It isn't the cost of the breakfast. Its that many parents need to be in work earlier than school starts...
(More) breakfast clubs for schools isn't a bad use of public money, probably pays for itself with the combination of children getting decent nutrition first thing (OK Rice Krispies) in the morning leading to long term better outcomes & parents able to work slightly longer hours. There's plenty to criticise Labour for but this is a good policy.
The one Things One and Two went to back in the day is now £5.50 per morning.
It's a correct place to start, as is rolling out SureStart-alike - which by the end of this term is one thing that will be noticeable in many less well off areas aka Labour/Reform battlegrounds.
The slashing of SureStart was one of the most egregious things done by Cameron & Co.
I was chatting to Mrs Eek about that Hampshire Council budget chart where everything went on social care.
Her immediate question / point was when was SureStart closed as that will have picked up a lot of the problems early enough that they could be fixed cheaply.
Another example of unintended consequences of Osborne’s cuts. Save a £x00m on SureStart creating long term problems that cost £xbn a year
The one Things One and Two went to back in the day is now £5.50 per morning.
It's a correct place to start, as is rolling out SureStart-alike - which by the end of this term is one thing that will be noticeable in many less well off areas aka Labour/Reform battlegrounds.
The slashing of SureStart was one of the most egregious things done by Cameron & Co.
A case of a certain cohort of Tory having a good handle of the "cost" of everything and the "value" of nothing.
This seems like a ridiculous sentence for a juror who seemed to just want to understand more about the case . Prisons are full and yet they’re putting people in jail for this .
At least 5 days of trial court wasted. Probably at least £100k. Preparation work for a murder probably several multiples of that depending on the complexity of the case. Justice delayed for the best part of a year and more court time needed which delays other cases. For murder, possibly the additional cost of having the accused on remand for even longer.
This is made crystal clear to every jury. What they read on the internet is not necessarily right and it is not evidence in the case. It cannot be allowed to influence their decisions. It sounds relatively innocent but the consequences are significant.
Come on, the sentence is so stiff because the juror has basically trod on the court's toes. Burglary, fraud, people razzing away from the coppers at 70 down a residential road, shoplifters & nonces aren't nearly dealt with as relatively harshly. But because the juror was directly potentially mucking up the judges' own work the sentence is completely out of whack because he's angered the judge. Now the judge might be very angry with all this but he shouldn't be sentencing based on that anger, which is what I think he's done here.
Yes it's absurd. We cannot afford to jail people for stuff like this. A fine would be appropriate.
He;s not even looking up details about the defendant, he's obviously just googled "joint enterprise" ffsake.
I've never served on a jury but if a lawyer used a legal term (like that one) that I didn't understand, am I just supposed to guess what it means? Is there a way you can ask the judge?
Actually, I am wrong, Looking this up, juries in criminal trials can rely only on the legal guidance given to them by the judge in his summing up (along with the submissions of the prosecution and defence). They can ask for that guidance to be repeated to them during their deliberations, but that is it.
(I think the procedure in (eg) inquests is a bit different.)
Jurors are told they must take the law from the judge, (and not from prosecution or defence lawyers). Arguments about law, or how the judge should express it to the jurors in summing up are conducted in the absence of the jury beforehand. prosecution and defence can both loudly commend to the jury how the law relates to their version of what the facts are. Facts are entirely for the jury, however perverse their decision. The judge often gives a steer as to what a sane finding on certain critical facts may be. Tone of voice is often an indicator.
Incidentally (I don't know the facts of this juror case) I can't see that looking up bits of law on the internet can ever of itself be an offence, any more than possessing and reading a criminal law text book can be an offence.
Judges are increasingly formulaic in their summing up, and increasingly try to agree stuff with the lawyers in advance. They have a mighty volume before them giving outlines of what to say in a multitude of situations.
So the story is misreported? It certainly reads as if he got 4 months for doing some extra Internet research. In particular the idea that he admitted reading a story on the guardian on a similar topic feels very harsh to me. I would definitely be tempted to read about a similar case if I were on a jury.
No, I think it was accurately reported: ..Richards had previously pleaded guilty to being a juror conducting unauthorised research and of being a juror disclosing prohibited information to other jury members..
I think the point here is that, by sharing his own research with other jury members, he was potentially misleading the entire jury, which is what halted the trial. We all know how unreliable information found on the internet can be, for pretty well any purpose. It's no different here, hence the very strict rules.
Had he kept it to himself, the issue would never have arisen in the first place.
But say he had read that article before being selected for jury duty. Then he would have been fine to share the unreliable information?
Yes. As Cyclefree pointed out earlier, jurors bring all manner of prior knowledge to the trial.
Point is that he was sharing his interpretation that he'd researched after the judge's summing up.
Okay, then yes it is absurd that we are sending someone to prison for this.. And absurd that we are happy for prior misinformation to be relevant but post misinformation to be worthy of imprisonment.
A suspended sentence would indeed seem more appropriate. OTOH, the guy did openly flaunt the judge's clear instruction, in contravention of his jury oath, which can't really be ignored.
And we are talking about two different things. Jurors are allowed to be wrong about the law in their deliberations - that's simple human fallibility. What they're not allowed to do is present an alternative version of the law that they've researched after the judge has given them instructions.
The difference between the two things is pretty clear.
A friend worked at MoJ and was trying to get a research study done of what works in sentencing about 10 years ago. Couldn't even get judges to participate in the research.
Being so late to the thread, has anyone come up with any brilliant ideas to solve the problem?
Act of attainder on everyone charged with a crime currently.
Send them to Africa as slaves. Think Slavery Reparations.
Remember - all suspects are guilty. Otherwise they wouldn’t be suspect!
Old joke I tell every now and then: A Mexican goes to Spain, accosts the first Spaniard he sees, and lays into him: “I demand an apology, sir - your ancestors pillaged my country!”
This seems like a ridiculous sentence for a juror who seemed to just want to understand more about the case . Prisons are full and yet they’re putting people in jail for this .
At least 5 days of trial court wasted. Probably at least £100k. Preparation work for a murder probably several multiples of that depending on the complexity of the case. Justice delayed for the best part of a year and more court time needed which delays other cases. For murder, possibly the additional cost of having the accused on remand for even longer.
This is made crystal clear to every jury. What they read on the internet is not necessarily right and it is not evidence in the case. It cannot be allowed to influence their decisions. It sounds relatively innocent but the consequences are significant.
Come on, the sentence is so stiff because the juror has basically trod on the court's toes. Burglary, fraud, people razzing away from the coppers at 70 down a residential road, shoplifters & nonces aren't nearly dealt with as relatively harshly. But because the juror was directly potentially mucking up the judges' own work the sentence is completely out of whack because he's angered the judge. Now the judge might be very angry with all this but he shouldn't be sentencing based on that anger, which is what I think he's done here.
Yes it's absurd. We cannot afford to jail people for stuff like this. A fine would be appropriate.
He;s not even looking up details about the defendant, he's obviously just googled "joint enterprise" ffsake.
I've never served on a jury but if a lawyer used a legal term (like that one) that I didn't understand, am I just supposed to guess what it means? Is there a way you can ask the judge?
Actually, I am wrong, Looking this up, juries in criminal trials can rely only on the legal guidance given to them by the judge in his summing up (along with the submissions of the prosecution and defence). They can ask for that guidance to be repeated to them during their deliberations, but that is it.
(I think the procedure in (eg) inquests is a bit different.)
Jurors are told they must take the law from the judge, (and not from prosecution or defence lawyers). Arguments about law, or how the judge should express it to the jurors in summing up are conducted in the absence of the jury beforehand. prosecution and defence can both loudly commend to the jury how the law relates to their version of what the facts are. Facts are entirely for the jury, however perverse their decision. The judge often gives a steer as to what a sane finding on certain critical facts may be. Tone of voice is often an indicator.
Incidentally (I don't know the facts of this juror case) I can't see that looking up bits of law on the internet can ever of itself be an offence, any more than possessing and reading a criminal law text book can be an offence.
Judges are increasingly formulaic in their summing up, and increasingly try to agree stuff with the lawyers in advance. They have a mighty volume before them giving outlines of what to say in a multitude of situations.
So the story is misreported? It certainly reads as if he got 4 months for doing some extra Internet research. In particular the idea that he admitted reading a story on the guardian on a similar topic feels very harsh to me. I would definitely be tempted to read about a similar case if I were on a jury.
No, I think it was accurately reported: ..Richards had previously pleaded guilty to being a juror conducting unauthorised research and of being a juror disclosing prohibited information to other jury members..
I think the point here is that, by sharing his own research with other jury members, he was potentially misleading the entire jury, which is what halted the trial. We all know how unreliable information found on the internet can be, for pretty well any purpose. It's no different here, hence the very strict rules.
Had he kept it to himself, the issue would never have arisen in the first place.
But say he had read that article before being selected for jury duty. Then he would have been fine to share the unreliable information?
Yes. As Cyclefree pointed out earlier, jurors bring all manner of prior knowledge to the trial.
Point is that he was sharing his interpretation that he'd researched after the judge's summing up.
Okay, then yes it is absurd that we are sending someone to prison for this.. And absurd that we are happy for prior misinformation to be relevant but post misinformation to be worthy of imprisonment.
A suspended sentence would indeed seem more appropriate. OTOH, the guy did openly flaunt the judge's clear instruction, in contravention of his jury oath, which can't really be ignored.
And we are talking about two different things. Jurors are allowed to be wrong about the law in their deliberations - that's simple human fallibility. What they're not allowed to do is present an alternative version of the law that they've researched after the judge has given them instructions.
The difference between the two things is pretty clear.
Im happy for him to be kicked off the jury. Or for him to be fined or banned from participating in future. But a prison sentence when (as everyone appears to acknowledge) there was no malice is absurd and so damaging to society.
Plainly he should have denied everything but his honesty has cost him.
Without jury trials you wouldn't have defence barristers throwing out a load of chaff for hours on end in an attempt to befuddle the jury into an incorrect Not Guilty verdict.
While the prosecution doesn't do that for a guilty verdict?
I've done jury service twice in recent years, all professionals involved were needlessly verbose with the negative consequence that their point was lost in the guff or from losing attention. Defence barristers weren't the worst offenders ime.
That was some bloke in a wig assembling the jury so he could tell us in person that another bloke in a wig was down with flu. Could have been done by phone/text/email without wasting 12 peoples day plus the barristers, court staff etc etc.
The one Things One and Two went to back in the day is now £5.50 per morning.
It's a correct place to start, as is rolling out SureStart-alike - which by the end of this term is one thing that will be noticeable in many less well off areas aka Labour/Reform battlegrounds.
The slashing of SureStart was one of the most egregious things done by Cameron & Co.
I was chatting to Mrs Eek about that Hampshire Council budget chart where everything went on social care.
Her immediate question / point was when was SureStart closed as that will have picked up a lot of the problems early enough that they could be fixed cheaply.
Another example of unintended consequences of Osborne’s cuts. Save a £x00m on SureStart creating long term problems that cost £xbn a year
But it saved money in 2010 and the costs were going to be paid by someone else in the future.
Frankly, it serves all those future people right for not speaking up at the time.
This seems like a ridiculous sentence for a juror who seemed to just want to understand more about the case . Prisons are full and yet they’re putting people in jail for this .
At least 5 days of trial court wasted. Probably at least £100k. Preparation work for a murder probably several multiples of that depending on the complexity of the case. Justice delayed for the best part of a year and more court time needed which delays other cases. For murder, possibly the additional cost of having the accused on remand for even longer.
This is made crystal clear to every jury. What they read on the internet is not necessarily right and it is not evidence in the case. It cannot be allowed to influence their decisions. It sounds relatively innocent but the consequences are significant.
Come on, the sentence is so stiff because the juror has basically trod on the court's toes. Burglary, fraud, people razzing away from the coppers at 70 down a residential road, shoplifters & nonces aren't nearly dealt with as relatively harshly. But because the juror was directly potentially mucking up the judges' own work the sentence is completely out of whack because he's angered the judge. Now the judge might be very angry with all this but he shouldn't be sentencing based on that anger, which is what I think he's done here.
Yes it's absurd. We cannot afford to jail people for stuff like this. A fine would be appropriate.
He;s not even looking up details about the defendant, he's obviously just googled "joint enterprise" ffsake.
I've never served on a jury but if a lawyer used a legal term (like that one) that I didn't understand, am I just supposed to guess what it means? Is there a way you can ask the judge?
Actually, I am wrong, Looking this up, juries in criminal trials can rely only on the legal guidance given to them by the judge in his summing up (along with the submissions of the prosecution and defence). They can ask for that guidance to be repeated to them during their deliberations, but that is it.
(I think the procedure in (eg) inquests is a bit different.)
Jurors are told they must take the law from the judge, (and not from prosecution or defence lawyers). Arguments about law, or how the judge should express it to the jurors in summing up are conducted in the absence of the jury beforehand. prosecution and defence can both loudly commend to the jury how the law relates to their version of what the facts are. Facts are entirely for the jury, however perverse their decision. The judge often gives a steer as to what a sane finding on certain critical facts may be. Tone of voice is often an indicator.
Incidentally (I don't know the facts of this juror case) I can't see that looking up bits of law on the internet can ever of itself be an offence, any more than possessing and reading a criminal law text book can be an offence.
Judges are increasingly formulaic in their summing up, and increasingly try to agree stuff with the lawyers in advance. They have a mighty volume before them giving outlines of what to say in a multitude of situations.
So the story is misreported? It certainly reads as if he got 4 months for doing some extra Internet research. In particular the idea that he admitted reading a story on the guardian on a similar topic feels very harsh to me. I would definitely be tempted to read about a similar case if I were on a jury.
No, I think it was accurately reported: ..Richards had previously pleaded guilty to being a juror conducting unauthorised research and of being a juror disclosing prohibited information to other jury members..
I think the point here is that, by sharing his own research with other jury members, he was potentially misleading the entire jury, which is what halted the trial. We all know how unreliable information found on the internet can be, for pretty well any purpose. It's no different here, hence the very strict rules.
Had he kept it to himself, the issue would never have arisen in the first place.
But say he had read that article before being selected for jury duty. Then he would have been fine to share the unreliable information?
Yes. As Cyclefree pointed out earlier, jurors bring all manner of prior knowledge to the trial.
Point is that he was sharing his interpretation that he'd researched after the judge's summing up.
Okay, then yes it is absurd that we are sending someone to prison for this.. And absurd that we are happy for prior misinformation to be relevant but post misinformation to be worthy of imprisonment.
A suspended sentence would indeed seem more appropriate. OTOH, the guy did openly flaunt the judge's clear instruction, in contravention of his jury oath, which can't really be ignored.
And we are talking about two different things. Jurors are allowed to be wrong about the law in their deliberations - that's simple human fallibility. What they're not allowed to do is present an alternative version of the law that they've researched after the judge has given them instructions.
The difference between the two things is pretty clear.
In the spirit of the second post, the juror flouted not flaunted...
This seems like a ridiculous sentence for a juror who seemed to just want to understand more about the case . Prisons are full and yet they’re putting people in jail for this .
At least 5 days of trial court wasted. Probably at least £100k. Preparation work for a murder probably several multiples of that depending on the complexity of the case. Justice delayed for the best part of a year and more court time needed which delays other cases. For murder, possibly the additional cost of having the accused on remand for even longer.
This is made crystal clear to every jury. What they read on the internet is not necessarily right and it is not evidence in the case. It cannot be allowed to influence their decisions. It sounds relatively innocent but the consequences are significant.
Come on, the sentence is so stiff because the juror has basically trod on the court's toes. Burglary, fraud, people razzing away from the coppers at 70 down a residential road, shoplifters & nonces aren't nearly dealt with as relatively harshly. But because the juror was directly potentially mucking up the judges' own work the sentence is completely out of whack because he's angered the judge. Now the judge might be very angry with all this but he shouldn't be sentencing based on that anger, which is what I think he's done here.
Yes it's absurd. We cannot afford to jail people for stuff like this. A fine would be appropriate.
He;s not even looking up details about the defendant, he's obviously just googled "joint enterprise" ffsake.
I've never served on a jury but if a lawyer used a legal term (like that one) that I didn't understand, am I just supposed to guess what it means? Is there a way you can ask the judge?
Actually, I am wrong, Looking this up, juries in criminal trials can rely only on the legal guidance given to them by the judge in his summing up (along with the submissions of the prosecution and defence). They can ask for that guidance to be repeated to them during their deliberations, but that is it.
(I think the procedure in (eg) inquests is a bit different.)
Jurors are told they must take the law from the judge, (and not from prosecution or defence lawyers). Arguments about law, or how the judge should express it to the jurors in summing up are conducted in the absence of the jury beforehand. prosecution and defence can both loudly commend to the jury how the law relates to their version of what the facts are. Facts are entirely for the jury, however perverse their decision. The judge often gives a steer as to what a sane finding on certain critical facts may be. Tone of voice is often an indicator.
Incidentally (I don't know the facts of this juror case) I can't see that looking up bits of law on the internet can ever of itself be an offence, any more than possessing and reading a criminal law text book can be an offence.
Judges are increasingly formulaic in their summing up, and increasingly try to agree stuff with the lawyers in advance. They have a mighty volume before them giving outlines of what to say in a multitude of situations.
So the story is misreported? It certainly reads as if he got 4 months for doing some extra Internet research. In particular the idea that he admitted reading a story on the guardian on a similar topic feels very harsh to me. I would definitely be tempted to read about a similar case if I were on a jury.
No, I think it was accurately reported: ..Richards had previously pleaded guilty to being a juror conducting unauthorised research and of being a juror disclosing prohibited information to other jury members..
I think the point here is that, by sharing his own research with other jury members, he was potentially misleading the entire jury, which is what halted the trial. We all know how unreliable information found on the internet can be, for pretty well any purpose. It's no different here, hence the very strict rules.
Had he kept it to himself, the issue would never have arisen in the first place.
But say he had read that article before being selected for jury duty. Then he would have been fine to share the unreliable information?
Yes. As Cyclefree pointed out earlier, jurors bring all manner of prior knowledge to the trial.
Point is that he was sharing his interpretation that he'd researched after the judge's summing up.
Okay, then yes it is absurd that we are sending someone to prison for this.. And absurd that we are happy for prior misinformation to be relevant but post misinformation to be worthy of imprisonment.
A suspended sentence would indeed seem more appropriate. OTOH, the guy did openly flaunt the judge's clear instruction, in contravention of his jury oath, which can't really be ignored.
And we are talking about two different things. Jurors are allowed to be wrong about the law in their deliberations - that's simple human fallibility. What they're not allowed to do is present an alternative version of the law that they've researched after the judge has given them instructions.
The difference between the two things is pretty clear.
In the spirit of the second post, the juror flouted not flaunted...
Being so late to the thread, has anyone come up with any brilliant ideas to solve the problem?
Act of attainder on everyone charged with a crime currently.
Send them to Africa as slaves. Think Slavery Reparations.
Remember - all suspects are guilty. Otherwise they wouldn’t be suspect!
Old joke I tell every now and then: A Mexican goes to Spain, accosts the first Spaniard he sees, and lays into him: “I demand an apology, sir - your ancestors pillaged my country!”
The one Things One and Two went to back in the day is now £5.50 per morning.
It's a correct place to start, as is rolling out SureStart-alike - which by the end of this term is one thing that will be noticeable in many less well off areas aka Labour/Reform battlegrounds.
The slashing of SureStart was one of the most egregious things done by Cameron & Co.
I was chatting to Mrs Eek about that Hampshire Council budget chart where everything went on social care.
Her immediate question / point was when was SureStart closed as that will have picked up a lot of the problems early enough that they could be fixed cheaply.
Another example of unintended consequences of Osborne’s cuts. Save a £x00m on SureStart creating long term problems that cost £xbn a year
From thoughtful lefties one thing I am hearing is that this and similar currently "bubbling under" initiatives are things that will start working in Starmer's favour towards the next election.
My question is that it all has to get through still-disfunctional processes (unlike Trump we cannot work like Caesar or Caligula), and then deliver to an extent of being noticeable, and then be perceived.
Is there time or comms to help that? But that's a question I think all of us are watching, from whatever our current views are.
Blimey. Iowa's GDP reportedly fell more than 6% in the last quarter.
Tariffs?
Yep, soybeans. The Chinese are now buying from Argentina instead.
See also Florida wrt Canadian Snowbirds, which is a smaller number in the economy but noticeable.
A million Canadians used to winter in the USA, with Florida getting the lion's share. Figures are that it is down 37% year on year. At $10k each (probably a very low guestimate) x 370,000 that is ~$4 billion of revenue gone.
The only number for Canadian snowbird revenue for Florida was $6bn per annum.
Which is odd, because if beans are being harvested but not sold, you'd expect something to change?
Don't know - you'd expect it to change because the Americans account for about 30% of global production. I guess overall overall supply hasn't changed much but the issue for Iowa is a lack of processing plant or something?
It isn't the cost of the breakfast. Its that many parents need to be in work earlier than school starts...
Are you new to PB? Just stick to the Daily Telegraph unhinged headlines please.
I don't read the Telegraph, I quoted the Labour Party
I didn't question anything except for what I considered to be a rather inflated saving for families at £450 per month
Your straw man factory is still working at high capacity, producing really shit Worzels
I was responding to Rochdale.
I wasn't specifically focused on your post, but if you feel the cap fits, wear it.
Look, you don't like me posting, and I suspect many of your fans concur, so have a word with the mods and get me removed. No skin off my nose mate.
Unbelievable thing is that there are miriads of idiots taken in by their bullshit. Most of tehm will not spend that feeding the whole family in a month. A couple of weetabix or suchlike and some toast woudl not run to 50p a day. They will have selected the price of some toffee nosed breakfast club run by Harrods or Fortnum & Mason that serves the Junior Hoorays cavier on toast etc
It isn't the cost of the breakfast. Its that many parents need to be in work earlier than school starts...
Are you new to PB? Just stick to the Daily Telegraph unhinged headlines please.
I don't read the Telegraph, I quoted the Labour Party
I didn't question anything except for what I considered to be a rather inflated saving for families at £450 per month
Your straw man factory is still working at high capacity, producing really shit Worzels
I was responding to Rochdale.
I wasn't specifically focused on your post, but if you feel the cap fits, wear it.
Look, you don't like me posting, and I suspect many of your fans concur, so have a word with the mods and get me removed. No skin off my nose mate.
Unbelievable thing is that there are miriads of idiots taken in by their bullshit. Most of tehm will not spend that feeding the whole family in a month. A couple of weetabix or suchlike and some toast woudl not run to 50p a day. They will have selected the price of some toffee nosed breakfast club run by Harrods or Fortnum & Mason that serves the Junior Hoorays cavier on toast etc
Nope employing staff to run a pre and after school club is expensive.
Take 1 child being looked after between 7:45 and 9 and £10 a day isn’t out of the question - minimum staff ratios, minimum wage, backup staff for when things go wrong and some management overhead an the costs increase quickly
So 2 children is £20 a day, £100 a week or on a bad month (23 school days) £460 a month
It isn't the cost of the breakfast. Its that many parents need to be in work earlier than school starts...
Are you new to PB? Just stick to the Daily Telegraph unhinged headlines please.
I don't read the Telegraph, I quoted the Labour Party
I didn't question anything except for what I considered to be a rather inflated saving for families at £450 per month
Your straw man factory is still working at high capacity, producing really shit Worzels
To be fair wraparound childcare costs can be absurd. It's about 11 hours per month, at £15 per hour, you're up to £160. Plus food, including all costs, perhaps another £50?
"Up to" is the important clause here. If you've also got 6 kids then you could contrive something mad like £1k per month.
Did anyone hear the coverage this mornign on PM about the report into asylum accommodation contarcts?
The Home Office has "squandered" billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on asylum accommodation, according to a report by a committee of MPs.
The Home Affairs Committee said "flawed contracts" and "incompetent delivery" left the department unable to cope with a surge in demand and it relied on hotels as "go-to solutions" instead of temporary stop-gaps.
I do think it is criminal that Starmer appears uninterested in fixing this issue, but I can kinda understand the constraints he is operating under.
He has, probably correctly, decided that his re-election relies on improving the NHS. As long as everything else avoids outright collapse and obvious disaster, it matters little. And several disasters can likely be papered over if the NHS is improving.
He also knows that he is severely resource-constrained due to the dire state of the public finances that he inherited, and the taxation promises he had made to win election. So every spare penny must be directed to the NHS.
Add in a focus on the small boats in reaction to Reform's surge and you have the essence of the Starmer Ministry. It strikes me as a very reductionist way of running a government, stripping back the job of government to core essentials to win re-election - which, as the Blairites will not tire of telling you, is all that matters.
It is so very uninspiring. It's almost as though, in his desperation to repudiate everything about Corbyn's leadership, Starmer has set out to strip away all hope for anything better, any scintilla of ambition, and every cause for joy.
“Joyless” is a very good word to describe this administration
Did anyone hear the coverage this mornign on PM about the report into asylum accommodation contarcts?
The Home Office has "squandered" billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on asylum accommodation, according to a report by a committee of MPs.
The Home Affairs Committee said "flawed contracts" and "incompetent delivery" left the department unable to cope with a surge in demand and it relied on hotels as "go-to solutions" instead of temporary stop-gaps.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Did anyone hear the coverage this mornign on PM about the report into asylum accommodation contarcts?
The Home Office has "squandered" billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on asylum accommodation, according to a report by a committee of MPs.
The Home Affairs Committee said "flawed contracts" and "incompetent delivery" left the department unable to cope with a surge in demand and it relied on hotels as "go-to solutions" instead of temporary stop-gaps.
Was this not mainly Bobby Jenrick - with some contracts running to 2029?
PM is, er pm. I think you mean Today, which discussion occasioned the Nick Robinson quote: "I'll make you a deal. I'll let you tell me why the last government is to blame, if you'll then tell me how you're going to sort it out."
It isn't the cost of the breakfast. Its that many parents need to be in work earlier than school starts...
(More) breakfast clubs for schools isn't a bad use of public money, probably pays for itself with the combination of children getting decent nutrition first thing (OK Rice Krispies) in the morning leading to long term better outcomes & parents able to work slightly longer hours. There's plenty to criticise Labour for but this is a good policy.
Lots of govt spending pays for itself, but voters see the tax going out, but don't see how their income are higher.
An interesting header. I agree with others on here who have commented that one of the Coalition (and following on from them, the Tory government’s) worst actions was the cuts to legal aid and the justice budgets.
There’s no easy solution to fix the problem. Spending more money is part of it, but it needs to be appropriately targeted in investing to clear backlogs in the system and to allow it to run more efficiently. Perhaps we do need to look at the balance of jury trials / jury numbers etc (I start from the point that it is crucial that juries are retained for the most serious offences). Perhaps we also need to face up to the idea that we need Less Law, not more. Every statute, every separate offence, creates additional pressure. Perhaps we need to go back to first principles. Could we codify the criminal law into a single statute, with lots of separate offences brought together, with more guidance? Sure it’s a Herculean task but surely there is some worth in paying a few expert criminal lawyers /professors and retired judges to have a go over a 5-10 year period? Whatever happened to Royal Commissions?
A very interesting video from Paul Whitewick (hiker/landscape history youtuber based in Wiltshire) on how Steve Schwarzman CEO of Blackstone bought a 4 sqm estate at Conhalt, and there now seem to be security goons crawling all over the countryside demanding to know what members of the public are doing.
I'd say the chap is trying to apply his USA values - Madonna did it a couple of decades ago when HER goons were confronting people on public footpaths.
Worth a watch. IMO Paul needs a bit of radicalising; he says "it's not my battle". Sorry, Paul, it's a battle for all of us - or we lose access over time. He talks to Guy Shrubsole, so he has the links.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Who could have guessed that most consultancy might be low level grunt work than can largely be done by AIs ?
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/ ..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
I do think it is criminal that Starmer appears uninterested in fixing this issue, but I can kinda understand the constraints he is operating under.
He has, probably correctly, decided that his re-election relies on improving the NHS. As long as everything else avoids outright collapse and obvious disaster, it matters little. And several disasters can likely be papered over if the NHS is improving.
He also knows that he is severely resource-constrained due to the dire state of the public finances that he inherited, and the taxation promises he had made to win election. So every spare penny must be directed to the NHS.
Add in a focus on the small boats in reaction to Reform's surge and you have the essence of the Starmer Ministry. It strikes me as a very reductionist way of running a government, stripping back the job of government to core essentials to win re-election - which, as the Blairites will not tire of telling you, is all that matters.
It is so very uninspiring. It's almost as though, in his desperation to repudiate everything about Corbyn's leadership, Starmer has set out to strip away all hope for anything better, any scintilla of ambition, and every cause for joy.
“Joyless” is a very good word to describe this administration
Who could have guessed that most consultancy might be low level grunt work than can largely be done by AIs ?
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/ ..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
The event horizon is that the same LLM is used to generate 100,000 page reports and then read them itself. Without interacting with reality or humans.
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the overall saving is even bigger.
An interesting header. I agree with others on here who have commented that one of the Coalition (and following on from them, the Tory government’s) worst actions was the cuts to legal aid and the justice budgets...
Note this isn't really hindsight. I recall similar comments on PB at the time.
Who could have guessed that most consultancy might be low level grunt work than can largely be done by AIs ?
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/ ..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
Based on my experience - LLM (note a particular branch of “AI”) and consultancies are little different. Both will charge a bit and give you completely useless advice that turns out to not work in the real world
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
At the risk of generating a swirling rabbit hole of argument, the Church of England is AD597 officially.
All we did was chuck out the tyrannical foreign management - in Tony Benn's words, we nationalised it.
I do think it is criminal that Starmer appears uninterested in fixing this issue, but I can kinda understand the constraints he is operating under.
He has, probably correctly, decided that his re-election relies on improving the NHS. As long as everything else avoids outright collapse and obvious disaster, it matters little. And several disasters can likely be papered over if the NHS is improving.
He also knows that he is severely resource-constrained due to the dire state of the public finances that he inherited, and the taxation promises he had made to win election. So every spare penny must be directed to the NHS.
Add in a focus on the small boats in reaction to Reform's surge and you have the essence of the Starmer Ministry. It strikes me as a very reductionist way of running a government, stripping back the job of government to core essentials to win re-election - which, as the Blairites will not tire of telling you, is all that matters.
It is so very uninspiring. It's almost as though, in his desperation to repudiate everything about Corbyn's leadership, Starmer has set out to strip away all hope for anything better, any scintilla of ambition, and every cause for joy.
“Joyless” is a very good word to describe this administration
A very interesting video from Paul Whitewick (hiker/landscape history youtuber based in Wiltshire) on how Steve Schwarzman CEO of Blackstone bought a 4 sqm estate at Conhalt, and there now seem to be security goons crawling all over the countryside demanding to know what members of the public are doing.
I'd say the chap is trying to apply his USA values - Madonna did it a couple of decades ago when HER goons were confronting people on public footpaths.
Worth a watch. IMO Paul needs a bit of radicalising; he says "it's not my battle". Sorry, Paul, it's a battle for all of us - or we lose access over time. He talks to Guy Shrubsole, so he has the links.
From the OS map the park is split by one footpath. If you are on that you should certainly be allowed to proceed. Of the path maybe not so much (no right to roam in England, although its not an offence AIUI as long as no damage is caused on private land).
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the saving is even bigger.
Wouldn't surprise me if someone had quoted the *cost* of providing the meals. By the time you add admin and all the other stuff.....
Who could have guessed that most consultancy might be low level grunt work than can largely be done by AIs ?
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/ ..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
Accenture share price was pretty much a one way bet from IPO to 2022, down 30% in last 12 months.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
Depending on what they are, its more or less impressive. For instance some people do BSc, then an MSc, then PhD. Are they better qualified than me (just the BSc and PhD)? And Oxford and Cambridge has a racket where you get to upgrade the first degree by paying a fee some time later...
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
At the risk of generating a swirling rabbit hole of argument, the Church of England is AD597 officially.
All we did was chuck out the tyrannical foreign management - in Tony Benn's words, we nationalised it.
But the Celtic church was earlier, no? I recall a Council of Whitby but forget what was discussed!
An interesting header. I agree with others on here who have commented that one of the Coalition (and following on from them, the Tory government’s) worst actions was the cuts to legal aid and the justice budgets.
There’s no easy solution to fix the problem. Spending more money is part of it, but it needs to be appropriately targeted in investing to clear backlogs in the system and to allow it to run more efficiently. Perhaps we do need to look at the balance of jury trials / jury numbers etc (I start from the point that it is crucial that juries are retained for the most serious offences). Perhaps we also need to face up to the idea that we need Less Law, not more. Every statute, every separate offence, creates additional pressure. Perhaps we need to go back to first principles. Could we codify the criminal law into a single statute, with lots of separate offences brought together, with more guidance? Sure it’s a Herculean task but surely there is some worth in paying a few expert criminal lawyers /professors and retired judges to have a go over a 5-10 year period? Whatever happened to Royal Commissions?
The problem is that, for many, Professionalism = Complexity.
So a law that is more complex is obviously better.
In my early days at work, my boss showed me how to pad out the 3 lines of facts on a matter into a professional 50 page report. Otherwise it would have been embarrassing to base spending 7 figures on 3 lines of text.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
At the risk of generating a swirling rabbit hole of argument, the Church of England is AD597 officially.
All we did was chuck out the tyrannical foreign management - in Tony Benn's words, we nationalised it.
But the Celtic church was earlier, no? I recall a Council of Whitby but forget what was discussed!
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
Depending on what they are, its more or less impressive. For instance some people do BSc, then an MSc, then PhD. Are they better qualified than me (just the BSc and PhD)? And Oxford and Cambridge has a racket where you get to upgrade the first degree by paying a fee some time later...
Actually, the Oxbridge Masters was there first. It was many, many years later that other Universities used "Masters" to indicate a separate degree.
I do think it is criminal that Starmer appears uninterested in fixing this issue, but I can kinda understand the constraints he is operating under.
He has, probably correctly, decided that his re-election relies on improving the NHS. As long as everything else avoids outright collapse and obvious disaster, it matters little. And several disasters can likely be papered over if the NHS is improving.
He also knows that he is severely resource-constrained due to the dire state of the public finances that he inherited, and the taxation promises he had made to win election. So every spare penny must be directed to the NHS.
Add in a focus on the small boats in reaction to Reform's surge and you have the essence of the Starmer Ministry. It strikes me as a very reductionist way of running a government, stripping back the job of government to core essentials to win re-election - which, as the Blairites will not tire of telling you, is all that matters.
It is so very uninspiring. It's almost as though, in his desperation to repudiate everything about Corbyn's leadership, Starmer has set out to strip away all hope for anything better, any scintilla of ambition, and every cause for joy.
“Joyless” is a very good word to describe this administration
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the overall saving is even bigger.
Just out from Lab on X
Labour is rolling out free breakfast clubs, helping children start the day ready to learn and saving parents up to £450 a year. --
An interesting header. I agree with others on here who have commented that one of the Coalition (and following on from them, the Tory government’s) worst actions was the cuts to legal aid and the justice budgets.
There’s no easy solution to fix the problem. Spending more money is part of it, but it needs to be appropriately targeted in investing to clear backlogs in the system and to allow it to run more efficiently. Perhaps we do need to look at the balance of jury trials / jury numbers etc (I start from the point that it is crucial that juries are retained for the most serious offences). Perhaps we also need to face up to the idea that we need Less Law, not more. Every statute, every separate offence, creates additional pressure. Perhaps we need to go back to first principles. Could we codify the criminal law into a single statute, with lots of separate offences brought together, with more guidance? Sure it’s a Herculean task but surely there is some worth in paying a few expert criminal lawyers /professors and retired judges to have a go over a 5-10 year period? Whatever happened to Royal Commissions?
The problem is that, for many, Professionalism = Complexity.
So a law that is more complex is obviously better.
In my early days at work, my boss showed me how to pad out the 3 lines of facts on a matter into a professional 50 page report. Otherwise it would have been embarrassing to base spending 7 figures on 3 lines of text.
This ends up with people telling the AI to turn the 100 words into 2,000 words, and the recipients all then using the AI to summarise the 2,000 words back into 100 words.
The only reason the 2,000 word version exists is for all the senior managers copied into the email, the vast majority of whom don’t care to even read a summary.
Who could have guessed that most consultancy might be low level grunt work than can largely be done by AIs ?
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/ ..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
Based on my experience - LLM (note a particular branch of “AI”) and consultancies are little different. Both will charge a bit and give you completely useless advice that turns out to not work in the real world
Separately someone was complaining last week that they had sent out a stupid amount of tenders and all the responses where generated by chatai.
My viewpoint is I don’t do tenders as it’s not worth the time invested so I can see why companies not think inch they have much chance are throwing chatai at what they deem tenders they won’t win
A very interesting video from Paul Whitewick (hiker/landscape history youtuber based in Wiltshire) on how Steve Schwarzman CEO of Blackstone bought a 4 sqm estate at Conhalt, and there now seem to be security goons crawling all over the countryside demanding to know what members of the public are doing.
I'd say the chap is trying to apply his USA values - Madonna did it a couple of decades ago when HER goons were confronting people on public footpaths.
Worth a watch. IMO Paul needs a bit of radicalising; he says "it's not my battle". Sorry, Paul, it's a battle for all of us - or we lose access over time. He talks to Guy Shrubsole, so he has the links.
American buys property in Britain and sends security to expel the Brits within it. When people ask me why non-British citizens should not be allowed to own land in Britain, this is one of the reasons why.
An interesting header. I agree with others on here who have commented that one of the Coalition (and following on from them, the Tory government’s) worst actions was the cuts to legal aid and the justice budgets.
There’s no easy solution to fix the problem. Spending more money is part of it, but it needs to be appropriately targeted in investing to clear backlogs in the system and to allow it to run more efficiently. Perhaps we do need to look at the balance of jury trials / jury numbers etc (I start from the point that it is crucial that juries are retained for the most serious offences). Perhaps we also need to face up to the idea that we need Less Law, not more. Every statute, every separate offence, creates additional pressure. Perhaps we need to go back to first principles. Could we codify the criminal law into a single statute, with lots of separate offences brought together, with more guidance? Sure it’s a Herculean task but surely there is some worth in paying a few expert criminal lawyers /professors and retired judges to have a go over a 5-10 year period? Whatever happened to Royal Commissions?
The problem is that, for many, Professionalism = Complexity.
So a law that is more complex is obviously better.
In my early days at work, my boss showed me how to pad out the 3 lines of facts on a matter into a professional 50 page report. Otherwise it would have been embarrassing to base spending 7 figures on 3 lines of text.
This ends up with people telling the AI to turn the 100 words into 2,000 words, and the recipients all then using the AI to summarise the 2,000 words back into 100 words.
The only reason the 2,000 word version exists is for all the senior managers copied into the email, the vast majority of whom don’t care to even read a summary.
I do think it is criminal that Starmer appears uninterested in fixing this issue, but I can kinda understand the constraints he is operating under.
He has, probably correctly, decided that his re-election relies on improving the NHS. As long as everything else avoids outright collapse and obvious disaster, it matters little. And several disasters can likely be papered over if the NHS is improving.
He also knows that he is severely resource-constrained due to the dire state of the public finances that he inherited, and the taxation promises he had made to win election. So every spare penny must be directed to the NHS.
Add in a focus on the small boats in reaction to Reform's surge and you have the essence of the Starmer Ministry. It strikes me as a very reductionist way of running a government, stripping back the job of government to core essentials to win re-election - which, as the Blairites will not tire of telling you, is all that matters.
It is so very uninspiring. It's almost as though, in his desperation to repudiate everything about Corbyn's leadership, Starmer has set out to strip away all hope for anything better, any scintilla of ambition, and every cause for joy.
“Joyless” is a very good word to describe this administration
A very interesting video from Paul Whitewick (hiker/landscape history youtuber based in Wiltshire) on how Steve Schwarzman CEO of Blackstone bought a 4 sqm estate at Conhalt, and there now seem to be security goons crawling all over the countryside demanding to know what members of the public are doing.
I'd say the chap is trying to apply his USA values - Madonna did it a couple of decades ago when HER goons were confronting people on public footpaths.
Worth a watch. IMO Paul needs a bit of radicalising; he says "it's not my battle". Sorry, Paul, it's a battle for all of us - or we lose access over time. He talks to Guy Shrubsole, so he has the links.
From the OS map the park is split by one footpath. If you are on that you should certainly be allowed to proceed. Of the path maybe not so much (no right to roam in England, although its not an offence AIUI as long as no damage is caused on private land).
That's the same billionaire who was caught tankering millions of litres of water from public standpipes near Andover to Wiltshire to fill his lake. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5jg9vy1n0o Freeloaders, that's why we need a wealth tax
Who could have guessed that most consultancy might be low level grunt work than can largely be done by AIs ?
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/ ..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business. Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000. This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
Based on my experience - LLM (note a particular branch of “AI”) and consultancies are little different. Both will charge a bit and give you completely useless advice that turns out to not work in the real world
Separately someone was complaining last week that they had sent out a stupid amount of tenders and all the responses where generated by chatai.
My viewpoint is I don’t do tenders as it’s not worth the time invested so I can see why companies not think inch they have much chance are throwing chatai at what they deem tenders they won’t win
Don't you all congregate in a high-end Parisian restaurant and decide who gets the contract? Standards have dropped.
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the overall saving is even bigger.
Just out from Lab on X
Labour is rolling out free breakfast clubs, helping children start the day ready to learn and saving parents up to £450 a year. --
Today’s “companies not understanding the internet” post.
Spanish broadcaster managed to take down half of the internet in Spain last night by ordering Cloudflare to be blocked by ISPs, because one of their customers had a dodgy site running that was streaming a football match.
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the overall saving is even bigger.
Just out from Lab on X
Labour is rolling out free breakfast clubs, helping children start the day ready to learn and saving parents up to £450 a year. --
There's a guy who's sat down on the same table as me in the pub. I've no idea who he is. He does however have a guide dog with him so I'm guessing he might not know I'm here 😶🌫️
There's a guy who's sat down on the same table as me in the pub. I've no idea who he is. He does however have a guide dog with him so I'm guessing he might not know I'm here 😶🌫️
There's a guy who's sat down on the same table as me in the pub. I've no idea who he is. He does however have a guide dog with him so I'm guessing he might not know I'm here 😶🌫️
Today’s “companies not understanding the internet” post.
Spanish broadcaster managed to take down half of the internet in Spain last night by ordering Cloudflare to be blocked by ISPs, because one of their customers had a dodgy site running that was streaming a football match.
Internet is massively overdependent on Azure, AWS, Cloudflare and Google Cloud. Obviously it works for companies (Including this website) on an individual level but it doesn't half introduce systemic vulnerability.
There's a guy who's sat down on the same table as me in the pub. I've no idea who he is. He does however have a guide dog with him so I'm guessing he might not know I'm here 😶🌫️
I hope the guide dog knows you are there.
Heh, I think so! He brushed against my leg a few minutes ago but apart from that it's just sitting down looking cute.
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the saving is even bigger.
Wouldn't surprise me if someone had quoted the *cost* of providing the meals. By the time you add admin and all the other stuff.....
So going back 5-6 years now, 2 kids dropped at childminder before school so we could get to work on time. Set rate of £10 per kid inc breakfast for drop-off from 7.45am onwards. £20/day, £100/week, £400 per month. After-school club £15 vs childminder £30 per child. These are serious savings for parents from their net income, a family with 2 kids could be saving £1000/month if the school has breakfast and afterschool clubs.
There's a guy who's sat down on the same table as me in the pub. I've no idea who he is. He does however have a guide dog with him so I'm guessing he might not know I'm here 😶🌫️
I hope the guide dog knows you are there.
Heh, I think so! He brushed against my leg a few minutes ago but apart from that it's just sitting down looking cute.
To be honest, I think these wrappers on top of ChatGPT etc are unhelpful. Bog standard Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT are powerful enough to seriously improve productivity in professional services without paying for the wrappers.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
Depending on what they are, its more or less impressive. For instance some people do BSc, then an MSc, then PhD. Are they better qualified than me (just the BSc and PhD)? And Oxford and Cambridge has a racket where you get to upgrade the first degree by paying a fee some time later...
Actually, the Oxbridge Masters was there first. It was many, many years later that other Universities used "Masters" to indicate a separate degree.
O/T but in view of recent discussions passim, @Malmesbury, have you encountered this book? not so much re the details of the disaster but how it had precursor events (one narrowly prevented from disaster by the author's father) but those were shrugged off. Just been reminded of it by finfing it under another book.
Today’s “companies not understanding the internet” post.
Spanish broadcaster managed to take down half of the internet in Spain last night by ordering Cloudflare to be blocked by ISPs, because one of their customers had a dodgy site running that was streaming a football match.
Internet is massively overdependent on Azure, AWS, Cloudflare and Google Cloud. Obviously it works for companies (Including this website) on an individual level but it doesn't half introduce systemic vulnerability.
As I understand the law in Spain (which I may not), the ISPs have no choice but to block IP addresses given to them by rights holders during a live sporting event. A similar system operates in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
So the pirates are hosting themselves on Cloudflare/Amazon/Google/Microsoft, knowing that public opinion will quickly turn against the zealotry of the rights holders when they cause serious and measurable disruption to businesses by trying to take down the pirates.
To be honest, I think these wrappers on top of ChatGPT etc are unhelpful. Bog standard Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT are powerful enough to seriously improve productivity in professional services without paying for the wrappers.
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the overall saving is even bigger.
Just out from Lab on X
Labour is rolling out free breakfast clubs, helping children start the day ready to learn and saving parents up to £450 a year. --
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
Depending on what they are, its more or less impressive. For instance some people do BSc, then an MSc, then PhD. Are they better qualified than me (just the BSc and PhD)? And Oxford and Cambridge has a racket where you get to upgrade the first degree by paying a fee some time later...
Actually, the Oxbridge Masters was there first. It was many, many years later that other Universities used "Masters" to indicate a separate degree.
O/T but in view of recent discussions passim, @Malmesbury, have you encountered this book? not so much re the details of the disaster but how it had precursor events (one narrowly prevented from disaster by the author's father) but those were shrugged off. Just been reminded of it by finfing it under another book.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
Depending on what they are, its more or less impressive. For instance some people do BSc, then an MSc, then PhD. Are they better qualified than me (just the BSc and PhD)? And Oxford and Cambridge has a racket where you get to upgrade the first degree by paying a fee some time later...
Actually, the Oxbridge Masters was there first. It was many, many years later that other Universities used "Masters" to indicate a separate degree.
O/T but in view of recent discussions passim, @Malmesbury, have you encountered this book? not so much re the details of the disaster but how it had precursor events (one narrowly prevented from disaster by the author's father) but those were shrugged off. Just been reminded of it by finfing it under another book.
It isn't the cost of the breakfast. Its that many parents need to be in work earlier than school starts...
Are you new to PB? Just stick to the Daily Telegraph unhinged headlines please.
I don't read the Telegraph, I quoted the Labour Party
I didn't question anything except for what I considered to be a rather inflated saving for families at £450 per month
Your straw man factory is still working at high capacity, producing really shit Worzels
I was responding to Rochdale.
I wasn't specifically focused on your post, but if you feel the cap fits, wear it.
Look, you don't like me posting, and I suspect many of your fans concur, so have a word with the mods and get me removed. No skin off my nose mate.
Unbelievable thing is that there are miriads of idiots taken in by their bullshit. Most of tehm will not spend that feeding the whole family in a month. A couple of weetabix or suchlike and some toast woudl not run to 50p a day. They will have selected the price of some toffee nosed breakfast club run by Harrods or Fortnum & Mason that serves the Junior Hoorays cavier on toast etc
Nope employing staff to run a pre and after school club is expensive.
Take 1 child being looked after between 7:45 and 9 and £10 a day isn’t out of the question - minimum staff ratios, minimum wage, backup staff for when things go wrong and some management overhead an the costs increase quickly
So 2 children is £20 a day, £100 a week or on a bad month (23 school days) £460 a month
People should be looking after their own children, these clowns don't know what to splash other people's hard earned money on. They are obsessed with shovelling out more and more benefits without having the money to pay for it.
To be honest, I think these wrappers on top of ChatGPT etc are unhelpful. Bog standard Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT are powerful enough to seriously improve productivity in professional services without paying for the wrappers.
It's an excellent article. @rcs1000 describes one of the bottlenecks very well.
Why has it arisen? I'll tell you why - and it is exactly the same reason as I said in August 2019 -
"The legal system has few friends. There is an assumption that it mostly deals with the criminal and the feckless. Few politicians care about them. It has no “Aaah” factor. Most people hope never to encounter it. Those who are caught up in it are generally appalled by the experience. It has been in recent years put in the care, if that is the word, of politicians with little knowledge about it and little willingness to learn, let alone to fight to make it better.
For 6 years from 2012 to 2018, no lawyer was deemed worthy to be Minister of Justice, the choice instead falling on Chris Grayling and Liz Truss, about whom the word “second-rate” would be an undeserved compliment. Michael Gove spent much of his time undoing the damage caused by his predecessor. Few Ministers lasted more than a year. And who was responsible for the police? Well, one Mrs May, followed by Amber Rudd and Sajid Javid. Enough said.
Lawyers, however eloquent they may be on behalf of their clients, are generally hopeless at explaining why law and justice matter to anyone other than fellow lawyers. But our legal system does matter, very much indeed. There is no more important function of the state than the maintenance of law and order.
Crucial to that are a competent police force, a legal system which works and in which equality under the law and access to justice are not simply empty phrases, prisons which are something other than a breeding ground of violence and hopelessness and a probation service which works. All these aspects matter not just one of them.
The rule of law is not simply an airy phrase: it is the reality of a state able to keep its citizens safe, a state able to apprehend criminals, a state able to dispense justice, a state able find the right balance between the rights of the innocent and the guilty, a state able to enforce its laws, a state able to punish fairly and provide the hope of rehabilitation for those who have paid their dues. ........
The rule of law in its widest sense is something of which Britain ought to be proud; it has probably had a greater claim than the NHS to be considered “the envy of the world“. But for too long it has been neglected, downgraded, ignored and managed by penny pinchers who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Futile as this plea may be, it is long past the time for this to stop."
Of course you're right, Ms Cyclefree. But the apparently impossible question is... how to fix it?
We are in a society that likes penny-pinching, because it assumes that frees up pennies for sweeties now. As for future us, they're in the future, so serves them right.
One of our problems derives from Mrs Thatcher's views. I recall her saying something like her preferring that the best minds from Oxford and Cambridge (I know, I know) should go into the City rather than public service. Up until then very bright students would include public service, as Civil Servants in their career options. After that, not so much.
This allows me to get back on my hobby horse of calling the big change of UK society and the divisions over the past 40 years. Before Fatch indeed bright young things would go into all kinds of occupations - doctors, civil servants, yes finance, but that was only one of several options. All paid roughly the same, perhaps the City a smidge more.
Then Big Bang happened, the US banks took over the UK merchant banks and began to pay megabucks for the people to work there (or at "their" bank, rather than another one). City salaries skyrocketed and hence any sensible grad, Oxbridge or not, would likely try to get a job in finance, rather than become a doctor or a civil servant, etc.
And linked to that, it means that the elite has lost a lot of its sense of the long term.
My Jenny-come-lately Cambridge College is over 150 years old. The British Army is 350 years old, depending on when you start counting. The Church of England, 450 years (same Ts and C's). All institutions that were around long before me, and intend to be around long after me. It ties in with that old Tory thing of inheritance as a duty.
High finance seems to think it's doing well with a ten year horizon. No wonder so much of the country gets sold off for parts.
Those are tiny numbers! You need bigger numbers! My school is 460 years old. My first degree was at a university 814 years old. My third was at a university approaching 1000. My city is approaching 2000.
Just the three degrees then...
Depending on what they are, its more or less impressive. For instance some people do BSc, then an MSc, then PhD. Are they better qualified than me (just the BSc and PhD)? And Oxford and Cambridge has a racket where you get to upgrade the first degree by paying a fee some time later...
Actually, the Oxbridge Masters was there first. It was many, many years later that other Universities used "Masters" to indicate a separate degree.
O/T but in view of recent discussions passim, @Malmesbury, have you encountered this book? not so much re the details of the disaster but how it had precursor events (one narrowly prevented from disaster by the author's father) but those were shrugged off. Just been reminded of it by finfing it under another book.
Comments
There's plenty to criticise Labour for but this is a good policy.
Her immediate question / point was when was SureStart closed as that will have picked up a lot of the problems early enough that they could be fixed cheaply.
Another example of unintended consequences of Osborne’s cuts. Save a £x00m on SureStart creating long term problems that cost £xbn a year
Send them to Africa as slaves. Think Slavery Reparations.
Remember - all suspects are guilty. Otherwise they wouldn’t be suspect!
OTOH, the guy did openly flaunt the judge's clear instruction, in contravention of his jury oath, which can't really be ignored.
And we are talking about two different things.
Jurors are allowed to be wrong about the law in their deliberations - that's simple human fallibility.
What they're not allowed to do is present an alternative version of the law that they've researched after the judge has given them instructions.
The difference between the two things is pretty clear.
Couldn't even get judges to participate in the research.
https://x.com/DagnyTaggart963/status/1982723608364351651
Bank Of China has implemented an integration payment settlement system to replace Swift that offers instant settlement rather than days later
I merely want to bring back bills of attainder.
I am a life long opponent of the death penalty.
The Spaniard blinks. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. Your ancestors did that. Mine stayed home.”
https://x.com/romanhelmetguy/status/1982453988168466569
But a prison sentence when (as everyone appears to acknowledge) there was no malice is absurd and so damaging to society.
Plainly he should have denied everything but his honesty has cost him.
I've done jury service twice in recent years, all professionals involved were needlessly verbose with the negative consequence that their point was lost in the guff or from losing attention.
Defence barristers weren't the worst offenders ime.
That was some bloke in a wig assembling the jury so he could tell us in person that another bloke in a wig was down with flu. Could have been done by phone/text/email without wasting 12 peoples day plus the barristers, court staff etc etc.
Frankly, it serves all those future people right for not speaking up at the time.
Even in the shit stain that is Peruvian politics, that got a laugh. *Everyone* has some Spanish ancestry.
Iowa's GDP reportedly fell more than 6% in the last quarter.
I didn't question anything except for what I considered to be a rather inflated saving for families at £450 per month
Your straw man factory is still working at high capacity, producing really shit Worzels
I wasn't specifically focused on your post, but if you feel the cap fits, wear it.
Look, you don't like me posting, and I suspect many of your fans concur, so have a word with the mods and get me removed. No skin off my nose mate.
My question is that it all has to get through still-disfunctional processes (unlike Trump we cannot work like Caesar or Caligula), and then deliver to an extent of being noticeable, and then be perceived.
Is there time or comms to help that? But that's a question I think all of us are watching, from whatever our current views are.
That's your most persistent and pathetic straw man
https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/soybeans-price
Which is odd, because if beans are being harvested but not sold, you'd expect something to change?
Hence I, personally, wouldn’t trust the figure until I’ve seen the real data
A million Canadians used to winter in the USA, with Florida getting the lion's share. Figures are that it is down 37% year on year. At $10k each (probably a very low guestimate) x 370,000 that is ~$4 billion of revenue gone.
The only number for Canadian snowbird revenue for Florida was $6bn per annum.
https://www.threads.com/@bigst1ckel/post/DQR_vB7klCD?xmt=AQF0QVG7DOzPgeUyWwV0hhYjFf4DAQVCW9Ku2Wd38rZYcA&slof=1
Take 1 child being looked after between 7:45 and 9 and £10 a day isn’t out of the question - minimum staff ratios, minimum wage, backup staff for when things go wrong and some management overhead an the costs increase quickly
So 2 children is £20 a day, £100 a week or on a bad month (23 school days) £460 a month
"Up to" is the important clause here. If you've also got 6 kids then you could contrive something mad like £1k per month.
Agricultural machinery will have been hit both by input prices and farmers having no money,
The Home Office has "squandered" billions of pounds of taxpayers' money on asylum accommodation, according to a report by a committee of MPs.
The Home Affairs Committee said "flawed contracts" and "incompetent delivery" left the department unable to cope with a surge in demand and it relied on hotels as "go-to solutions" instead of temporary stop-gaps.
The MPs said expected costs had tripled to more than £15bn and not enough had been done to recoup excess profits.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr43ww32xx0o
Was this not mainly Bobby Jenrick - with some contracts running to 2029?
I think you mean Today, which discussion occasioned the Nick Robinson quote:
"I'll make you a deal. I'll let you tell me why the last government is to blame, if you'll then tell me how you're going to sort it out."
To call the US banking system “antiquated” would be verging on misrepresentation
There’s no easy solution to fix the problem. Spending more money is part of it, but it needs to be appropriately targeted in investing to clear backlogs in the system and to allow it to run more efficiently. Perhaps we do need to look at the balance of jury trials / jury numbers etc (I start from the point that it is crucial that juries are retained for the most serious offences). Perhaps we also need to face up to the idea that we need Less Law, not more. Every statute, every separate offence, creates additional pressure. Perhaps we need to go back to first principles. Could we codify the criminal law into a single statute, with lots of separate offences brought together, with more guidance? Sure it’s a Herculean task but surely there is some worth in paying a few expert criminal lawyers /professors and retired judges to have a go over a 5-10 year period? Whatever happened to Royal Commissions?
This is a country which has a special prison for ex-presidents. And it's full.
I'd say the chap is trying to apply his USA values - Madonna did it a couple of decades ago when HER goons were confronting people on public footpaths.
Worth a watch. IMO Paul needs a bit of radicalising; he says "it's not my battle". Sorry, Paul, it's a battle for all of us - or we lose access over time. He talks to Guy Shrubsole, so he has the links.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgOAmNAjkyU
AI sets up Kodak moment for global consultants
https://www.reuters.com/commentary/breakingviews/ai-sets-up-kodak-moment-global-consultants-2025-10-24/
..AI is, in some respects, a boon. In September, Accenture said it had helped it cut 11,000 jobs, and CEO Julie Sweet is set to augment that with staff that cannot be retrained. Salesforce recently laid off 4000 customer support workers. Microsoft has halted hiring in its consulting business.
Unfortunately, big clients are cottoning on to the advantages too. One finance chief of a large UK company outlined the issue for Breakingviews via an illustrative example. Say an outsourced project costs the client $1 million to do themselves, and Accenture and the like have historically been able to do the same job for $200,000. With the advent of machine learning, companies can do the same work for just $10,000.
This gives clients considerable leverage. If consultants won’t lower their prices to near the relevant level, the client can find one who will. Or just do the job itself...
Then someone pulls the plug....
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/free-breakfast-clubs-roll-out-as-costs-for-families-cut-by-8000
"School mornings just got easier for families across the country as 750 schools open breakfast clubs today, offering 30 minutes of free childcare, a healthy start for kids and a little more breathing room before the school bell rings.
Parents will be supported with additional time at the start of the day to attend appointments, get to work on time and run errands. In total, this means parents will be able to save up to 95 additional hours and £450 per year if their child attends free breakfast clubs every day.
This amount rises to a saving of up to £8,000 every year when combining the free breakfast clubs with further support through the expansion of government-funded childcare and new school uniform cap on branded items."
So it seems plausible the £450 a month should have been £450 a year. Although they are saying the overall saving is even bigger.
I recall similar comments on PB at the time.
All we did was chuck out the tyrannical foreign management - in Tony Benn's words, we nationalised it.
So a law that is more complex is obviously better.
In my early days at work, my boss showed me how to pad out the 3 lines of facts on a matter into a professional 50 page report. Otherwise it would have been embarrassing to base spending 7 figures on 3 lines of text.
Labour is rolling out free breakfast clubs, helping children start the day ready to learn and saving parents up to £450 a year.
--
No need for apologies
The only reason the 2,000 word version exists is for all the senior managers copied into the email, the vast majority of whom don’t care to even read a summary.
My viewpoint is I don’t do tenders as it’s not worth the time invested so I can see why companies not think inch they have much chance are throwing chatai at what they deem tenders they won’t win
AI is just the automation of this process.
https://x.com/gerashchenko_en/status/1982755147479437419
Also, a widely circulated but surely not a real photo of Russian “air defences” near the Kremlin.
https://x.com/darthputinkgb/status/1982561636562141686
Edit: oh, and what looks like one dead Russian helicopter and crew
https://x.com/saintjavelin/status/1982770594912579988
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq5jg9vy1n0o
Freeloaders, that's why we need a wealth tax
Spanish broadcaster managed to take down half of the internet in Spain last night by ordering Cloudflare to be blocked by ISPs, because one of their customers had a dodgy site running that was streaming a football match.
https://x.com/pirat_nation/status/1982658765150384150
£20/day, £100/week, £400 per month.
After-school club £15 vs childminder £30 per child.
These are serious savings for parents from their net income, a family with 2 kids could be saving £1000/month if the school has breakfast and afterschool clubs.
To be honest, I think these wrappers on top of ChatGPT etc are unhelpful. Bog standard Gemini, Claude and ChatGPT are powerful enough to seriously improve productivity in professional services without paying for the wrappers.
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=hLPNDwAAQBAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&dq=hixon+accident&hl=en&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=hixon accident&f=false
So the pirates are hosting themselves on Cloudflare/Amazon/Google/Microsoft, knowing that public opinion will quickly turn against the zealotry of the rights holders when they cause serious and measurable disruption to businesses by trying to take down the pirates.
https://x.com/tomfgoodwin/status/1981392894817948137
Sounds like the Swiss Cheese Model in action…
They are obsessed with shovelling out more and more benefits without having the money to pay for it.
That’s how accidents happen.