Ninety violent or sex offenders have been mistakenly released from prison in the last year,
Your joking, not another one 90....
Surely it’s a simple process? Prisoner arrives from court and is “checked in”. Papers from court confirm release date. Release date is put into prison system on the Prisoner’s page with name, details and photo.
Prison receives written instructions from MoJ etc to confirm if prisoner is being released early - get prisoner from cell, check they are the same person as the system shows from check-in, release.
Prisoner arrives at check-out for release, prison system checked and the date doesn’t align with prisoner detail on system, prisoner has to wait until MoJ confirm in writing that its correct and he is being released earlier.
Prisoner arrives at check-out for release, system checked and date doesn’t align with prisoner detail on system, prisoner has to wait until MoJ confirm, MoJ say no, prisoner is not being released early so a mistake, prisoner goes back to cell.
It's usually more complicated than that. I was talking to a friend in the Prion Service about this - it isn't the 'end of sentence' releases that are the problem (they know when they are, exactly as you describe). it's when something changes, usually because of the end of a court case when someone has been on remand. Are they in for another offence? What has the court sentenced them to? To run concurrently or consecutively? How long have they already served? etc etc. Then often the instructions from the court are misleading or even wrong (another overstretched, under-resourced and underpaid environment prone to making mistakes).There is also Probation who often do daft things like insist on the prisoner reporting to their home office at 9:30 in the morning 300 miles away when they're being released from the middle of nowhere and there isn't a train until the morning
And then if they are non-UK Nationals they also have to check with Immigration, which means the dead hand of the Home Office.
And all this happens at 4:30 in the afternoon because that's when the courts get round to sending the paperwork out.
The other source of error is because the prisons are all full, often people are in the wrong one temporarily to balance out numbers so there are a lot of moves taking place all the time it's easier than you think to make mistakes.
So as is often the case, what seems easy, isn't.
Stick to the bottom line here - soon as Labour got into power and saying too many people locked up too long, in other words Labour on side of criminals not victims, has there been an explosion of manhunts for mistaken release or not?
I’m pleased the media have stopped trying to pretend it just one or two, and now asking just how many unsolved manhunts due to early release do the police have outstanding at the moment - that is the only question to be answered and put into headlines right now.
Not. The rapid rise started in 2022 according to the statistics. Around the same time that the prison system went to the point of needing prayer to stop it collapsing.
The only relevant statistic right now is how manhunts due to early release still ongoing, how many criminals out there free who according to their sentence should be inside, with goodness knows what they are up to. That is the only relevant statistic right now. How many unsolved ongoing manhunts due to early release.
You would say that because you want to pretend this is Labour's fault.
Operational shambles at local level are hell for politicians because they are not directly responsible for what happens - regardless of party.
But, they are happening because the system is a mess. And its a mess because of you lot - that it remains a mess is Labour's fault but they inherited it from you.
This is why Tories get such ridicule on social media and short shrift in the polls. You are lying, we all know you are lying, so why go on lying?
+1
Nothing works because the Conservatives spent years starving almost everything of funding, and more years obsessing over imposing a damaging hard Brexit, whilst the country went to pot.
Labour promised to change things whilst being unwilling to raise the significant amounts of money needed to bring this about, has belatedly realised its mistake amid widespread disappointment, and is now either about to set about raising this money, or is engaged in frightening us that it might only to retreat to yet more tinkering around the edges.
More than 1000 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel in the last 24 hours...
This weeks friday evening copy / pasta tweets on weekly achievements from Labour MPs might be a bit quiet on how successful one thousand in, one out....
Once again - the number of immigrants crossing the channel is a function of the weather.
When it's good they come. When it's bad, they don't
But, but, surely the gangs are all smashed by now and the swops with France are discouraging people from making the effort? I mean, Starmer told us this was a priority, right?
The UK construction PMI has shown a historic contraction, with the latest reading in October 2025 at 44.1, marking the tenth consecutive month below the 50-point expansion/contraction threshold. This marks the longest period of continuous decline since the global financial crisis. The sector has been negatively impacted by sluggish demand, a lack of new tender opportunities, and falling employment, with civil engineering activity falling particularly sharply.
Recent performance and key trends
Continuous contraction: The S&P Global UK Construction PMI has been below 50 for ten straight months as of October 2025, indicating a sustained downturn.
Sharpest decline in over five years: The rate of contraction in October 2025 was the sharpest since May 2020.
Weakening demand and new work: Construction firms report poor market conditions and fewer new projects, with civil engineering activity falling at the fastest pace since May 2020 due to a lack of new work to replace completed projects.
Job losses: Employment in the sector has dropped significantly, with the pace of job shedding accelerating to its fastest since November 2020 in some recent months.
Sector-specific performance: While commercial and residential building both declined, civil engineering activity has been the weakest-performing segment.
Cost pressures: Despite weak demand, some periods have seen rising cost pressures from materials and wages.
Looking ahead
Business expectations: Business confidence has fluctuated, sometimes remaining positive due to hopes for future projects despite short-term challenges.
Contributing factors: Reasons cited for the downturn include economic uncertainty, higher borrowing costs, and a shortage of new projects.
Policy impact: The figures have been influenced by fiscal worries and potential tax changes, such as those rumoured for the November 2025 Budget.
When do we get the apologies from Reeves and Rayner ?
Down here in Devon, builders are complaining there is no work. A mass of second homes are up for sale without even being tarted up. No point spending money as they aren't selling regardless of condition.
"They aren't selling regardless of condition" may be missing something out. There is a magical belief about property that there is a proper price it should fetch. With some exceptions property will sell as long as both parties have the same idea about price. That a house is worth exactly what a buyer is prepared to pay is a deep mystery to a lot of people.
All goes out the window when there is a glut on the market. I'm sure they could sell at massive discounts. But they aren't that desperate. Too expensive as first homes for those that can afford first homes is the real issue.
TBF it's cheaper to buy and then tart it up the way one wants.
When we sold my dad's house, the plumbing was on its last legs - we asked our tame plumber if we should get it redone before sale. He said very firmly no - he'd lost count of the number of times he'd installed a new kitchen/bathroom and then was commissioned to rip it out and put a new one in by new buyers a few months later.
When I lived in the Desperate Housewives* part of Hampstead, it was automatic that, on buying a new house, the old kitchen was ripped out and a new one put in.
I saw this happen, repeatedly, for six figure kitchens.
No-one involved actually cooked. When I went to parties, it was noticeable that the ovens and hobs were untouched, the microwaves in a terrible state. When looking for ice, the freezers were usually full of ready meals...
*Seriously, it was like a documentary, there.
I often think that when watching Grand Designs. Lots of high end kitchens that look great, but do they ever really get used?
Channelling Malc, it's stupid rich morons who know nothing of life.
More than 1000 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel in the last 24 hours...
This weeks friday evening copy / pasta tweets on weekly achievements from Labour MPs might be a bit quiet on how successful one thousand in, one out....
Once again - the number of immigrants crossing the channel is a function of the weather.
When it's good they come. When it's bad, they don't
But, but, surely the gangs are all smashed by now and the swops with France are discouraging people from making the effort? I mean, Starmer told us this was a priority, right?
More than 1000 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel in the last 24 hours...
This weeks friday evening copy / pasta tweets on weekly achievements from Labour MPs might be a bit quiet on how successful one thousand in, one out....
Once again - the number of immigrants crossing the channel is a function of the weather.
When it's good they come. When it's bad, they don't
But, but, surely the gangs are all smashed by now and the swops with France are discouraging people from making the effort? I mean, Starmer told us this was a priority, right?
"Cherif was spotted by a member of the public in Blackhorse Lane, Islington just before 11.30am," the Met says in a statement.
---
This shows what a mess the immigration and justice system is,
Kaddour-Cherif, 24, had been convicted in November 2024 of indecent exposure relating to an incident in March that year, police said. He was sentenced to an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders' register for five years, the Met added.
He is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visit visa in 2019 but overstayed his visa, with a "probable over-stayer" case created in 2020.
So in 2020 he is an overstayer, but 4 years later, a) still here and b) then convicted of a sexual offence, only to be released back into the community (not deported), before c) committing another crime which resulted in a custodial sentence and then d) incorrectly released. Will he be deported at the end of this sentence?
Finding these people is nevertheless made easier by their always heading to a relatively small area of north London.
"Cherif was spotted by a member of the public in Blackhorse Lane, Islington just before 11.30am," the Met says in a statement.
---
This shows what a mess the immigration and justice system is,
Kaddour-Cherif, 24, had been convicted in November 2024 of indecent exposure relating to an incident in March that year, police said. He was sentenced to an 18-month community order and placed on the sex offenders' register for five years, the Met added.
He is understood to have entered the UK legally on a visit visa in 2019 but overstayed his visa, with a "probable over-stayer" case created in 2020.
So in 2020 he is an overstayer, but 4 years later, a) still here and b) then convicted of a sexual offence, only to be released back into the community (not deported), before c) committing another crime which resulted in a custodial sentence and then d) incorrectly released. Will he be deported at the end of this sentence?
Finding these people is nevertheless made easier by their always heading to a relatively small area of north London.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
Oh dear, they’re really not going to want a claim on their PI insurance. Hope your relatives have hired another solicitor to threaten to sue their arses. The SRA should also be interested in taking six months to resolve a claim like this.
Ha ha the SRA are as slow as the solicitors. They’ve been sitting on it for months. The police wont touch it. MPs send letters that get ignored. Seriously, a couple in their late eighties lose their life savings and nobody gives a shit. It's complete failure by everyone concerned and nobody cares. I have to keep reminding myself that heading to the solicitors' office with a baseball bat isn't a solution. Luckily they're 200 miles away. And I don't have a baseball bat.
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
Oh dear, they’re really not going to want a claim on their PI insurance. Hope your relatives have hired another solicitor to threaten to sue their arses. The SRA should also be interested in taking six months to resolve a claim like this.
Ha ha the SRA are as slow as the solicitors. They’ve been sitting on it for months. The police wont touch it. MPs send letters that get ignored. Seriously, a couple in their late eighties lose their life savings and nobody gives a shit. It's complete failure by everyone concerned and nobody cares. I have to keep reminding myself that heading to the solicitors' office with a baseball bat isn't a solution. Luckily they're 200 miles away. And I don't have a baseball bat.
Found on the inter webs -
"Anger and hate in this situation is a normal reaction and important to validate," Koba, a psychologist from Kyiv, told the Times. "But it is important to channel it into something useful, such as making incendiary bombs out of empty bottles."
I’m not so sure. I like Rory as a commentator, and am largely on the same page with his analyses, despite his still being a (just about clinging to the sensible edge of the…) Tory, but what’s his track record of good judgements or actually delivering as a politician? Rory is probably better engaged in the media, challenging those in power to do better, than he is actually put in charge of anything.
Lol. I Was actually aiming for this one, where they talked about Prince Andrew. It is not as good. 11 minutes. And he got a bit pissed off with Newsnight.
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
China backs off chip export ban that could have shut down global auto plants Updated Nov 4, 2025
China has agreed to allow the export of chips critical to auto production, averting widespread shutdowns that had been predicted by the industry.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
That’s appalling. Have they committed to give them the money now ?
What irks me the most is I think most of the money will be pissed up the wall.
I think the triple-lock, PIPs for hundreds of thousands of people who've fallen out of the habit of working post Covid, winter fuel allowance, and indulgences, like private cabs, for shuttling around those on adult social care are a terrible use of public funds.
Councils are in a terrible state, some of it cuts, but others by a dramatic increase in costs, obliged on them by the courts moving the line for what they are required to provide. Some costs around children services are extraordinary, there's no cap on looked after children in care costs. A local council to me has a single child in care (one child) costing over £25k a week. A week!!
Like every entitlement, every piece of public spending, they'll be some rationale behind it all. But there needs to be some tough loving going on somewhere.
Let’s say that they require 3 staff members per shift (rare but happens, especially with mentally ill teenagers with violent tendencies). That’s 9 core staff members to provide 24/7 cover. Add in another staff member to account for holiday cover and you will easily be a £400,000 p.a. in staff costs. You’ll also need say 25% of a team coordinator which is around £20k additional.
You will need at least a 3 bedroom property to support them - let’s assume that’s £350,000 of capital cost post adaption which they will rent at a 8% annual rate so probably another £30k per year at least.
So we are at £450k per year before you even start thinking about social charges on staff (probably another £40k per year), any medical interventions or support, education and life enhancement programmes. You could very easily get to £1m per year. You then add a 20% margin on top for the company that is doing all of this work and you easily get to £1.2m - £25k per week.
It's just not sustainable. What would have happened to children in this situation twenty five years ago?
They would have been locked up in an institution and forgotten about.
We have rightly moved on from that approach as it is unconscionable
50 years ago maybe, not 25.
How can we make sure we provide the care that is needed, but doesnt wipe out the resources of the local council.
Estate tax on death as originally mooted by Labour all those years ago.
I’m not so sure. I like Rory as a commentator, and am largely on the same page with his analyses, despite his still being a (just about clinging to the sensible edge of the…) Tory, but what’s his track record of good judgements or actually delivering as a politician? Rory is probably better engaged in the media, challenging those in power to do better, than he is actually put in charge of anything.
Tough one to call. He had 5 ministerial positions in 5 years, after 5 years on the backbenches.
So I'm not sure what serious achievements were even possible.
Ninety violent or sex offenders have been mistakenly released from prison in the last year,
Your joking, not another one 90....
Surely it’s a simple process? Prisoner arrives from court and is “checked in”. Papers from court confirm release date. Release date is put into prison system on the Prisoner’s page with name, details and photo.
Prison receives written instructions from MoJ etc to confirm if prisoner is being released early - get prisoner from cell, check they are the same person as the system shows from check-in, release.
Prisoner arrives at check-out for release, prison system checked and the date doesn’t align with prisoner detail on system, prisoner has to wait until MoJ confirm in writing that its correct and he is being released earlier.
Prisoner arrives at check-out for release, system checked and date doesn’t align with prisoner detail on system, prisoner has to wait until MoJ confirm, MoJ say no, prisoner is not being released early so a mistake, prisoner goes back to cell.
It's usually more complicated than that. I was talking to a friend in the Prion Service about this - it isn't the 'end of sentence' releases that are the problem (they know when they are, exactly as you describe). it's when something changes, usually because of the end of a court case when someone has been on remand. Are they in for another offence? What has the court sentenced them to? To run concurrently or consecutively? How long have they already served? etc etc. Then often the instructions from the court are misleading or even wrong (another overstretched, under-resourced and underpaid environment prone to making mistakes).There is also Probation who often do daft things like insist on the prisoner reporting to their home office at 9:30 in the morning 300 miles away when they're being released from the middle of nowhere and there isn't a train until the morning
And then if they are non-UK Nationals they also have to check with Immigration, which means the dead hand of the Home Office.
And all this happens at 4:30 in the afternoon because that's when the courts get round to sending the paperwork out.
The other source of error is because the prisons are all full, often people are in the wrong one temporarily to balance out numbers so there are a lot of moves taking place all the time it's easier than you think to make mistakes.
So as is often the case, what seems easy, isn't.
Stick to the bottom line here - soon as Labour got into power and saying too many people locked up too long, in other words Labour on side of criminals not victims, has there been an explosion of manhunts for mistaken release or not?
I’m pleased the media have stopped trying to pretend it just one or two, and now asking just how many unsolved manhunts due to early release do the police have outstanding at the moment - that is the only question to be answered and put into headlines right now.
Not. The rapid rise started in 2022 according to the statistics. Around the same time that the prison system went to the point of needing prayer to stop it collapsing.
The only relevant statistic right now is how manhunts due to early release still ongoing, how many criminals out there free who according to their sentence should be inside, with goodness knows what they are up to. That is the only relevant statistic right now. How many unsolved ongoing manhunts due to early release.
You would say that because you want to pretend this is Labour's fault.
Operational shambles at local level are hell for politicians because they are not directly responsible for what happens - regardless of party.
But, they are happening because the system is a mess. And its a mess because of you lot - that it remains a mess is Labour's fault but they inherited it from you.
This is why Tories get such ridicule on social media and short shrift in the polls. You are lying, we all know you are lying, so why go on lying?
It has long been thus. A senior airman leaves a cd rom on a bus during the New Labour Government and the Tories, the Telegraph and the Mail demand the Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary's resignation. A serving Foreign Secretary shakes off his minders to go to a KGB organised party at a villa in Lombardy and is discovered tired and emotional at an Italian railway station a few days later and it barely makes the news. A grandee of various Nigel Farage political vehicles pleads guilty to taking bungs from Russia and the media are not interested, even here in Wales where Nathan Gill was a UKIP/ Brexit/Farage top dog.
As in early 2008, despite (or perhaps because of) indices being near record highs, if you have any feel for the markets, you can just sense an impending crash looming. Anyone invested, do tread carefully over coming months.
More than 1000 small boat migrants have crossed the Channel in the last 24 hours...
This weeks friday evening copy / pasta tweets on weekly achievements from Labour MPs might be a bit quiet on how successful one thousand in, one out....
Once again - the number of immigrants crossing the channel is a function of the weather.
When it's good they come. When it's bad, they don't
But, but, surely the gangs are all smashed by now and the swops with France are discouraging people from making the effort? I mean, Starmer told us this was a priority, right?
Starmer - the straight-to-video PM.
In the trade, beyond straight-to-video is straight-to-landfill...
It was only a few weeks ago Amorim was getting ' you're going to be sacked in the morning '
I love the manager of the month award for two reasons.
1) Its often a curse - the team loses immediately after 2) It seems to be awarded to the team who win the most games. Now that may correlate with the manager doing something right, but what has Amorim changed since last month?!
First prefs - BUT the previous holder was Labour, second elected on the slate, and removed from office on account of being jailed, so comparison is tricky, even allowing for Reform coming in.
I might launch a petition to deport the pathetic residents to West Falkland.
Top tip: don't buy a flat next to a pub if you want a quiet night's sleep.
Quite. Or a house next to a cricket pitch if you don't want the odd cricket ball in your garden. Or a house next to a church if you are prone to annoyance about church bells.
I’m not so sure. I like Rory as a commentator, and am largely on the same page with his analyses, despite his still being a (just about clinging to the sensible edge of the…) Tory, but what’s his track record of good judgements or actually delivering as a politician? Rory is probably better engaged in the media, challenging those in power to do better, than he is actually put in charge of anything.
Tough one to call. He had 5 ministerial positions in 5 years, after 5 years on the backbenches.
So I'm not sure what serious achievements were even possible.
He’s in the wrong party. In that video he argues that the answer to many of our problems is to “go local”, despite his own party having brought about the extreme centralisation of our governance and the complete subjugation of local government to Westminster.
Of course, Labour are worse when it comes to the centralisation of power.
I’m not so sure. I like Rory as a commentator, and am largely on the same page with his analyses, despite his still being a (just about clinging to the sensible edge of the…) Tory, but what’s his track record of good judgements or actually delivering as a politician? Rory is probably better engaged in the media, challenging those in power to do better, than he is actually put in charge of anything.
Tough one to call. He had 5 ministerial positions in 5 years, after 5 years on the backbenches.
So I'm not sure what serious achievements were even possible.
He’s in the wrong party. In that video he argues that the answer to many of our problems is to “go local”, despite his own party having brought about the extreme centralisation of our governance and the complete subjugation of local government to Westminster.
I’m not so sure. I like Rory as a commentator, and am largely on the same page with his analyses, despite his still being a (just about clinging to the sensible edge of the…) Tory, but what’s his track record of good judgements or actually delivering as a politician? Rory is probably better engaged in the media, challenging those in power to do better, than he is actually put in charge of anything.
Tough one to call. He had 5 ministerial positions in 5 years, after 5 years on the backbenches.
So I'm not sure what serious achievements were even possible.
He’s in the wrong party. In that video he argues that the answer to many of our problems is to “go local”, despite his own party having brought about the extreme centralisation of our governance and the complete subjugation of local government to Westminster.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
Oh dear, they’re really not going to want a claim on their PI insurance. Hope your relatives have hired another solicitor to threaten to sue their arses. The SRA should also be interested in taking six months to resolve a claim like this.
Ha ha the SRA are as slow as the solicitors. They’ve been sitting on it for months. The police wont touch it. MPs send letters that get ignored. Seriously, a couple in their late eighties lose their life savings and nobody gives a shit. It's complete failure by everyone concerned and nobody cares. I have to keep reminding myself that heading to the solicitors' office with a baseball bat isn't a solution. Luckily they're 200 miles away. And I don't have a baseball bat.
Best of luck, that sounds like a horrible situation for your relatives. Can they write to their MP?
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
That’s appalling. Have they committed to give them the money now ?
No! They can't speak to us until they hear from their insurers, and we can't contact their insurers, and they have no idea when the insurers will come back to them... seven months later still nothing.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
Oh dear, they’re really not going to want a claim on their PI insurance. Hope your relatives have hired another solicitor to threaten to sue their arses. The SRA should also be interested in taking six months to resolve a claim like this.
Ha ha the SRA are as slow as the solicitors. They’ve been sitting on it for months. The police wont touch it. MPs send letters that get ignored. Seriously, a couple in their late eighties lose their life savings and nobody gives a shit. It's complete failure by everyone concerned and nobody cares. I have to keep reminding myself that heading to the solicitors' office with a baseball bat isn't a solution. Luckily they're 200 miles away. And I don't have a baseball bat.
Best of luck, that sounds like a horrible situation for your relatives. Can they write to their MP?
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Why do all Lego models look utterly crap? Even the colour is off in that one.
It's not that I don't admire the talents of whoever has constructed it but their talent is to have made the best model possible using a terrible material.
The rise (return) of VDI in the workplace and similar means that local resources on your machine can be unimportant.
Again.
Mind you, the price of an iPad combined with a keyboard case can easily exceed the MacBook Air.....
I told the developers of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook (I was in the pre-release trial), that if they integrated Wifi onboard and priced it low enough, it would sweep the market. They priced it as a laptop.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
China backs off chip export ban that could have shut down global auto plants Updated Nov 4, 2025
China has agreed to allow the export of chips critical to auto production, averting widespread shutdowns that had been predicted by the industry.
It really doesn't. From your link: ..After the Dutch government took control of Nexperia several weeks ago and removed its Chinese CEO, citing national security concerns, Beijing suspended shipments from China. Auto industry trade groups in the United States and Europe both feared the trade dispute would lead them to run out of the chips they needed. That could drive up car prices, as happened in the years following the pandemic...
...The Dutch government took control of Nexperia last month under pressure from the US government, which had placed its Chinese parent company, Wingtech, on a blacklist of companies it saw as posing a national security threat. In response to the Dutch action, the Chinese government ordered the export controls that stopped shipments of Nexperia chips for weeks...
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
My daughter recently divorced her husband and has bought a home nearby
It is extraordinary how bad most everyone has been in the process from the divorce lawyers, to the conveyancers, to the utility services, to the local council, and to Welsh Water who knew her water meter had been buried in road works two years previously and have not exposed it since
I do not like the word broken Britain but sadly it is and I see little prospects of any improvement soon
The prisons still use paper with no computerised records as WIfi is not available apparently
Of course the collapse of the prison and courts happened under successive governments alongside so much more, but ultimately we expect to pour countless billions into a failing NHS with little or no reform, pensions and benefits are out of control, paying interest on our debt of £100 billion pa, etc and we wonder why we are where we are
Labour's answer is to tax and tax everything in sight, hand out billions more on WFP, triple lock, and now abolitioning the 2 child cap.
This has to stop and radical action is required to change the direction of the economy but nobody is brave enough as they perceive the public will not elect them
Ultimately this only ends up one way and that is the IMF intervening
And to those who blame the 'other lot' each lot is to blame and no political party is any better than the other at facing realism
My recent experience with a range of public and private sector organisations has similarly been rather poor in many cases. It sometimes fees like bad service has become normalized. I would emphasise this is not just in the public sector by any means. The exception is usually small firms. Are we bad at building a good culture in large organisations in this country?
Our daughter's house sale completed at 12 noon and her furniture van was waiting outside her new home
She couldn't gain access as the money transfers were in the process but at 1.30 she expressed concern to the Estate Agent holding the keys as she would incur delay penalties from her removers if they couldn't move her in by 2.00pm
The estate agents said they would phone the solicitors only to respond that they were closed for lunch until 2.00pm !!!!!!
She did get the OK just after 2.00pm but this is 2025 not 1955
Don't talk to me about solicitors. My parents in law's solicitors sent the proceeds of their house sale to a fraudster in March and they have still not given my parents in law their money.
That’s appalling. Have they committed to give them the money now ?
No! They can't speak to us until they hear from their insurers, and we can't contact their insurers, and they have no idea when the insurers will come back to them... seven months later still nothing.
Presumably they've gone through the Solicitors' complaint procedure? If so, then Ombudsman and SRA are the next step.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Have been listening to the Rest is History on 1914. The Eastern Front campaigns are eye opening. Huge clashes, vast casualties, almost unheard of in the UK and France with our Western Front obsession. Similarly the clashes in the West in 1914 - such as the Marne, 1st Ypres, contested by vast numbers of men. We are a little obsessed with July 1st 1916, but many other days were as bad for somebody.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
They were Moltke's clever/hardworking officers. Those suited for the highest command were the clever and lazy, as they knew how to delegate. Stupid and lazy officers were useful too, as they just did what they were told. But, the category that must weeded out were the stupid and hardworking, as they did incalculable damage, without knowing it.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
Indeed, I was thinking more that I had always watched it with Darling coming across as a bit of a wet and a sneak who had dodged a lot of fighting by working through staff however with the knowledge he has an MC it completely changes perception of him as he must have been (yes I know it’s fiction) in combat and extremely brave before ending up as the character we see.
I’m surprised, if this was on purpose, I’ve never heard any of the cast or writers etc mention it but would also be surprised that nobody checked the details such as his ribbons.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Have been listening to the Rest is History on 1914. The Eastern Front campaigns are eye opening. Huge clashes, vast casualties, almost unheard of in the UK and France with our Western Front obsession. Similarly the clashes in the West in 1914 - such as the Marne, 1st Ypres, contested by vast numbers of men. We are a little obsessed with July 1st 1916, but many other days were as bad for somebody.
Not to mention the White/Red conflict which was to follow.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Have been listening to the Rest is History on 1914. The Eastern Front campaigns are eye opening. Huge clashes, vast casualties, almost unheard of in the UK and France with our Western Front obsession. Similarly the clashes in the West in 1914 - such as the Marne, 1st Ypres, contested by vast numbers of men. We are a little obsessed with July 1st 1916, but many other days were as bad for somebody.
Another feature of fighting in the East in WWI, is that all sides hated the local Jews, and considered them collaborators with the enemy.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
The battle of Stalingrad (and others on the Eastern front) were (thankfully) beyond anything our military ever experienced in either war.
Re Captain Darling - indeed. One could also imagine his twitch is some form of PTSD. A brilliantly written character.
“Rather hoped I’d get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris… Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says, “Bugger.” “
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Have been listening to the Rest is History on 1914. The Eastern Front campaigns are eye opening. Huge clashes, vast casualties, almost unheard of in the UK and France with our Western Front obsession. Similarly the clashes in the West in 1914 - such as the Marne, 1st Ypres, contested by vast numbers of men. We are a little obsessed with July 1st 1916, but many other days were as bad for somebody.
Years ago I came across a fascinating contemporary novel - I forget the name, but it was about a soldier in the German-occupied parts of the Tsarist Empire. Very eye opening as you say.
You could also add the Italian fronts, and Mespot ... though Gallipoli is well enugh known. I don't suppose more than a few readers today [edit] realise that Evelyn Waugh was making a sly point when he named the ghastly preparatory school in the Sword of Honour trilogy Kut-al-Amara House with the dorms after various Great War disasters.
Lib Dem (Gareth Williams) 471 Reform 212 Conservative 100 Labour 26 Independent 12
Lib Dem gain from Reform
Only a Town Council but..., last week it happened at Bromsgrove. Reform are not invincible. Interesting their win at Harborough yesterday, on the face of it Cons, Labour and Greens vote fell, Lib Dem held steady and only 98 behind.
Local elections sine May have given Reform 57 victories, LDs 47, Cons 16, Labour 13, Greens 11. Total votes Reform lead with 27%, Lib Dems second on 20%. Cons Labour and Greens mid to low teens.
Quite remarkable how the LDs get almost no publicity, but plod on and either retain or increase their votes.
Absolutely no sign over the last month of the "Green surge", perhaps it is concentrated in London and the University Towns. Keep waiting for it to show, maybe next week, maybe not.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Why do all Lego models look utterly crap? Even the colour is off in that one.
It's not that I don't admire the talents of whoever has constructed it but their talent is to have made the best model possible using a terrible material.
Agreed, I gave up on Lego the moment I built my first Airfix model at the age of five (a TBF Avenger I recall). Gluey as it was I realised even at that tender age it looked more like something that had actually existed than anything I could build with Lego.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Why do all Lego models look utterly crap? Even the colour is off in that one.
It's not that I don't admire the talents of whoever has constructed it but their talent is to have made the best model possible using a terrible material.
Agreed, I gave up on Lego the moment I built my first Airfix model at the age of five (a TBF Avenger I recall). Gluey as it was I realised even at that tender age it looked more like something that had actually existed than anything I could build with Lego.
I liked to make model rockets and spaceships. Not easy with Lego, especially before 2001 changed the style radically from overgrown A-4s ands their descendants.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
Even if they'd taken the city, they would still have been crushed, in Operation Uranus. As early as 31st August, the Quartermaster of the Sixth Army was noting signs of malnutrition, among the soldiers. All their supplies were conveyed up one single track railway, infested by partisans.
As you say, hindsight is easy, but one can now see that in the Summer of 1942, the Axis armies were running on fumes.
Stalingrad is now seen as the turning point on the Eastern Front, but actually, the Soviets were not impressed by the outcome of the battle, at the time. Their own casualties were huge, and most of Army Group South escaped the trap they had set for them.
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
This is such a major change and such a big threat to our future freedom and prosperity.
Does anyone in British or European politics understand the scale of the danger?
You are Ed Miliband and I claim my "It's where the nanny cooks"
It was an accident, it was when we were having an extension built, it would have meant us not having access to the main kitchen for six months.
You slipped and fell into an accidental kitchen...
Even Ed had a better excuse than that
The trick is to make the second one a processing / ironing / storage / drying / utility / maybe dog wash room with a sink and simple cooker and fridge so you can use it in the interim, and the function still valid afterwards.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
"Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it? Last person I called `Darling' was pregnant twenty seconds later!"
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
"Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it? Last person I called `Darling' was pregnant twenty seconds later!"
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
Even if they'd taken the city, they would still have been crushed, in Operation Uranus. As early as 31st August, the Quartermaster of the Sixth Army was noting signs of malnutrition, among the soldiers. All their supplies were conveyed up one single track railway, infested by partisans.
As you say, hindsight is easy, but one can now see that in the Summer of 1942, the Axis armies were running on fumes.
The invasion of Russia was mathematically impossible - if you took the requirements of the armies at the front, and built the logistics chain backwards, it was provable that it couldn't work. Not with trains.
Living off the land (aka robbing and starving the local population) was not even a complete fix - just delayed the inevitable.
One of the July Bomb plot conspirators was giving lectures on this, at the German Staff College.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
"Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it? Last person I called `Darling' was pregnant twenty seconds later!"
I don't know if this is the only reason he was called Darling, but the first time we meet him is Blackadder saying "What do you want Darling?" and its hilarious. Obviously funny for Flashheart too.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Have been listening to the Rest is History on 1914. The Eastern Front campaigns are eye opening. Huge clashes, vast casualties, almost unheard of in the UK and France with our Western Front obsession. Similarly the clashes in the West in 1914 - such as the Marne, 1st Ypres, contested by vast numbers of men. We are a little obsessed with July 1st 1916, but many other days were as bad for somebody.
Years ago I came across a fascinating contemporary novel - I forget the name, but it was about a soldier in the German-occupied parts of the Tsarist Empire. Very eye opening as you say.
You could also add the Italian fronts, and Mespot ... though Gallipoli is well enugh known. I don't suppose more than a few readers today [edit] realise that Evelyn Waugh was making a sly point when he named the ghastly preparatory school in the Sword of Honour trilogy Kut-al-Amara House with the dorms after various Great War disasters.
My grandparents had a set of teaspoons engraved with western front battles and regimental crests on the handle. Slightly discomfiting to think of stirring your tea with Passchendaele or Ypres but a different attitude to remembrance then I guess. Strangely no Italian battles since my grandad was on that front.
The UK construction PMI has shown a historic contraction, with the latest reading in October 2025 at 44.1, marking the tenth consecutive month below the 50-point expansion/contraction threshold. This marks the longest period of continuous decline since the global financial crisis. The sector has been negatively impacted by sluggish demand, a lack of new tender opportunities, and falling employment, with civil engineering activity falling particularly sharply.
Recent performance and key trends
Continuous contraction: The S&P Global UK Construction PMI has been below 50 for ten straight months as of October 2025, indicating a sustained downturn.
Sharpest decline in over five years: The rate of contraction in October 2025 was the sharpest since May 2020.
Weakening demand and new work: Construction firms report poor market conditions and fewer new projects, with civil engineering activity falling at the fastest pace since May 2020 due to a lack of new work to replace completed projects.
Job losses: Employment in the sector has dropped significantly, with the pace of job shedding accelerating to its fastest since November 2020 in some recent months.
Sector-specific performance: While commercial and residential building both declined, civil engineering activity has been the weakest-performing segment.
Cost pressures: Despite weak demand, some periods have seen rising cost pressures from materials and wages.
Looking ahead
Business expectations: Business confidence has fluctuated, sometimes remaining positive due to hopes for future projects despite short-term challenges.
Contributing factors: Reasons cited for the downturn include economic uncertainty, higher borrowing costs, and a shortage of new projects.
Policy impact: The figures have been influenced by fiscal worries and potential tax changes, such as those rumoured for the November 2025 Budget.
When do we get the apologies from Reeves and Rayner ?
Down here in Devon, builders are complaining there is no work. A mass of second homes are up for sale without even being tarted up. No point spending money as they aren't selling regardless of condition.
"They aren't selling regardless of condition" may be missing something out. There is a magical belief about property that there is a proper price it should fetch. With some exceptions property will sell as long as both parties have the same idea about price. That a house is worth exactly what a buyer is prepared to pay is a deep mystery to a lot of people.
All goes out the window when there is a glut on the market. I'm sure they could sell at massive discounts. But they aren't that desperate. Too expensive as first homes for those that can afford first homes is the real issue.
TBF it's cheaper to buy and then tart it up the way one wants.
When we sold my dad's house, the plumbing was on its last legs - we asked our tame plumber if we should get it redone before sale. He said very firmly no - he'd lost count of the number of times he'd installed a new kitchen/bathroom and then was commissioned to rip it out and put a new one in by new buyers a few months later.
When I lived in the Desperate Housewives* part of Hampstead, it was automatic that, on buying a new house, the old kitchen was ripped out and a new one put in.
I saw this happen, repeatedly, for six figure kitchens.
No-one involved actually cooked. When I went to parties, it was noticeable that the ovens and hobs were untouched, the microwaves in a terrible state. When looking for ice, the freezers were usually full of ready meals...
*Seriously, it was like a documentary, there.
I often think that when watching Grand Designs. Lots of high end kitchens that look great, but do they ever really get used?
Channelling Malc, it's stupid rich morons who know nothing of life.
More social pressure - "It's the done thing".
So, conformists with no quirks.
So sad. The muggles from the audience in the original Apple Mac advert.
You are Ed Miliband and I claim my "It's where the nanny cooks"
It was an accident, it was when we were having an extension built, it would have meant us not having access to the main kitchen for six months.
You slipped and fell into an accidental kitchen...
Even Ed had a better excuse than that
The trick is to make the second one a processing / ironing / storage / drying / utility / maybe dog wash room with a sink and simple cooker and fridge so you can use it in the interim, and the function still valid afterwards.
Or lean into the ethnic stereotype and at least call it a spice kitchen.
You are Ed Miliband and I claim my "It's where the nanny cooks"
It was an accident, it was when we were having an extension built, it would have meant us not having access to the main kitchen for six months.
You slipped and fell into an accidental kitchen...
Even Ed had a better excuse than that
The trick is to make the second one a processing / ironing / storage / drying / utility / maybe dog wash room with a sink and simple cooker and fridge so you can use it in the interim, and the function still valid afterwards.
Ooh, just the thing for boiling up sheep's heads for the dog. As was the practice in my family, alas in the (small) single kitchen.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
Even if they'd taken the city, they would still have been crushed, in Operation Uranus. As early as 31st August, the Quartermaster of the Sixth Army was noting signs of malnutrition, among the soldiers. All their supplies were conveyed up one single track railway, infested by partisans.
As you say, hindsight is easy, but one can now see that in the Summer of 1942, the Axis armies were running on fumes.
The invasion of Russia was mathematically impossible - if you took the requirements of the armies at the front, and built the logistics chain backwards, it was provable that it couldn't work. Not with trains.
Living off the land (aka robbing and starving the local population) was not even a complete fix - just delayed the inevitable.
One of the July Bomb plot conspirators was giving lectures on this, at the German Staff College.
As Professor Matthias Strohn answered, when asked "At what point did the Germans lose the war on the Eastern Front?"
"22nd June 1941."
It was similar to the Japanese invasion of China, which was going nowhere by 1940.
Lib Dem (Gareth Williams) 471 Reform 212 Conservative 100 Labour 26 Independent 12
Lib Dem gain from Reform
Only a Town Council but..., last week it happened at Bromsgrove. Reform are not invincible. Interesting their win at Harborough yesterday, on the face of it Cons, Labour and Greens vote fell, Lib Dem held steady and only 98 behind.
Local elections sine May have given Reform 57 victories, LDs 47, Cons 16, Labour 13, Greens 11. Total votes Reform lead with 27%, Lib Dems second on 20%. Cons Labour and Greens mid to low teens.
Quite remarkable how the LDs get almost no publicity, but plod on and either retain or increase their votes.
Absolutely no sign over the last month of the "Green surge", perhaps it is concentrated in London and the University Towns. Keep waiting for it to show, maybe next week, maybe not.
Other than Reform doing quite to very well, I think it's hard to transpose the national polls on to local by elections. For the rest of them, it's all about the local set up. That often favours the Lib Dems.
Both the erroneously released prisoners are back in custody then. Well done to the person responsible for their recapture, David Lammy. After all the brickbats thrown at him in recent days it's only fair he now takes the plaudits.
If they're willing to go cheap, they must have found a way to build it with their usual 35% or so gross margin, or I don't think they'd bother.
Since macs are only 8% of Apple's revenue, I doubt it would be transformative to their share price.
Rumour mill is that they're sweating the design of an old iPhone chip. It'd be a nice web terminal/chromebook replacement/second system but it'll not keep up with their mainstream offerings.
Still, it will get your kids hooked on the ecosystem - which is probably the core goal.
You are Ed Miliband and I claim my "It's where the nanny cooks"
It was an accident, it was when we were having an extension built, it would have meant us not having access to the main kitchen for six months.
You slipped and fell into an accidental kitchen...
Even Ed had a better excuse than that
The trick is to make the second one a processing / ironing / storage / drying / utility / maybe dog wash room with a sink and simple cooker and fridge so you can use it in the interim, and the function still valid afterwards.
Or lean into the ethnic stereotype and at least call it a spice kitchen.
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
This is such a major change and such a big threat to our future freedom and prosperity.
Does anyone in British or European politics understand the scale of the danger?
A huge mistake (among many) that Boris government made was they setup a task force during COVID to really closely look at UK exposure to crucial aspects to China as it was blindly obvious how over exposed we were. Then it was disbanded as soon as COVID pandemic was over without really going anywhere.
Both the erroneously released prisoners are back in custody then. Well done to the person responsible for their recapture, David Lammy. After all the brickbats thrown at him in recent days it's only fair he now takes the plaudits.
Do you congratulate someone for cleaning up their own shit?
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
The Germans also failed to take Leningrad, despite putting it under siege that resulted in immense hunger and suffering for the population inside the city. So I wouldn't have thought that cutting off Stalingrad would have been all that much more successful.
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
This is such a major change and such a big threat to our future freedom and prosperity.
Does anyone in British or European politics understand the scale of the danger?
I was quite surprised to learn that Apple iphone Air has been a huge L for Apple. I presumed that people that love the Apple design language would be all over it (having inferior specs has never been a problem in the past for Apple products).
If they're willing to go cheap, they must have found a way to build it with their usual 35% or so gross margin, or I don't think they'd bother.
Since macs are only 8% of Apple's revenue, I doubt it would be transformative to their share price.
Rumour mill is that they're sweating the design of an old iPhone chip. It'd be a nice web terminal/chromebook replacement/second system but it'll not keep up with their mainstream offerings.
Still, it will get your kids hooked on the ecosystem - which is probably the core goal.
The MacAir is gaining performance every year. I know quite a few developers who are using one.
If all you need is a terminal to open a session to a VDI, then a cheaper, even smaller machine would be useful
Both the erroneously released prisoners are back in custody then. Well done to the person responsible for their recapture, David Lammy. After all the brickbats thrown at him in recent days it's only fair he now takes the plaudits.
If Apple go for cheap laptop route, where does this leave the sale pitch that Apple have been pushing for ages that your iPad is a cheap laptop replacement (and with the new OS for ipad and mac, they are more similar then ever)?
Somewhat inevitably, Europe just folded to Chinese economic pressure.
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days.. https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that. That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
This is such a major change and such a big threat to our future freedom and prosperity.
Does anyone in British or European politics understand the scale of the danger?
A huge mistake (among many) that Boris government made was they setup a task force during COVID to really closely look at UK exposure to crucial aspects to China as it was blindly obvious how over exposed we were. Then it was disbanded as soon as COVID pandemic was over without really going anywhere.
No.
What happened was that the recommendations were shaping up to be so far reaching and difficult that the *task force* became the problem.
As Herman Kahn observed, this is the standard behaviour of large bureaucracies - if a problem becomes large enough to require massive change, those *raising the problem* become the problem.
Years and years ago, I bought a book by Jerry Mander titled "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television". I skimmed it, but never got around to seriously reading it. Now that I have brought it to his attention, I look forward to TSE's review.
One reason I didn't read it seriously was that I had already come to a similar conclusion about TV and politics: At the time, when asked how a person (in the US) could be well-informed, I began by telling them not to watch TV news.
If they're willing to go cheap, they must have found a way to build it with their usual 35% or so gross margin, or I don't think they'd bother.
Since macs are only 8% of Apple's revenue, I doubt it would be transformative to their share price.
Rumour mill is that they're sweating the design of an old iPhone chip. It'd be a nice web terminal/chromebook replacement/second system but it'll not keep up with their mainstream offerings.
Still, it will get your kids hooked on the ecosystem - which is probably the core goal.
The MacAir is gaining performance every year. I know quite a few developers who are using one.
If all you need is a terminal to open a session to a VDI, then a cheaper, even smaller machine would be useful
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
Even if they'd taken the city, they would still have been crushed, in Operation Uranus. As early as 31st August, the Quartermaster of the Sixth Army was noting signs of malnutrition, among the soldiers. All their supplies were conveyed up one single track railway, infested by partisans.
As you say, hindsight is easy, but one can now see that in the Summer of 1942, the Axis armies were running on fumes.
Stalingrad is now seen as the turning point on the Eastern Front, but actually, the Soviets were not impressed by the outcome of the battle, at the time. Their own casualties were huge, and most of Army Group South escaped the trap they had set for them.
At least the Baku and Grozny oil wells were out of reach!
Macbook Air is perfect for modern dev where you are running your ML training on a remote cluster and you just need a "window" onto it, while also wanting to run some small scale experiments locally just to check things are setup correctly. The Macbook pros are still not powerful to run proper ML workloads, so not necessary, they are much more suited if you are doing things like video editting.
I was quite surprised to learn that Apple iphone Air has been a huge L for Apple. I presumed that people that love the Apple design language would be all over it (having inferior specs has never been a problem in the past for Apple products).
The problem is it doesn't really follow the Apple design language. There is no way Jobs would have let it out of the building
ITV has said it is in "preliminary" discussions to sell its broadcasting business to Sky for £1.6bn, a move that could reshape the UK's television landscape.
The talks focus on ITV's Media and Entertainment division, which includes its free-to-air TV channels as well as the ITV X streaming service.
The discussions with Sky, which is owned by US-based Comcast, come as the television industry faces fierce competition from streaming services such as Netflix and Disney+.
The deal would not include ITV's production arm - ITV Studios - which makes popular programmes such as Love Island and I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
I went to a lecture about Stalingrad. During the course of one day's fighting, the Germans took 3,000 casualties, advancing twenty meters into the Tractor Factory. That degree of carnage exceeds anything in Blackadder.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Hindsight is easy and all that but I think its Beevor who makes the point that the Germans main goal on the Eastern Front was encirclements (huge Cannae style battles) didn't do the obvious thing at Stalingrad - having reach the Volga to the North and South of the city, just work up and down the river back to encircle the defenders. Instead they tried frontal attack after frontal attack. Whether it would have worked is anyone's guess, and I'm pretty sure that they would still have lost the war in the end, but its an interesting counterfactual.
The Germans also failed to take Leningrad, despite putting it under siege that resulted in immense hunger and suffering for the population inside the city. So I wouldn't have thought that cutting off Stalingrad would have been all that much more successful.
They never surrounded Leningrad fully and also never made attempts to fully capture it. Leningrad was supplied over the ice road during the winter.
In Stalingrad the soviets were able to keep feeding in men and weapons over the who duration of the battle, something that closing off the Volga crossing would have stopped.
Really doesn't look at first glance as if it has 3.6 kbits in it, I must say. But presumably they are lurking somewhere.
There's a Lego model of Chester Cathedral inside the real cathedral with apparently 275,000 pieces!
Very impressive! At least we maintain some engineering prowess on large projects these days!
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?” “One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
On the subject of Blackadder 4 I saw something the other day pointing out that Captain Darling is wearing the Military Cross ribbon on his uniform which would completely change perception of his character from a weak jobsworth to potentially a hero who has been shattered by war and sent to staff.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
Staff officers were phenomenally hard working officers, and tended to be good at their job. Its not impossible for Darling to have won the MC and been offered a promotion to the staff without a need for a breakdown.
"Captain Darling? Funny name for a guy, isn't it? Last person I called `Darling' was pregnant twenty seconds later!"
I don't know if this is the only reason he was called Darling, but the first time we meet him is Blackadder saying "What do you want Darling?" and its hilarious. Obviously funny for Flashheart too.
According to Ben Elton, Captain Darling was named by Stephen Fry. Elton also expressed frustration at the Oxbridge-educated cast ‘tutorialising’ each script at read-throughs.
Comments
Nothing works because the Conservatives spent years starving almost everything of funding, and more years obsessing over imposing a damaging hard Brexit, whilst the country went to pot.
Labour promised to change things whilst being unwilling to raise the significant amounts of money needed to bring this about, has belatedly realised its mistake amid widespread disappointment, and is now either about to set about raising this money, or is engaged in frightening us that it might only to retreat to yet more tinkering around the edges.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4kyua6nxNc
The Netherlands is prepared to suspend a ministerial order that gave it control over Chinese-owned chipmaker Nexperia if chip shipments resume in the coming days..
https://x.com/fbermingham/status/1986695511877836861
Not that they had much choice; China can now inflict far greater economic pain on us than we can on them. It will take a lot of time and effort to change that.
That is a far greater issue than the supposed threat to our sovereignty from EU membership.
"Anger and hate in this situation is a normal reaction and important to validate," Koba, a psychologist from Kyiv, told the Times. "But it is important to channel it into something useful, such as making incendiary bombs out of empty bottles."
Top tip: don't buy a flat next to a pub if you want a quiet night's sleep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42JbMaczlPc
Updated Nov 4, 2025
China has agreed to allow the export of chips critical to auto production, averting widespread shutdowns that had been predicted by the industry.
The chips are provided by Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chipmaker based in the Netherlands.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/03/business/china-nexperia-chip-exports
It depends which way you spin it.
Reminds me of the Blackadder Goes Forth sketch
“What’s the scale of this Darling?”
“One-to-one Sir. Look - there’s a little worm…”
So I'm not sure what serious achievements were even possible.
An autistic (lefty) Tolkien fan demolishing Elon Musk on hobbits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72VN5pRTZmY
2083 pieces. 106cm long.
https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/concorde-10318
Apple is reportedly working on a cheaper Mac laptop with an iPhone chip
It will have a smaller screen, but could come in at ‘well under’ $1,000.
https://www.theverge.com/news/813391/apple-mac-laptop-iphone-a-series-chip-macbook-cheaper
Of course, Labour are worse when it comes to the centralisation of power.
I would be surprised if the costume department didn’t realise or check his ribbons but I’ve never heard it mentioned by the writers etc.
It's not that I don't admire the talents of whoever has constructed it but their talent is to have made the best model possible using a terrible material.
Again.
Mind you, the price of an iPad combined with a keyboard case can easily exceed the MacBook Air.....
I told the developers of the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook (I was in the pre-release trial), that if they integrated Wifi onboard and priced it low enough, it would sweep the market. They priced it as a laptop.
Captain Darling is definitely wearing the ribbon of the Military Cross.
Since macs are only 8% of Apple's revenue, I doubt it would be transformative to their share price.
https://www.nms.ac.uk/past-exhibitions/lego-concorde-model
From your link:
..After the Dutch government took control of Nexperia several weeks ago and removed its Chinese CEO, citing national security concerns, Beijing suspended shipments from China. Auto industry trade groups in the United States and Europe both feared the trade dispute would lead them to run out of the chips they needed. That could drive up car prices, as happened in the years following the pandemic...
...The Dutch government took control of Nexperia last month under pressure from the US government, which had placed its Chinese parent company, Wingtech, on a blacklist of companies it saw as posing a national security threat. In response to the Dutch action, the Chinese government ordered the export controls that stopped shipments of Nexperia chips for weeks...
We folded.
If so, then Ombudsman and SRA are the next step.
https://x.com/vadimyuryev/status/1986163623560159413
The Biden administration went about that a little bit more rationally than the current blundering around.
Europe (us too) hasn't really even started to make a serious effort.
I’m surprised, if this was on purpose, I’ve never heard any of the cast or writers etc mention it but would also be surprised that nobody checked the details such as his ribbons.
Re Captain Darling - indeed. One could also imagine his twitch is some form of PTSD. A brilliantly written character.
“Rather hoped I’d get through the whole show; go back to work at Pratt & Sons; keep wicket for the Croydon gentlemen; marry Doris… Made a note in my diary on my way here. Simply says, “Bugger.” “
You could also add the Italian fronts, and Mespot ... though Gallipoli is well enugh known. I don't suppose more than a few readers today [edit] realise that Evelyn Waugh was making a sly point when he named the ghastly preparatory school in the Sword of Honour trilogy Kut-al-Amara House with the dorms after various Great War disasters.
Lib Dem (Gareth Williams) 471
Reform 212
Conservative 100
Labour 26
Independent 12
Lib Dem gain from Reform
Only a Town Council but..., last week it happened at Bromsgrove. Reform are not invincible. Interesting their win at Harborough yesterday, on the face of it Cons, Labour and Greens vote fell, Lib Dem held steady and only 98 behind.
Local elections sine May have given Reform 57 victories, LDs 47, Cons 16, Labour 13, Greens 11.
Total votes Reform lead with 27%, Lib Dems second on 20%. Cons Labour and Greens mid to low teens.
Quite remarkable how the LDs get almost no publicity, but plod on and either retain or increase their votes.
Absolutely no sign over the last month of the "Green surge", perhaps it is concentrated in London and the University Towns. Keep waiting for it to show, maybe next week, maybe not.
Even Ed had a better excuse than that
https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/07/grab_macos_cloud_repatriation_savings/
As you say, hindsight is easy, but one can now see that in the Summer of 1942, the Axis armies were running on fumes.
Stalingrad is now seen as the turning point on the Eastern Front, but actually, the Soviets were not impressed by the outcome of the battle, at the time. Their own casualties were huge, and most of Army Group South escaped the trap they had set for them.
Does anyone in British or European politics understand the scale of the danger?
Living off the land (aka robbing and starving the local population) was not even a complete fix - just delayed the inevitable.
One of the July Bomb plot conspirators was giving lectures on this, at the German Staff College.
So sad. The muggles from the audience in the original Apple Mac advert.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwS24cBZPc
As Professor Matthias Strohn answered, when asked "At what point did the Germans lose the war on the Eastern Front?"
"22nd June 1941."
It was similar to the Japanese invasion of China, which was going nowhere by 1940.
Still, it will get your kids hooked on the ecosystem - which is probably the core goal.
If all you need is a terminal to open a session to a VDI, then a cheaper, even smaller machine would be useful
Something like this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_netBook - it would be so much thinner and lighter today, but the principle is the same.
What happened was that the recommendations were shaping up to be so far reaching and difficult that the *task force* became the problem.
As Herman Kahn observed, this is the standard behaviour of large bureaucracies - if a problem becomes large enough to require massive change, those *raising the problem* become the problem.
One reason I didn't read it seriously was that I had already come to a similar conclusion about TV and politics: At the time, when asked how a person (in the US) could be well-informed, I began by telling them not to watch TV news.
(It is still available, at least here in the US: https://www.amazon.com/Arguments-Elimination-Television-Jerry-Mander/dp/0688082742/ref=vo_sr_l_dp_bo_lf?crid=G7MFPCYB5JNI&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ND_b9WQ0cR_61ixFjpy9N2tpa5Dxsb-LyrFJsISklIR9cN52_VZTzo9VJsD9Jst6.hfdmHRBUrXuZSPoAg-BWkuJkuQqYP_mqOeQqM7hOXkw&dib_tag=se&dpss=1&keywords=four+arguments+for+the+elimination+of+television&qid=1762524243&sprefix=Four+Arguments+,aps,153&sr=8-1 )
In Stalingrad the soviets were able to keep feeding in men and weapons over the who duration of the battle, something that closing off the Volga crossing would have stopped.