blood panel every year.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
It's Salmon.
(By which I mean that's the answer you seek. But it must be entirely wrong)
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
Savvy in terms tying everything up in deniability and process, yes I agree. He is a creature of that world. But he’s not politically savvy, per se, IMHO.
There was a point today where it looked very much like he was worried he’d misstepped - the uncharacteristic “I need to double-check that point” was a bit of a panic moment for him I think. By trying to frame this as a blame the opposition piece and play the politics (clumsily) there is a risk of “misspeaking.”
Yes, I just meant he'd know not to leave himself open to the 'deliberately misleading the House' charge. I didn't watch PMQs though.
Starmer isn’t good at politics but he always covers himself legally .
Starmer is an innocent abroad in politics and it SHOWS!
WATO had Prof Mark Elliott from Cambridge commenting on law re: China spying
AIUI he said that the Govt is not the "gatekeeper" as to the determination of whether China was/is a threat to national security but that it is up to a jury to determine that.
Interested to know PB's learned opinion of: 1 How the govt, which is in charge of international relations and national security, is not the sole arbiter on which countries are a threat to national security 2 How a jury, drawn from the general public and ignorant of security briefings, is supposed to do anything other than accept evidence on the govt's determination at the relevant time.
Above ignores the Prof's confusion at to whether OSA or NSA is the current legislation or whether the determination of threat can be retrospectively changed.
Juries decide facts on evidence. If necessary they do so on evidence heard in secret. Governments can certify that country X is a threat, and decide so as a matter of policy, just as the Tories tried to certify in a statute that Rwanda was a 'safe country'. None of that would be sufficient to require any jury to think anything particular.
Government is the arbiter of policy. A jury, strange as it may seem, would be the arbiter of (a) the fact of what that policy is and (b) whether or not country X, declared by government a threat, is in fact a threat.
If the point were contested, both sides could call expert evidence on the matter.
For a bit more see David Allen Green's blog today;
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
Yeah, China is our mate because of Trump
😂
Neither are our mates.
No nation is our ‘mate’
Apart from Australia, NZ and Canada, who I think are pretty staunch mates (two world wars together and counting).
Famously, Australia decoupled from the UK in the middle of WWII, see John Curtin. Australian involvement in the European theatre was less after 1942.
They were still pissed off about Bodyline but the arrival of the Yanks to Europe and the bombing of Darwin it made sense to redeploy to Australia.
At least the Aussies were there at El Alamein.
Once Singapore fell they had to look to their own defences first.
We couldn't help them because we were fighting for survival in Europe and the Med, and had trouble keeping a lid on India.
If we hadn't sent the Prince of Wales and the Repulse on a suicide mission, then Singapore would have been rather better defended. It's a decision of Churchill's that deserves far more approbation.
They'd have been sitting ducks in harbour instead, and sunk at anchor.
The problem was there was no air cover, and the battleships were impotent in Singapore.
The captains gambled they could at least do some damage to the landings in Malaya before they were taken out.
There was air support in Singapore, while the Japanese would not have had nearby airbases.. So they would have been significantly harder to sink.
And the Japanese would have been much more circumspect about attacking if there were two battleships around Singapore who could intercept and attack boats.
I'm not saying the Japanese would have been unable to take Singapore, just that it would have been significantly more difficult for them. (Plus there would have been a cadre of military officers there who were not third rank.)
Just had this from LNER, this didn’t happen when they were in the private sector.
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
Yours sincerely, LNER Data Protection Team
The public run railways are going to be a real problem for Labour.
BR was beyond awful, and we're heading that way.
I think it was interesting that Horse, once of this parish, thought we should nationalise the railways. He was of course, too young to recall the horror of British Rail. "We're getting there". Maybe, but no bloody idea when...
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
How is the rabbit moving? Does a single jump of 1m consume more energy than slowly shuffling the same distance?
"@Nigel_Farage Fayaz Khan received an 8 month sentence for illegal entry into the UK. Where are the sentences for the 35,000 migrants who've illegally entered this year?"
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Moonwalking mouse or a pea shooter
This is all on earth, so you're first option isn't applicable. The pea shooter I don't know about... But it includes the propulsion method not traveling, so I guess it would be excluded. (Canons and guns don't count.)
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
That will be why the role of rabbits has declined in modern warfare...
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
It's Salmon.
(By which I mean that's the answer you seek. But it must be entirely wrong)
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
WATO had Prof Mark Elliott from Cambridge commenting on law re: China spying
AIUI he said that the Govt is not the "gatekeeper" as to the determination of whether China was/is a threat to national security but that it is up to a jury to determine that.
Interested to know PB's learned opinion of: 1 How the govt, which is in charge of international relations and national security, is not the sole arbiter on which countries are a threat to national security 2 How a jury, drawn from the general public and ignorant of security briefings, is supposed to do anything other than accept evidence on the govt's determination at the relevant time.
Above ignores the Prof's confusion at to whether OSA or NSA is the current legislation or whether the determination of threat can be retrospectively changed.
Juries decide facts on evidence. If necessary they do so on evidence heard in secret. Governments can certify that country X is a threat, and decide so as a matter of policy, just as the Tories tried to certify in a statute that Rwanda was a 'safe country'. None of that would be sufficient to require any jury to think anything particular.
Government is the arbiter of policy. A jury, strange as it may seem, would be the arbiter of (a) the fact of what that policy is and (b) whether or not country X, declared by government a threat, is in fact a threat.
If the point were contested, both sides could call expert evidence on the matter.
For a bit more see David Allen Green's blog today;
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
Savvy in terms tying everything up in deniability and process, yes I agree. He is a creature of that world. But he’s not politically savvy, per se, IMHO.
There was a point today where it looked very much like he was worried he’d misstepped - the uncharacteristic “I need to double-check that point” was a bit of a panic moment for him I think. By trying to frame this as a blame the opposition piece and play the politics (clumsily) there is a risk of “misspeaking.”
Yes, I just meant he'd know not to leave himself open to the 'deliberately misleading the House' charge. I didn't watch PMQs though.
Starmer isn’t good at politics but he always covers himself legally .
Starmer is an innocent abroad in politics and it SHOWS!
"@Nigel_Farage Fayaz Khan received an 8 month sentence for illegal entry into the UK. Where are the sentences for the 35,000 migrants who've illegally entered this year?"
Beta = lower status male, as opposed to alpha; wimpy, uses oat milk and eats vegan scones at NT cafes as opposed to raw steaks Cuck = cuckoo = allusion to the beta status male's wife being rogered by alpha males, I believe, with ensuing illegitimate offspring (yes, yes, I know, but those of a certain tendency probably don't spend their weekends birdwatching, or at least watching the feathered variety)
It's a very nasty insult when used in person.
Ouch. That’s quite comprehensive.
So presumably swingers who go to dogging sites.
Self-image vs actuality for Pete Hegseth?
(Amusingly, on his "no fatties in the military" speech, they withdrew some Texas National Guard from their invasion of Chicago after some on social media published photos of the cowboy chunkers.
Hegseth isn’t wrong, the old movie stereotype of the cops sitting in their car outside the donut shop does appear to have spread to certain areas of the military.
Those TX National Guard aren’t going to be chasing anyone, isn’t military service supposed to be about discipline and readiness? That bunch of fatties clearly isn’t passing any fitness test.
Here's one of the young MAGA crowd in the Politico story.
That's the advantage of being a MAGA and the world of alternative truths. In his mind he is most definitely the alpha.
The last thing that you can still be rude about - weight. I see a lad who has taken care of his appearance - hair is well cut and under control, he's clean shaven and wearing a nice suit that fits his, admittedly somewhat large, frame.
I'm not sure that's true actually. People are extremely touchy about weight and it's absolutely not acceptable to bring it up in the workplace or as a term of abuse.
That's a big part of the problem with weight - normalisation. It's an exceptionally serious problem that is hushed up - consider all the "no underlying health conditions" stories we saw during COVID and it turned out the patient was obese and their body was already under huge strain.
They might not do it in person but just now on PB people are laughing at this chap because if his weight. They wouldn't about his ethnicity or sex or height. (Actually if he was short some probably would, and that's even less fair).
Those aren't things you can change*. In 99% of cases your weight reflects your behaviour and comparing it to something like height or ethnicity is crass.
*I know, I know.
He doesn't look that old. Mostly fat children are down to their parents. And actually weight is not a simple issue. It certainly isn't as simple as just reflecting behaviour. Environment is important too. As are genetics. I used to run 3 x weekly, 5 or more miles. I was never slim. My body type does not do that. My sister is hugely active - runs and walks most days. She's also not slim.
My wife is never overweight whether she is running a lot (as now) or not (as sometimes happens).
That betrays the usual mistake that people make - that exercise is the way to reduce weight. It takes a significant amount of running/cycling/swimming to burn off a single slice of cake. It's all about diet. 200-300 calories in a pint of beer etc etc.
Anyway, whenever you bring this up you just get a host of excuses and whataboutery with people unable to take personal responsibility. That's why it will take a significant government intervention to solve.
And calories is also a poor measure. Multiple studies suggest that if you consume more calories than 'required' you will gain weight but nothing like the amount expected. And the reverse is also true. A low calorie diet does not mean you will keep losing weight.
The food industry is a lot to blame. Convenience food, heavily processed food (a good guide is any ingredients that you wouldn't use in your kitchen such as calcium carbonate, emulsifiers etc) are the root of all evil. If we only ate meat, veg and fruit we would most likely all be healthy.
Exactly - it's a choice. Those things are available in supermarkets.
So, either we ask people to stop eating crap (won't work) or tax/regulate that stuff into oblivion.
Or restrict NHS care to people with a healthy weight.
And then ban those who do dangerous hobbies from A and E (climbing, abseiling, mountain biking etc)?
Another classic. You'll find someone who eats well and keeps active will have a significantly reduced impact on the NHS over someone who is sedentary and overweight over the course iof their life, even accounting for the odd broken collarbone.
This attitude to keeping healthy is so ingrained in UK culture that it's very difficult to see a sustainable path for the NHS. People like me will start to refuse to pay the tax that supports such an attitude.
So you want the NHS to treat only healthy people? Is that right?
Now *there’s* a way to make cost savings at the NHS!
Tbh - there is a grain of truth to that. The NHS is an incredibly effective and cost-efficient system for keeping unwell people alive to a bare-minimum standard. A&E is typically excellent if you're about to die etc etc
But it's supposed to be a health service. It's failing badly at keeping people out of the GP practice, out of the hospital.
NHS is a classic “Well I wouldn’t start from here” problem.
More effort on being proactive about health, as seen where private insurance is prevalent, would be a step in the right direction. I have private insurance and get a checkup and blood panel every year.
In bang for buck terms it's mainly about the basics. Don't smoke, don't drink too much, keep a healthy weight through good diet and exercise, get screened for anything serious that runs in your family.
I only partially comply with my own advice, though, it has to be said.
Just had this from LNER, this didn’t happen when they were in the private sector.
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
Yours sincerely, LNER Data Protection Team
The public run railways are going to be a real problem for Labour.
BR was beyond awful, and we're heading that way.
The supplier is presumably a private sector company, so not LNER itself.
Would also note: 1) They've admitted it and contacted those affected 2) They've made an assessment of what actual data has been compromised 3) Given concise advice on how to minimise any issues 4) Provided a point of contact
To compare to my former accountants who lost their clients' data to the dark web in a ransomware attack
1) They denied it for two months, including outright lies when asked directly 2) They had no idea of what data had been compromised, made no attempt to assess it or advise clients as to potential extent 3) Suggested a free trial of Experian 4) Stopped responding to emails 5) Got upset when I fired them
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Moonwalking mouse or a pea shooter
This is all on earth, so you're first option isn't applicable. The pea shooter I don't know about... But it includes the propulsion method not traveling, so I guess it would be excluded. (Canons and guns don't count.)
Michael Jackson wasn't actually on the moon you know.
"Britain has lost control of its borders, home secretary admits Shabana Mahmood says public trust in state will be weakened unless politicians ‘bring order’ to immigration" (£)
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
No one cares about the China spy case . And most realize that with Trump in the WH we need to suck up to China.
If the government sabotaged the case then I’m afraid that’s the reality of where we are .
Yeah, China is our mate because of Trump
😂
Neither are our mates.
No nation is our ‘mate’
Apart from Australia, NZ and Canada, who I think are pretty staunch mates (two world wars together and counting).
Famously, Australia decoupled from the UK in the middle of WWII, see John Curtin. Australian involvement in the European theatre was less after 1942.
They were still pissed off about Bodyline but the arrival of the Yanks to Europe and the bombing of Darwin it made sense to redeploy to Australia.
At least the Aussies were there at El Alamein.
Once Singapore fell they had to look to their own defences first.
We couldn't help them because we were fighting for survival in Europe and the Med, and had trouble keeping a lid on India.
Can you not mention the F*ll of S*ngapore please.
It triggers me.
Doesn't surprise me. I've just been reading a history of it. So depressing that it's gone off to Oxfam. Don't think I could bear rereading it ever again.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Question: Do I want to upgrade my iPhone 15 Pro Max for a 17 Pro Max? £480 trade in is tempting - will I be able to keep it in tradable condition for another year...?
New cameras will be useful for filming, especially the selfie camera as I use that a lot. Then again there is literally nothing wrong with it...
Why not ditch the phone altogether and use a laptop for everything instead?
Because he cannot fit a laptop in his pocket.
The phone also has a much better camera than the laptop.
I had - still have, but now unused - a pocket for my Z88, in my Barbour coat. Very useful for visiting the uni library on the way home from the day job.
It is obvious and has been for some time that Reform is moving into a position where, despite the rhetoric, it accepts the framework of the post WWII social democratic state, high state spending, no figures whatever on what % of GDP will be TME (total state/LA spending) five years into a Reform government as it will similar to now. It won't mention that this is a high tax policy, higher still if it wants to reduce PSBR as it should.
The formula is simple: ask each voter of Clacton what free stuff they want from the state. Multiply by 68 million. They will list the expensive bits. Add to this the overlooked bits (debt interest, boring bits of government) and away you go. Social democrat state, high spend, high tax + attempt at closed borders.
It is possible to run it better, though I am not holding my breath; not possible to run it much cheaper.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
big scale: Supertanker? smaller scale: Bus?
Whale?
Rotifer?
I assume it's for something?
Scaling is critical - but no Re (Reynold's Number) is given. Which raises the small matters of density and viscosity of surroundings, which affects the need to carry the weight - not to mention the density of the specified weight. A gram of osmium would be a lot easier to move at a constant velocity than a gram of helium, whatever the medium.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
"@Nigel_Farage Fayaz Khan received an 8 month sentence for illegal entry into the UK. Where are the sentences for the 35,000 migrants who've illegally entered this year?"
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
The second post wasn't abolished until after the dotcom boom had gone bust. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
"Britain has lost control of its borders, home secretary admits Shabana Mahmood says public trust in state will be weakened unless politicians ‘bring order’ to immigration" (£)
At the moment Labour are doing a lot of standing around talking about how bad it all is without a tremendous amount of actually doing anything about it.
I know changes are on the table and take time but you do have the machinery of government behind you. Perhaps just get on with it?
This is why people don’t trust Labour. Frontbencher diagnoses a very serious issue (Mahmood is saying here that the very frontier of the state is essentially out of control). And then promises stuff will be done: and people wait. And the frontbencher says the same thing a month later. And people see no progress (or at least no visible progress) and think - what are you doing?
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
He's a senior lawyer. Surely he wouldn't have lied!
Perish the thought!
Lawyers and politicians don’t lie, they mis-speak.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
He's a senior lawyer. Surely he wouldn't have lied!
Perish the thought!
Lawyers and politicians don’t lie, they mis-speak.
I was thinking about this and was trying to remember when “mis-speak” entered common parlance.
I do remember a big deal being made of Ms Clinton mis-speaking when she said she allegedly landed in the former Yugoslavia to snipers firing above her head or something.
It is obvious and has been for some time that Reform is moving into a position where, despite the rhetoric, it accepts the framework of the post WWII social democratic state, high state spending, no figures whatever on what % of GDP will be TME (total state/LA spending) five years into a Reform government as it will similar to now. It won't mention that this is a high tax policy, higher still if it wants to reduce PSBR as it should.
The formula is simple: ask each voter of Clacton what free stuff they want from the state. Multiply by 68 million. They will list the expensive bits. Add to this the overlooked bits (debt interest, boring bits of government) and away you go. Social democrat state, high spend, high tax + attempt at closed borders.
It is possible to run it better, though I am not holding my breath; not possible to run it much cheaper.
Tice though suggested the opposite, slashed state, especially civil service and scrapped net zero to fund longer term tax cuts.
Though he is the most Thatcherite of the Reform MPs
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
Back in the 50's I, like many other students, worked on the 'Christmas post'. There were certainly two deliveries a day in my neck of the woods. We turned up to the delivery office at about 5.30am and were given 'our' bundle, which we then sorted into the easiest delivery route. In the case of 'temps' this was initially done by someone who knew the 'walk'. Off we went and did the delivery, getting back to the office at about 9am. We then had a short break and at about 10am were given another, usually smaller, bundle to take out. Meant we finished at about noon. As I say, this was back in the mid 50's, so some of my recollections may be wrong.
China compromised the system used to transfer highly secret data around Whitehall and obtained “vast amounts” of classified government information over a period of many years, Dominic Cummings has said
Cummings, who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson, said that he and the then prime minister were informed about the breach in 2020. He said he was warned at the time that disclosing some specific details of the breach would be a criminal offence
It included “Strap” material — which is the government term for the highest level of classified information.
Cummings told The Times: “The Cabinet Secretary said, ‘we have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was
“And it was so bizarre that — not just Boris — a few people in the room were looking around like this. ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying? Because it sounds f***ing crazy’.”
He added: “What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised.
“Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”
He said he would be willing to share what he knew about the data breach with MPs and claimed that the most senior officials in Whitehall had covered it up. Cummings refused to say how the system had been breached.
“If the MPs want to finally have an inquiry about it, I’d be happy to talk about it,” he said. And many people know that what I’m saying is true and many people will back it up.
“And many people know that after the PM was notified about this in 2020, officials from the Cabinet Office then went round telling everybody in the meeting that it was illegal for them to discuss this with the media.”
He declined to say how the system was compromised
He said that he found the collapse of a China spy trial because the government refused to describe Beijing as a threat to national security as “ludicrous”.
“Anyone who has been read in at a high level with the intelligence services on China knows that the word threat doesn't even begin to cover it,” he said.
“The degree of penetration in espionage, in all kinds of operations, penetration of critical national infrastructure, theft of intellectual property, the whole range of things is absolutely extraordinary. A hundred times worse than it's in the public domain.
”Everybody who has been briefed on the critical analyses of these things from the intelligence services knows this is true. The idea that it is somehow a difficult semantic question of whether to define them as a threat or how much of a threat is absolutely puerile nonsense. And everybody in the heart of Whitehall knows this.
On this sort of stuff, Cummings almost certainly has a point. He’s going public with it because those in charge behind the scenes aren’t taking it seriously enough.
The cyber threat from state actors is worse than it’s even been, and is unlikely to get better any time soon. China and Russia can do an awful lot of damage for relatively little money.
Beta = lower status male, as opposed to alpha; wimpy, uses oat milk and eats vegan scones at NT cafes as opposed to raw steaks Cuck = cuckoo = allusion to the beta status male's wife being rogered by alpha males, I believe, with ensuing illegitimate offspring (yes, yes, I know, but those of a certain tendency probably don't spend their weekends birdwatching, or at least watching the feathered variety)
It's a very nasty insult when used in person.
Ouch. That’s quite comprehensive.
So presumably swingers who go to dogging sites.
Self-image vs actuality for Pete Hegseth?
(Amusingly, on his "no fatties in the military" speech, they withdrew some Texas National Guard from their invasion of Chicago after some on social media published photos of the cowboy chunkers.
Hegseth isn’t wrong, the old movie stereotype of the cops sitting in their car outside the donut shop does appear to have spread to certain areas of the military.
Those TX National Guard aren’t going to be chasing anyone, isn’t military service supposed to be about discipline and readiness? That bunch of fatties clearly isn’t passing any fitness test.
Here's one of the young MAGA crowd in the Politico story.
That's the advantage of being a MAGA and the world of alternative truths. In his mind he is most definitely the alpha.
The last thing that you can still be rude about - weight. I see a lad who has taken care of his appearance - hair is well cut and under control, he's clean shaven and wearing a nice suit that fits his, admittedly somewhat large, frame.
I'm not sure that's true actually. People are extremely touchy about weight and it's absolutely not acceptable to bring it up in the workplace or as a term of abuse.
That's a big part of the problem with weight - normalisation. It's an exceptionally serious problem that is hushed up - consider all the "no underlying health conditions" stories we saw during COVID and it turned out the patient was obese and their body was already under huge strain.
They might not do it in person but just now on PB people are laughing at this chap because if his weight. They wouldn't about his ethnicity or sex or height. (Actually if he was short some probably would, and that's even less fair).
Those aren't things you can change*. In 99% of cases your weight reflects your behaviour and comparing it to something like height or ethnicity is crass.
*I know, I know.
He doesn't look that old. Mostly fat children are down to their parents. And actually weight is not a simple issue. It certainly isn't as simple as just reflecting behaviour. Environment is important too. As are genetics. I used to run 3 x weekly, 5 or more miles. I was never slim. My body type does not do that. My sister is hugely active - runs and walks most days. She's also not slim.
My wife is never overweight whether she is running a lot (as now) or not (as sometimes happens).
That betrays the usual mistake that people make - that exercise is the way to reduce weight. It takes a significant amount of running/cycling/swimming to burn off a single slice of cake. It's all about diet. 200-300 calories in a pint of beer etc etc.
Anyway, whenever you bring this up you just get a host of excuses and whataboutery with people unable to take personal responsibility. That's why it will take a significant government intervention to solve.
And calories is also a poor measure. Multiple studies suggest that if you consume more calories than 'required' you will gain weight but nothing like the amount expected. And the reverse is also true. A low calorie diet does not mean you will keep losing weight.
The food industry is a lot to blame. Convenience food, heavily processed food (a good guide is any ingredients that you wouldn't use in your kitchen such as calcium carbonate, emulsifiers etc) are the root of all evil. If we only ate meat, veg and fruit we would most likely all be healthy.
Exactly - it's a choice. Those things are available in supermarkets.
So, either we ask people to stop eating crap (won't work) or tax/regulate that stuff into oblivion.
Or restrict NHS care to people with a healthy weight.
And then ban those who do dangerous hobbies from A and E (climbing, abseiling, mountain biking etc)?
Another classic. You'll find someone who eats well and keeps active will have a significantly reduced impact on the NHS over someone who is sedentary and overweight over the course iof their life, even accounting for the odd broken collarbone.
This attitude to keeping healthy is so ingrained in UK culture that it's very difficult to see a sustainable path for the NHS. People like me will start to refuse to pay the tax that supports such an attitude.
So you want the NHS to treat only healthy people? Is that right?
Now *there’s* a way to make cost savings at the NHS!
Tbh - there is a grain of truth to that. The NHS is an incredibly effective and cost-efficient system for keeping unwell people alive to a bare-minimum standard. A&E is typically excellent if you're about to die etc etc
But it's supposed to be a health service. It's failing badly at keeping people out of the GP practice, out of the hospital.
NHS is a classic “Well I wouldn’t start from here” problem.
More effort on being proactive about health, as seen where private insurance is prevalent, would be a step in the right direction. I have private insurance and get a checkup and blood panel every year.
Candidly, those things will just increase the cost on the State. The longer people live, the more they cost in terms of pensions and healthcare. Now you can ameliorate this somewhat by forcing people to save. But even this helps only slightly, because ultimately work done by ... errr ... workers has to be diverted into the care of pensions of oldies. Whether it is done by taxation or them taking a share of profits through dividends is a little beside the point: people of working age support those of non-working age.
As you have correctly pointed out in the past, one way of solving this problem is the Dubai model. Have lots of output from people you can tax, and then get them to fuck off back home before they reach the age where they need care. (And the Swiss used to have a similar model.)
The fundamental problem is that we're all living longer, and then we're all getting things like dementia, which require expense round the clock care.
I think everyon should be offered a choice at the age of 25: lower taxes, but euthanased at (say) 70 or 75. Or higher taxes, and you get looked after for longer.
Oh Lordy, are the same people who whipped themselves into a frenzy over Chagos are now predicting Starmer’s demise today.
I wish they would bet.
Chagos was ridiculous but not likely to bring down a government on its own. More likely in this instance is the resignation of Powell.
Some of our low IQ posters thought it would bring down the government.
The Chagos deal?
Has anything in recent times brought down a government, in terms of policy? There isnt really anything that could bring down a PM with the kind of majority he has except his own sense of shame and personal responsibility. And it requires a lack of both of these characteristics to get into the position in the first place. You might get a resignation or two though from this if theres a trail somewhere. The only way it would be curtains for Starmer would be if he is personally tied to the actions and has just lied about not being.
It's a murky situation with too much complication and unless personal identifiable wrong doing comes out it will just disappear.
Starmer would be in jeopardy if he's lied to the House but he's surely too savvy to have done that.
He's a senior lawyer. Surely he wouldn't have lied!
Perish the thought!
Lawyers and politicians don’t lie, they mis-speak.
I was thinking about this and was trying to remember when “mis-speak” entered common parlance.
I do remember a big deal being made of Ms Clinton mis-speaking when she said she allegedly landed in the former Yugoslavia to snipers firing above her head or something.
It is obvious and has been for some time that Reform is moving into a position where, despite the rhetoric, it accepts the framework of the post WWII social democratic state, high state spending, no figures whatever on what % of GDP will be TME (total state/LA spending) five years into a Reform government as it will similar to now. It won't mention that this is a high tax policy, higher still if it wants to reduce PSBR as it should.
The formula is simple: ask each voter of Clacton what free stuff they want from the state. Multiply by 68 million. They will list the expensive bits. Add to this the overlooked bits (debt interest, boring bits of government) and away you go. Social democrat state, high spend, high tax + attempt at closed borders.
It is possible to run it better, though I am not holding my breath; not possible to run it much cheaper.
Tice though suggested the opposite, slashed state, especially civil service and scrapped net zero to fund longer term tax cuts.
Though he is the most Thatcherite of the Reform MPs
Reform are trying to attract both sides at once, persuading voters on both sides with vague promises without concretising them into workable plans on the assumption they can wing it in office because they're just better than the other parties.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
Back in the 50's I, like many other students, worked on the 'Christmas post'. There were certainly two deliveries a day in my neck of the woods. We turned up to the delivery office at about 5.30am and were given 'our' bundle, which we then sorted into the easiest delivery route. In the case of 'temps' this was initially done by someone who knew the 'walk'. Off we went and did the delivery, getting back to the office at about 9am. We then had a short break and at about 10am were given another, usually smaller, bundle to take out. Meant we finished at about noon. As I say, this was back in the mid 50's, so some of my recollections may be wrong.
Just asked my mum whether she did this and she says yes. Would have been early 1960s probably.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
The second post wasn't abolished until after the dotcom boom had gone bust. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
No - we have one delivery a week of around 20 items. The local postal service is really struggling (we talk to the posties).
Just had this from LNER, this didn’t happen when they were in the private sector.
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
Yours sincerely, LNER Data Protection Team
That’s actually a *REALLY* good response. Well done LNER on the public relations front - if not on the data protection and supplier audit front.
I really hope that LNER also owns a whole load of similar-looking INER domains, as that’s how the phishers can do their work.
Personally my email address is yourcompany@mydomain.com (LNER@mydomain.com in this case), there’s probably a business opportunity in developing and easy-to-configure mass-market version of this.
China compromised the system used to transfer highly secret data around Whitehall and obtained “vast amounts” of classified government information over a period of many years, Dominic Cummings has said
Cummings, who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson, said that he and the then prime minister were informed about the breach in 2020. He said he was warned at the time that disclosing some specific details of the breach would be a criminal offence
It included “Strap” material — which is the government term for the highest level of classified information.
Cummings told The Times: “The Cabinet Secretary said, ‘we have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was
“And it was so bizarre that — not just Boris — a few people in the room were looking around like this. ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying? Because it sounds f***ing crazy’.”
He added: “What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised.
“Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”
He said he would be willing to share what he knew about the data breach with MPs and claimed that the most senior officials in Whitehall had covered it up. Cummings refused to say how the system had been breached.
“If the MPs want to finally have an inquiry about it, I’d be happy to talk about it,” he said. And many people know that what I’m saying is true and many people will back it up.
“And many people know that after the PM was notified about this in 2020, officials from the Cabinet Office then went round telling everybody in the meeting that it was illegal for them to discuss this with the media.”
He declined to say how the system was compromised
He said that he found the collapse of a China spy trial because the government refused to describe Beijing as a threat to national security as “ludicrous”.
“Anyone who has been read in at a high level with the intelligence services on China knows that the word threat doesn't even begin to cover it,” he said.
“The degree of penetration in espionage, in all kinds of operations, penetration of critical national infrastructure, theft of intellectual property, the whole range of things is absolutely extraordinary. A hundred times worse than it's in the public domain.
”Everybody who has been briefed on the critical analyses of these things from the intelligence services knows this is true. The idea that it is somehow a difficult semantic question of whether to define them as a threat or how much of a threat is absolutely puerile nonsense. And everybody in the heart of Whitehall knows this.
On this sort of stuff, Cummings almost certainly has a point. He’s going public with it because those in charge behind the scenes aren’t taking it seriously enough.
The cyber threat from state actors is worse than it’s even been, and is unlikely to get better any time soon. China and Russia can do an awful lot of damage for relatively little money.
He leaked it to 2 competing Journos who are now arguing about who got the story first
This sounds like an interesting Gresham Lecture. It's probably sold out already because there aren't many seats.
"Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man Who Murdered My Grandmother Lord Daniel Finkelstein OBE Lecture, Barnard's Inn Hall, Tuesday, 4 Nov 2025 - 18:00"
China compromised the system used to transfer highly secret data around Whitehall and obtained “vast amounts” of classified government information over a period of many years, Dominic Cummings has said
Cummings, who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson, said that he and the then prime minister were informed about the breach in 2020. He said he was warned at the time that disclosing some specific details of the breach would be a criminal offence
It included “Strap” material — which is the government term for the highest level of classified information.
Cummings told The Times: “The Cabinet Secretary said, ‘we have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was
“And it was so bizarre that — not just Boris — a few people in the room were looking around like this. ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying? Because it sounds f***ing crazy’.”
He added: “What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised.
“Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”
He said he would be willing to share what he knew about the data breach with MPs and claimed that the most senior officials in Whitehall had covered it up. Cummings refused to say how the system had been breached.
“If the MPs want to finally have an inquiry about it, I’d be happy to talk about it,” he said. And many people know that what I’m saying is true and many people will back it up.
“And many people know that after the PM was notified about this in 2020, officials from the Cabinet Office then went round telling everybody in the meeting that it was illegal for them to discuss this with the media.”
He declined to say how the system was compromised
He said that he found the collapse of a China spy trial because the government refused to describe Beijing as a threat to national security as “ludicrous”.
“Anyone who has been read in at a high level with the intelligence services on China knows that the word threat doesn't even begin to cover it,” he said.
“The degree of penetration in espionage, in all kinds of operations, penetration of critical national infrastructure, theft of intellectual property, the whole range of things is absolutely extraordinary. A hundred times worse than it's in the public domain.
”Everybody who has been briefed on the critical analyses of these things from the intelligence services knows this is true. The idea that it is somehow a difficult semantic question of whether to define them as a threat or how much of a threat is absolutely puerile nonsense. And everybody in the heart of Whitehall knows this.
On this sort of stuff, Cummings almost certainly has a point. He’s going public with it because those in charge behind the scenes aren’t taking it seriously enough.
The cyber threat from state actors is worse than it’s even been, and is unlikely to get better any time soon. China and Russia can do an awful lot of damage for relatively little money.
He leaked it to 2 competing Journos who are now arguing about who got the story first
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
Back in the 50's I, like many other students, worked on the 'Christmas post'. There were certainly two deliveries a day in my neck of the woods. We turned up to the delivery office at about 5.30am and were given 'our' bundle, which we then sorted into the easiest delivery route. In the case of 'temps' this was initially done by someone who knew the 'walk'. Off we went and did the delivery, getting back to the office at about 9am. We then had a short break and at about 10am were given another, usually smaller, bundle to take out. Meant we finished at about noon. As I say, this was back in the mid 50's, so some of my recollections may be wrong.
Just asked my mum whether she did this and she says yes. Would have been early 1960s probably.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
A tiny bicycle. Or an ant.
It is a human on a bicycle, correct.
Pah! It'a a sailplane, shirley?
Btw when I first became a paraplegic, one of the physios at Stoke Mandeville told me: "It's not all bad news - moving around in a wheelchair is far more efficient than walking."
Which is no doubt true but not much help in weight control:
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As someone with a glider pilot’s licence, I’m going to suggest a soaring bird.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
Is it that thing they do in the North East on Election nights, where they pass the ballot boxes from person to person in a long line?
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
Back in the 50's I, like many other students, worked on the 'Christmas post'. There were certainly two deliveries a day in my neck of the woods. We turned up to the delivery office at about 5.30am and were given 'our' bundle, which we then sorted into the easiest delivery route. In the case of 'temps' this was initially done by someone who knew the 'walk'. Off we went and did the delivery, getting back to the office at about 9am. We then had a short break and at about 10am were given another, usually smaller, bundle to take out. Meant we finished at about noon. As I say, this was back in the mid 50's, so some of my recollections may be wrong.
Just asked my mum whether she did this and she says yes. Would have been early 1960s probably.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As someone with a glider pilot’s licence, I’m going to suggest a soaring bird.
The three-under-par albatross?
Perhaps the best, as it does it at such a low altitude (slope soaring on the wave crests) that the energy cost in getting to height (including finding thermals) is minimised.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
The second post wasn't abolished until after the dotcom boom had gone bust. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
No - we have one delivery a week of around 20 items. The local postal service is really struggling (we talk to the posties).
Per capita letter volumes are less than 100 per person per year, or less than 2 per week.
You either have a very large household, or you are a major outlier in terms of your use of the post, or you are not remembering accurately the volume of post that you receive.
China compromised the system used to transfer highly secret data around Whitehall and obtained “vast amounts” of classified government information over a period of many years, Dominic Cummings has said
Cummings, who served as a senior adviser to Boris Johnson, said that he and the then prime minister were informed about the breach in 2020. He said he was warned at the time that disclosing some specific details of the breach would be a criminal offence
It included “Strap” material — which is the government term for the highest level of classified information.
Cummings told The Times: “The Cabinet Secretary said, ‘we have to explain something; there’s been a serious problem’, and he talked through what this was
“And it was so bizarre that — not just Boris — a few people in the room were looking around like this. ‘Am I somehow misunderstanding what he’s saying? Because it sounds f***ing crazy’.”
He added: “What I’m saying is that some Strap stuff was compromised and vast amounts of data classified as extremely secret and extremely dangerous for any foreign entity to control was compromised.
“Material from intelligence services. Material from the National Security Secretariat in the Cabinet Office. Things the government has to keep secret. If they’re not secret, then there are very, very serious implications for it.”
He said he would be willing to share what he knew about the data breach with MPs and claimed that the most senior officials in Whitehall had covered it up. Cummings refused to say how the system had been breached.
“If the MPs want to finally have an inquiry about it, I’d be happy to talk about it,” he said. And many people know that what I’m saying is true and many people will back it up.
“And many people know that after the PM was notified about this in 2020, officials from the Cabinet Office then went round telling everybody in the meeting that it was illegal for them to discuss this with the media.”
He declined to say how the system was compromised
He said that he found the collapse of a China spy trial because the government refused to describe Beijing as a threat to national security as “ludicrous”.
“Anyone who has been read in at a high level with the intelligence services on China knows that the word threat doesn't even begin to cover it,” he said.
“The degree of penetration in espionage, in all kinds of operations, penetration of critical national infrastructure, theft of intellectual property, the whole range of things is absolutely extraordinary. A hundred times worse than it's in the public domain.
”Everybody who has been briefed on the critical analyses of these things from the intelligence services knows this is true. The idea that it is somehow a difficult semantic question of whether to define them as a threat or how much of a threat is absolutely puerile nonsense. And everybody in the heart of Whitehall knows this.
On this sort of stuff, Cummings almost certainly has a point. He’s going public with it because those in charge behind the scenes aren’t taking it seriously enough.
The cyber threat from state actors is worse than it’s even been, and is unlikely to get better any time soon. China and Russia can do an awful lot of damage for relatively little money.
He leaked it to 2 competing Journos who are now arguing about who got the story first
LOL because he knows that hacks care more about it being *their* story, than it being *the* story.
Mahmoud is clearly positioning herself for a run at the top job
Here’s a thought to go with that. How would a Trumpite US admin respond to a UK led by a Muslim? I strongly suspect they would take away the keys to Trident, leaving the UK without nukes. Vance has said as much, IIRC
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
Back in the 50's I, like many other students, worked on the 'Christmas post'. There were certainly two deliveries a day in my neck of the woods. We turned up to the delivery office at about 5.30am and were given 'our' bundle, which we then sorted into the easiest delivery route. In the case of 'temps' this was initially done by someone who knew the 'walk'. Off we went and did the delivery, getting back to the office at about 9am. We then had a short break and at about 10am were given another, usually smaller, bundle to take out. Meant we finished at about noon. As I say, this was back in the mid 50's, so some of my recollections may be wrong.
Just asked my mum whether she did this and she says yes. Would have been early 1960s probably.
Just had this from LNER, this didn’t happen when they were in the private sector.
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
Yours sincerely, LNER Data Protection Team
The public run railways are going to be a real problem for Labour.
BR was beyond awful, and we're heading that way.
The supplier is presumably a private sector company, so not LNER itself.
Would also note: 1) They've admitted it and contacted those affected 2) They've made an assessment of what actual data has been compromised 3) Given concise advice on how to minimise any issues 4) Provided a point of contact
To compare to my former accountants who lost their clients' data to the dark web in a ransomware attack
1) They denied it for two months, including outright lies when asked directly 2) They had no idea of what data had been compromised, made no attempt to assess it or advise clients as to potential extent 3) Suggested a free trial of Experian 4) Stopped responding to emails 5) Got upset when I fired them
Outsourcing some important bit of your companies IT then watching all the data be released into the wild seems to be the zeitgeist. See M&S, Co-op etc etc.
Information wants to be free and seems to get there pretty quickly once its transferred to an Indian outsourcing firm.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
The second post wasn't abolished until after the dotcom boom had gone bust. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
No - we have one delivery a week of around 20 items. The local postal service is really struggling (we talk to the posties).
Per capita letter volumes are less than 100 per person per year, or less than 2 per week.
You either have a very large household, or you are a major outlier in terms of your use of the post, or you are not remembering accurately the volume of post that you receive.
We have something about twice or possibly three times a week. Quite a lot of it is requests for charitable donations...... RNLI, Amnesty and the like.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
The second post wasn't abolished until after the dotcom boom had gone bust. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
No - we have one delivery a week of around 20 items. The local postal service is really struggling (we talk to the posties).
Per capita letter volumes are less than 100 per person per year, or less than 2 per week.
You either have a very large household, or you are a major outlier in terms of your use of the post, or you are not remembering accurately the volume of post that you receive.
Well for a start there is myself and my wife. And we receive a fair number of periodicals each month (NT, English Heritage, Fortean Times, The Week). Add in other bits of mail, birthday cards (last week) and there you go. It happened on monday. I am not so senile yet I cannot recall our own post.
Everyone on PB ought to be numerate and be able to deal with randomness within a dataset. The average may be 100 per person per year but what is the range?
And my main point is that far from a delivery a day, five days a week, we currently have one.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As someone with a glider pilot’s licence, I’m going to suggest a soaring bird.
The three-under-par albatross?
Yebbut - a Nimbus 4 or ASH 30 is surely more efficient than any soaring bird?
"Britain has lost control of its borders, home secretary admits Shabana Mahmood says public trust in state will be weakened unless politicians ‘bring order’ to immigration" (£)
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
The second post wasn't abolished until after the dotcom boom had gone bust. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
No - we have one delivery a week of around 20 items. The local postal service is really struggling (we talk to the posties).
Per capita letter volumes are less than 100 per person per year, or less than 2 per week.
You either have a very large household, or you are a major outlier in terms of your use of the post, or you are not remembering accurately the volume of post that you receive.
Well for a start there is myself and my wife. And we receive a fair number of periodicals each month (NT, English Heritage, Fortean Times, The Week). Add in other bits of mail, birthday cards (last week) and there you go. It happened on monday. I am not so senile yet I cannot recall our own post.
Everyone on PB ought to be numerate and be able to deal with randomness within a dataset. The average may be 100 per person per year but what is the range?
And my main point is that far from a delivery a day, five days a week, we currently have one.
I am all over variability within a dataset, but, still, you're an outlier and you can't expect to have a postal service on the basis of your unusual level of demand.
If everyone had your level of demand then the postal service would be much better.
"Britain has lost control of its borders, home secretary admits Shabana Mahmood says public trust in state will be weakened unless politicians ‘bring order’ to immigration" (£)
It is neither blunt nor controversial but a statement of the obvious. It started long before Labour came into power. How to fix it is much more challenging. Unlike the previous government this lot are at least trying to fix it. For the Tories they stupidly believed letting it fester would be rewarded at the polls without considering the possibility of those voters going to Reform instead.
Old-fashioned letters are obviously more important than we thought.
"Royal Mail fined £21m for missing delivery targets Millions of important letters are arriving late, the communications regulator said, and people aren't getting what they pay for."
I liked the joke from a recent Al Murray Pub Landlord gig.
'Who do you work for?'
'The Royal Mail'
'Weren't you supposed to be here on Tuesday?'
We currently one post a week in a medium sized town in Wiltshire. Once a week. Pathetic. In Victorian era there were several a day.
In Victoria era Royal Mail was state owned and far more postmen were employed.
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
Addressed Royal Mail letters were down about a third between 2019-2023. At some point it's either going to have to be seriously cut back, or subsidised, or it's going to collapse.
I doubt there ever was really more than one delivery a day outside London even in Victorian times. Telegraph messages, yes, but not post. Yes there were deliveries on Christmas Day but I don't think Sundays. Royal Mail was valued for being secure before 1840, but not at all cheap. With the Mail Coaches in the eighteenth century it became somewhat faster but they didn't deliver out from the Post Office at all. In the 1730s in a court case a deponent deliberately sent his deposition by common carrier to the consternation of the other side in order to waste towards a month of time. Royal Mail would have returned the answer into Chancery from Kendal in a week.
I think you are wrong on this. It was customary to send post cards etc with the expectation of a rapid service (i.e. "I have arrived". Bear in mind the prevalence of the railway system in the later Victorian era, for instance.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
As someone with a glider pilot’s licence, I’m going to suggest a soaring bird.
The three-under-par albatross?
Yebbut - a Nimbus 4 or ASH 30 is surely more efficient than any soaring bird?
That 60:1 L/D is definitely better than most, but the albatross has a lot less weight to carry and can stay up for days on end.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
A tiny bicycle. Or an ant.
By the way, the efficiency of ants is terrible.
Really? I'd have thought their ability to carry 10x body weight would be in their favour.
Beta = lower status male, as opposed to alpha; wimpy, uses oat milk and eats vegan scones at NT cafes as opposed to raw steaks Cuck = cuckoo = allusion to the beta status male's wife being rogered by alpha males, I believe, with ensuing illegitimate offspring (yes, yes, I know, but those of a certain tendency probably don't spend their weekends birdwatching, or at least watching the feathered variety)
It's a very nasty insult when used in person.
Ouch. That’s quite comprehensive.
So presumably swingers who go to dogging sites.
Self-image vs actuality for Pete Hegseth?
(Amusingly, on his "no fatties in the military" speech, they withdrew some Texas National Guard from their invasion of Chicago after some on social media published photos of the cowboy chunkers.
Hegseth isn’t wrong, the old movie stereotype of the cops sitting in their car outside the donut shop does appear to have spread to certain areas of the military.
Those TX National Guard aren’t going to be chasing anyone, isn’t military service supposed to be about discipline and readiness? That bunch of fatties clearly isn’t passing any fitness test.
Here's one of the young MAGA crowd in the Politico story.
That's the advantage of being a MAGA and the world of alternative truths. In his mind he is most definitely the alpha.
The last thing that you can still be rude about - weight. I see a lad who has taken care of his appearance - hair is well cut and under control, he's clean shaven and wearing a nice suit that fits his, admittedly somewhat large, frame.
I'm not sure that's true actually. People are extremely touchy about weight and it's absolutely not acceptable to bring it up in the workplace or as a term of abuse.
That's a big part of the problem with weight - normalisation. It's an exceptionally serious problem that is hushed up - consider all the "no underlying health conditions" stories we saw during COVID and it turned out the patient was obese and their body was already under huge strain.
They might not do it in person but just now on PB people are laughing at this chap because if his weight. They wouldn't about his ethnicity or sex or height. (Actually if he was short some probably would, and that's even less fair).
Those aren't things you can change*. In 99% of cases your weight reflects your behaviour and comparing it to something like height or ethnicity is crass.
*I know, I know.
He doesn't look that old. Mostly fat children are down to their parents. And actually weight is not a simple issue. It certainly isn't as simple as just reflecting behaviour. Environment is important too. As are genetics. I used to run 3 x weekly, 5 or more miles. I was never slim. My body type does not do that. My sister is hugely active - runs and walks most days. She's also not slim.
My wife is never overweight whether she is running a lot (as now) or not (as sometimes happens).
That betrays the usual mistake that people make - that exercise is the way to reduce weight. It takes a significant amount of running/cycling/swimming to burn off a single slice of cake. It's all about diet. 200-300 calories in a pint of beer etc etc.
Anyway, whenever you bring this up you just get a host of excuses and whataboutery with people unable to take personal responsibility. That's why it will take a significant government intervention to solve.
And calories is also a poor measure. Multiple studies suggest that if you consume more calories than 'required' you will gain weight but nothing like the amount expected. And the reverse is also true. A low calorie diet does not mean you will keep losing weight.
The food industry is a lot to blame. Convenience food, heavily processed food (a good guide is any ingredients that you wouldn't use in your kitchen such as calcium carbonate, emulsifiers etc) are the root of all evil. If we only ate meat, veg and fruit we would most likely all be healthy.
Exactly - it's a choice. Those things are available in supermarkets.
So, either we ask people to stop eating crap (won't work) or tax/regulate that stuff into oblivion.
Or restrict NHS care to people with a healthy weight.
And then ban those who do dangerous hobbies from A and E (climbing, abseiling, mountain biking etc)?
Another classic. You'll find someone who eats well and keeps active will have a significantly reduced impact on the NHS over someone who is sedentary and overweight over the course iof their life, even accounting for the odd broken collarbone.
This attitude to keeping healthy is so ingrained in UK culture that it's very difficult to see a sustainable path for the NHS. People like me will start to refuse to pay the tax that supports such an attitude.
So you want the NHS to treat only healthy people? Is that right?
Now *there’s* a way to make cost savings at the NHS!
Tbh - there is a grain of truth to that. The NHS is an incredibly effective and cost-efficient system for keeping unwell people alive to a bare-minimum standard. A&E is typically excellent if you're about to die etc etc
But it's supposed to be a health service. It's failing badly at keeping people out of the GP practice, out of the hospital.
NHS is a classic “Well I wouldn’t start from here” problem.
More effort on being proactive about health, as seen where private insurance is prevalent, would be a step in the right direction. I have private insurance and get a checkup and blood panel every year.
Candidly, those things will just increase the cost on the State. The longer people live, the more they cost in terms of pensions and healthcare. Now you can ameliorate this somewhat by forcing people to save. But even this helps only slightly, because ultimately work done by ... errr ... workers has to be diverted into the care of pensions of oldies. Whether it is done by taxation or them taking a share of profits through dividends is a little beside the point: people of working age support those of non-working age.
As you have correctly pointed out in the past, one way of solving this problem is the Dubai model. Have lots of output from people you can tax, and then get them to fuck off back home before they reach the age where they need care. (And the Swiss used to have a similar model.)
The fundamental problem is that we're all living longer, and then we're all getting things like dementia, which require expense round the clock care.
I think everyon should be offered a choice at the age of 25: lower taxes, but euthanased at (say) 70 or 75. Or higher taxes, and you get looked after for longer.
Comments
If you want the universal service obligation only Royal Mail is obliged to do, including to rural areas other providers charge more for deliveries to and largely use RM for final mile to go to anyway, then taxpayers would need to fund that again.
The universal service obligation will otherwise always make a loss and RM will have to fund it from its more profitable urban, city and large town parcel deliveries
We are getting in touch from the LNER Data Protection Team to tell you that a personal data breach has taken place.
What happened
On 8 September 2025 we were told that one of our suppliers, who manages our customer communication database, had suffered a security incident. A third-party gained unauthorised access to the supplier’s networks and in the process gained access to customer data.
As a result of our investigation of the breach so far, we have concluded that the data included some personal information, specifically your name and email address.
No payment card details, passwords or your LNER account information were involved. Our ticketing systems remain safe, and you can continue to buy tickets from LNER as normal.
Because your name and email address were affected, it’s possible you will receive phishing or scam messages.
What we're doing
We are continuing to work closely with our supplier, who has engaged independent security experts, to put enhanced security controls in place to minimise the risk of this happening again. We have also taken the following measures to address the breach:
Reported the incident to the Information Commissioner’s Office on 9 September 2025;
Notified the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), British Transport Police (BTP) and the Department for Transport;
Paused certain communication channels temporarily as a precaution.
What you should do
Remain vigilant against phishing or scam attempts, including unexpected communications asking for personal or financial information.
Don’t click on links or download attachments in suspicious emails.
Be aware that phishing attempts may appear to come from LNER when they have not. Emails sent from LNER will end in @lner.co.uk or @email.lner.co.uk; threat actors may try to imitate this with similar characters, for example, using the number 1 instead of the letter L. You can contact us at datainfo@lner.co.uk if you are in doubt about whether an email or message comes from LNER.
Although we understand that password information has not been affected, we also suggest that you maintain a secure password and change your password regularly. Remember that we will never ask you to provide us with your password.
Contact us
We have set up a dedicated mailbox - datainfo@lner.co.uk - for questions about this incident. It goes directly to our Data Protection Officer, John.
Yours sincerely,
LNER Data Protection Team
The problem was there was no air cover, and the battleships were impotent in Singapore.
The captains gambled they could at least do some damage to the landings in Malaya before they were taken out.
You won't go far wrong if you ignore everything from the politicans (except sometimes the A-G when saying something directly, not when someone else refers to them), and ignore more or less everything from the media.
Pay attention to David Allen Green (Law and Policy Blog) and Joshua Rozenberg and skip the rest.
This:
https://davidallengreen.com/2025/10/trying-to-make-sense-of-the-nonsensical-decision-to-drop-the-chinese-spying-prosecutions/
from DAG will bring you more or less up to date and save a lot of time.
*Incidentally the closest one of my friends came to dying was with a burst peptic ulcer. At the time he was a healthy weight, despite a really unhealthy lifestyle. My MiL also had a terrible lifestyle and died early because of it - her weight was fine.
A fecking cheque!
Thankfully I can scan the cheque with my banking app.
The Japanese attacked by *land* to avoid the formidable naval defences of Singapore.
Churchill was astonished that nothing had been done to improve the land defences. The army had taken a view that since a land attack was impossible, they wouldn’t bother.
As far as kilojoules of energy to move a gram of weight by one meter goes (i.e. efficiency of transport), a modern jet fighter is more efficient than a rabbit.
Three points for identifying who or what is the most efficient method of transportation on this scale.
BR was beyond awful, and we're heading that way.
More effort on being proactive about health, as seen where private insurance is prevalent, would be a step in the right direction. I have private insurance and get a checkup and blood panel every year.
(By which I mean that's the answer you seek. But it must be entirely wrong)
Government is the arbiter of policy. A jury, strange as it may seem, would be the arbiter of (a) the fact of what that policy is and (b) whether or not country X, declared by government a threat, is in fact a threat.
If the point were contested, both sides could call expert evidence on the matter.
For a bit more see David Allen Green's blog today;
https://davidallengreen.com/2025/10/trying-to-make-sense-of-the-nonsensical-decision-to-drop-the-chinese-spying-prosecutions/
By Jonny Ball"
https://unherd.com/newsroom/nigel-farage-is-abandoning-thatcherism
And the Japanese would have been much more circumspect about attacking if there were two battleships around Singapore who could intercept and attack boats.
I'm not saying the Japanese would have been unable to take Singapore, just that it would have been significantly more difficult for them. (Plus there would have been a cadre of military officers there who were not third rank.)
I only partially comply with my own advice, though, it has to be said.
Would also note:
1) They've admitted it and contacted those affected
2) They've made an assessment of what actual data has been compromised
3) Given concise advice on how to minimise any issues
4) Provided a point of contact
To compare to my former accountants who lost their clients' data to the dark web in a ransomware attack
1) They denied it for two months, including outright lies when asked directly
2) They had no idea of what data had been compromised, made no attempt to assess it or advise clients as to potential extent
3) Suggested a free trial of Experian
4) Stopped responding to emails
5) Got upset when I fired them
"Britain has lost control of its borders, home secretary admits
Shabana Mahmood says public trust in state will be weakened unless politicians ‘bring order’ to immigration" (£)
https://www.ft.com/content/dc92efc5-3863-4a2f-9344-6df869f48031
Last seen getting four sumo wrestlers to walk across the Abbey Road crossing this morning.
Every ambassador needs to take his attitude, and get totally immersed in the country they live.
smaller scale: Bus?
Throw them in water, if it drowns it’s a girl, and if it floats, then it’s boy-ant.
(hums "Prince Charming")
The formula is simple: ask each voter of Clacton what free stuff they want from the state. Multiply by 68 million. They will list the expensive bits. Add to this the overlooked bits (debt interest, boring bits of government) and away you go. Social democrat state, high spend, high tax + attempt at closed borders.
It is possible to run it better, though I am not holding my breath; not possible to run it much cheaper.
If it drowns it’s girl-ant, but if it floats… [pause].
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1841961.stm
My mother has some old postcards she's collected which read a lot like text messages, arranging meeting up later the same day, because the post was that reliable and quick - and because there was no alternative, no phone.
I'm struggling to find statistics online, but I'd guess that the volume of post was a lot larger in 1895 than today, even with a smaller population back then. With a higher volume of post you can deliver a better service because of economies of scale.
You have one postal delivery a week because, frankly, you don't need a more frequent delivery.
I know changes are on the table and take time but you do have the machinery of government behind you. Perhaps just get on with it?
This is why people don’t trust Labour. Frontbencher diagnoses a very serious issue (Mahmood is saying here that the very frontier of the state is essentially out of control). And then promises stuff will be done: and people wait. And the frontbencher says the same thing a month later. And people see no progress (or at least no visible progress) and think - what are you doing?
I do remember a big deal being made of Ms Clinton mis-speaking when she said she allegedly landed in the former Yugoslavia to snipers firing above her head or something.
Though he is the most Thatcherite of the Reform MPs
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/13/eform-uk-abandoning-manifesto-pledge-tax-cuts-deputy-leader-admits
As I say, this was back in the mid 50's, so some of my recollections may be wrong.
The cyber threat from state actors is worse than it’s even been, and is unlikely to get better any time soon. China and Russia can do an awful lot of damage for relatively little money.
As you have correctly pointed out in the past, one way of solving this problem is the Dubai model. Have lots of output from people you can tax, and then get them to fuck off back home before they reach the age where they need care. (And the Swiss used to have a similar model.)
The fundamental problem is that we're all living longer, and then we're all getting things like dementia, which require expense round the clock care.
I think everyon should be offered a choice at the age of 25: lower taxes, but euthanased at (say) 70 or 75. Or higher taxes, and you get looked after for longer.
Because that's worked out so well so far...
I really hope that LNER also owns a whole load of similar-looking INER domains, as that’s how the phishers can do their work.
Personally my email address is yourcompany@mydomain.com (LNER@mydomain.com in this case), there’s probably a business opportunity in developing and easy-to-configure mass-market version of this.
"Minor Criminal: The Trial of the Man Who Murdered My Grandmother
Lord Daniel Finkelstein OBE
Lecture, Barnard's Inn Hall, Tuesday, 4 Nov 2025 - 18:00"
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/whats-on/minor-criminal
Btw when I first became a paraplegic, one of the physios at Stoke Mandeville told me: "It's not all bad news - moving around in a wheelchair is far more efficient than walking."
Which is no doubt true but not much help in weight control:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/why-sitting-too-much-is-bad-for-us/
The three-under-par albatross?
You either have a very large household, or you are a major outlier in terms of your use of the post, or you are not remembering accurately the volume of post that you receive.
Here’s a thought to go with that. How would a Trumpite US admin respond to a UK led by a Muslim? I strongly suspect they would take away the keys to Trident, leaving the UK without nukes. Vance has said as much, IIRC
Something for all sides to chew over
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1841961.stm
Information wants to be free and seems to get there pretty quickly once its transferred to an Indian outsourcing firm.
NEW THREAD
Everyone on PB ought to be numerate and be able to deal with randomness within a dataset. The average may be 100 per person per year but what is the range?
And my main point is that far from a delivery a day, five days a week, we currently have one.
If everyone had your level of demand then the postal service would be much better.
Damn, I can’t afford an open-class glider. Shame.
I guess a meter is a long way.