If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
Russia wants to reset Finland's NATO membership - Lavrov addressed his words directly to Finland’s FM Valtonen.
Russia’s demands for "security" apply not only to Ukraine but also elsewhere in Europe and the NATO defence alliance, as well as to Finland and Sweden, by seeking to reset Finland's and Sweden's recent NATO memberships and demanding a return to the situation of 1997.
Regardless of what treaties say, would the US under this administration respond militarily to a Russian attack on any European NATO country?
Quite: it's time for Europe (and Canada) to accept that NATO no longer exists.
Nonsense. It’s the perfect organisation to defend the North Atlantic, it just might now have to push the U.S. out and defend the Canadian border and Greenland too.
If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
Are you starting something?
Isn't it sherry one chucks into trifle ? Cherries are for a quite different desert.
So much to unpack in this Daily Mail opinion piece
The great Polish exodus: The arrival of 100,000s of Poles changed the face of Britain, but now they're returning home in droves for a better life in their low-tax, booming homeland. Could there be a more damning indictment of our decline?
This was my favourite section, Brexiteers just cannot admit the truth, I mean I wonder what caused the 'visa anxiety'? Was there some change?
'Visa anxiety' – the fear that they won't be able to work in Britain and visit Poland easily – is another often stated reason. 'The Poles are also more geared to family than we are,' says Jephcott, who is married to one.
The point was to slam the door in foreigners faces.
If said foreigners just walk, where's the fun in that?
Immigration is up, not down.
After a period of zero-friction immigration from a given country, followed by a period of high-friction immigration rules for the same country, you would of course expect emmigration to outweigh immigration, simply due to natural churn. Mawkish language doesn't illuminate.
Armed ICE agents trapped U.S. citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Do you carry your papers?
Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside Tuesday. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers.
I saw something darkly amusing where people are phoning the ICE hotline reporting an undocumented illegal immigrant hiding in their neighbour’s attic by the name of Anne Frank to waste ICE time.
Russia wants to reset Finland's NATO membership - Lavrov addressed his words directly to Finland’s FM Valtonen.
Russia’s demands for "security" apply not only to Ukraine but also elsewhere in Europe and the NATO defence alliance, as well as to Finland and Sweden, by seeking to reset Finland's and Sweden's recent NATO memberships and demanding a return to the situation of 1997.
I was about to post that saying you wish to leave Europe largely to itself, and also saying you wish to determine who stays in NATO, are incoherent positions. I then remembered this is Trump, so the coherency of his positions is irrelevant and you are correct, he appears to have bought the Russian narrative about NATO expansion and “root causes”.
If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
Are you starting something?
Isn't it sherry one chucks into trifle ? Cherries are for a quite different desert.
It's a single glacé cherry that one *places* onto trifle.
My late mother's sherry trifle for Christmas dinner, as an alternative or complement to clootie dumpling, had plenty of cream, and sherry, and ratafia biscuits, and home-made raspberry jam, and home-made egg custard, and several dozen dragees, but just one cherry.
Edit: also some candied angelica stem pieces.
Christmases have never been the same since she departed.
Russia wants to reset Finland's NATO membership - Lavrov addressed his words directly to Finland’s FM Valtonen.
Russia’s demands for "security" apply not only to Ukraine but also elsewhere in Europe and the NATO defence alliance, as well as to Finland and Sweden, by seeking to reset Finland's and Sweden's recent NATO memberships and demanding a return to the situation of 1997.
Regardless of what treaties say, would the US under this administration respond militarily to a Russian attack on any European NATO country?
More interesting if Russia attacked the other non-European country, Canada. Would Trump join in and carve it up under the cover of restoring security?
Lol probably.
But my actual take is Trump wants to play the big man without risk. He's keen to talk tough, gets a massive buzz from the idea he commands this shock and awe military, but he'll only use it in soft David v Goliath situations. Eg Iran, Houthis, Venezuela, Cuba etc.
He's fundamentally unserious about war and geopolitics.
The Reform led Council in Leicestershire brought in consultants at a cost of £1.4 million to find cost millions of pounds of cost savings. They have actually found £1 million of potential savings.
Reform financial illiteracy vs BBC financial illiteracy? Fight!
I assume recurring savings, but I suspect "savings" are probably the elimination of lower priority services rather than pure waste. Whereas the consultants probably are pure waste. Also the supposed savings are potential and may not happen while the consultants are upfront cost.
Sure, but the typical mutiple is 25x for one year vs permanent savings. So £25m vs £1.4m. In theory.
Councils have statutory duties, and other stuff. Cutting the other stuff is easy. Delivering the statutory stuff more efficiently is hard. Both are probably swamped by national funding trends. And so, local democracy is rather limited in effect.
The problem comes when Councils are forced by Government to take on more statutory duties without any additional resources. Social care for adults and children is the current "hot potato" - a decade or more ago, public health information and provision was passed from the NHS to County and Unitary Councils without a penny of additional resources.
The Councils had to take on the staff and find office space for them as well as for the promotional material, again with no financial support.
If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
Russia wants to reset Finland's NATO membership - Lavrov addressed his words directly to Finland’s FM Valtonen.
Russia’s demands for "security" apply not only to Ukraine but also elsewhere in Europe and the NATO defence alliance, as well as to Finland and Sweden, by seeking to reset Finland's and Sweden's recent NATO memberships and demanding a return to the situation of 1997.
Regardless of what treaties say, would the US under this administration respond militarily to a Russian attack on any European NATO country?
Quite: it's time for Europe (and Canada) to accept that NATO no longer exists.
Seems clear. I assume European leaders are factoring this in as a probable 'going forward' scenario although not yet able to articulate it in public. It's another aspect of the uncomfortable dynamic. America shoots its mouth off, Europe goes through convolutions so as not to offend. Objective, put off the evil day of US withdrawal for as long as possible. Backstop hope, Trump is kneecapped in the midterms and a Dem beats Vance/Maga in 28.
The Reform led Council in Leicestershire brought in consultants at a cost of £1.4 million to find cost millions of pounds of cost savings. They have actually found £1 million of potential savings.
Over the last 16 years Leics CC has delivered £290 million in savings/cuts, so there are ever diminishing returns from further rounds of savings. Without Council tax rises the CC is looking at a deficit of £106 million in 4 years time, so these supposed £1 million in annual savings would only reduce it trivially.
So I am expecting the 5% maximum council tax increase permitted.
In truth, and whisper it quietly, but the Conservative administrations at some of the Counties, which were swept away by the Reform tsunami in May, were actually very well run and the notion created by Reform there was a huge amount of potential savings to be made was just nonsense.
Now, we see the Reform sympathisers backpedalling frantically on this as another of their vacuous claims is shown to be rubbish.
If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
The Reform led Council in Leicestershire brought in consultants at a cost of £1.4 million to find cost millions of pounds of cost savings. They have actually found £1 million of potential savings.
Reform financial illiteracy vs BBC financial illiteracy? Fight!
I assume recurring savings, but I suspect "savings" are probably the elimination of lower priority services rather than pure waste. Whereas the consultants probably are pure waste. Also the supposed savings are potential and may not happen while the consultants are upfront cost.
Sure, but the typical mutiple is 25x for one year vs permanent savings. So £25m vs £1.4m. In theory.
Councils have statutory duties, and other stuff. Cutting the other stuff is easy. Delivering the statutory stuff more efficiently is hard. Both are probably swamped by national funding trends. And so, local democracy is rather limited in effect.
25 years seems an excessively long payback period.
Just an observation.
8x is the more normal multiplier
I was working off the multiplier for capital vs income when it comes to, say, university endowments. Perhaps I'm wrong.
25x implies a 4% yield which is about right for capital vs income
A capital investment needs a minimum return of about 12% to cover the cost of capital hence 8x (a 12.5% yield)
Right, but councils spending doesn't (normally?) come from borrowing.
Debt costs are a lot lower. It’s really about what the expected return on investment.
Spending £1.4m to save £1m annually seems very reasonable. Spending £6-8m to save £1m annually would be ok. Of course in this case the £1.4m is just the cost of the consultants - we don’t know how much it will cost to close whatever they plan to do
More than half of adults (56%) want the UK to either rejoin the EU (31%) or move to a closer relationship (25%). Only 14% want a more distant relationship.
Significantly, a decade after the referendum, re-engagement with Europe is seen as increasingly acceptable:
Rejoining the Customs Union: +24 net acceptable Rejoining the Single Market: +20 Rejoining the EU: +11
A shift suggesting the long-term politics of Brexit remain unsettled.
The Reform led Council in Leicestershire brought in consultants at a cost of £1.4 million to find cost millions of pounds of cost savings. They have actually found £1 million of potential savings.
Reform financial illiteracy vs BBC financial illiteracy? Fight!
I assume recurring savings, but I suspect "savings" are probably the elimination of lower priority services rather than pure waste. Whereas the consultants probably are pure waste. Also the supposed savings are potential and may not happen while the consultants are upfront cost.
Sure, but the typical mutiple is 25x for one year vs permanent savings. So £25m vs £1.4m. In theory.
Councils have statutory duties, and other stuff. Cutting the other stuff is easy. Delivering the statutory stuff more efficiently is hard. Both are probably swamped by national funding trends. And so, local democracy is rather limited in effect.
25 years seems an excessively long payback period.
Just an observation.
8x is the more normal multiplier
I was working off the multiplier for capital vs income when it comes to, say, university endowments. Perhaps I'm wrong.
25x implies a 4% yield which is about right for capital vs income
A capital investment needs a minimum return of about 12% to cover the cost of capital hence 8x (a 12.5% yield)
Right, but councils spending doesn't (normally?) come from borrowing.
Debt costs are a lot lower. It’s really about what the expected return on investment.
Spending £1.4m to save £1m annually seems very reasonable. Spending £6-8m to save £1m annually would be ok. Of course in this case the £1.4m is just the cost of the consultants - we don’t know how much it will cost to close whatever they plan to do
Police are investigating after a council sold a college building worth £4.6m for just £1, it has emerged.
Peterborough City Council officers are "concerned" its disposal of the John Mansfield Centre (JMC) – occupied by City College Peterborough – to a charity in 2020 and "associated financial transactions were unlawful".
After the sale, the council – which owns the college – paid rent of nearly £800,000 to the charity City College Peterborough Foundation (CCPF), but a cabinet report says there is "no evidence of any written lease or agreement for lease".
Cambridgeshire Police said three people had been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. CCPF has been contacted by the BBC.
The Reform led Council in Leicestershire brought in consultants at a cost of £1.4 million to find cost millions of pounds of cost savings. They have actually found £1 million of potential savings.
Reform financial illiteracy vs BBC financial illiteracy? Fight!
I assume recurring savings, but I suspect "savings" are probably the elimination of lower priority services rather than pure waste. Whereas the consultants probably are pure waste. Also the supposed savings are potential and may not happen while the consultants are upfront cost.
Sure, but the typical mutiple is 25x for one year vs permanent savings. So £25m vs £1.4m. In theory.
Councils have statutory duties, and other stuff. Cutting the other stuff is easy. Delivering the statutory stuff more efficiently is hard. Both are probably swamped by national funding trends. And so, local democracy is rather limited in effect.
25 years seems an excessively long payback period.
Just an observation.
8x is the more normal multiplier
I was working off the multiplier for capital vs income when it comes to, say, university endowments. Perhaps I'm wrong.
25x implies a 4% yield which is about right for capital vs income
A capital investment needs a minimum return of about 12% to cover the cost of capital hence 8x (a 12.5% yield)
Right, but councils spending doesn't (normally?) come from borrowing.
Debt costs are a lot lower. It’s really about what the expected return on investment.
Spending £1.4m to save £1m annually seems very reasonable. Spending £6-8m to save £1m annually would be ok. Of course in this case the £1.4m is just the cost of the consultants - we don’t know how much it will cost to close whatever they plan to do
Police are investigating after a council sold a college building worth £4.6m for just £1, it has emerged.
Peterborough City Council officers are "concerned" its disposal of the John Mansfield Centre (JMC) – occupied by City College Peterborough – to a charity in 2020 and "associated financial transactions were unlawful".
After the sale, the council – which owns the college – paid rent of nearly £800,000 to the charity City College Peterborough Foundation (CCPF), but a cabinet report says there is "no evidence of any written lease or agreement for lease".
Cambridgeshire Police said three people had been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. CCPF has been contacted by the BBC.
Is Dame Shirley Porter running Peterborough council?
So much to unpack in this Daily Mail opinion piece
The great Polish exodus: The arrival of 100,000s of Poles changed the face of Britain, but now they're returning home in droves for a better life in their low-tax, booming homeland. Could there be a more damning indictment of our decline?
This was my favourite section, Brexiteers just cannot admit the truth, I mean I wonder what caused the 'visa anxiety'? Was there some change?
'Visa anxiety' – the fear that they won't be able to work in Britain and visit Poland easily – is another often stated reason. 'The Poles are also more geared to family than we are,' says Jephcott, who is married to one.
The point was to slam the door in foreigners faces.
If said foreigners just walk, where's the fun in that?
Yep. Poles doing what the Mail wants them to do: go away.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Armed ICE agents trapped U.S. citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Do you carry your papers?
Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside Tuesday. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers.
I saw something darkly amusing where people are phoning the ICE hotline reporting an undocumented illegal immigrant hiding in their neighbour’s attic by the name of Anne Frank to waste ICE time.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Outside a Reform implosion it's hard to see the Tories doing significantly better than under Kemi, maybe a few points, so it's not a surprise some are getting impatient.
This is something that might damage Reform here given their support from platforming antivaxxers.
Unfortunately I don't think prospective voters tend to take in things like this in advance, especially if generally angry or dispirited enough. They have to see the consequences of such things.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
A strange one alright, but a leader who is more popular than their party is surely not in danger of being replaced?
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
A strange one alright, but a leader who is more popular than their party is surely not in danger of being replaced?
Look at the chart in this header.
It is in the nature of Tory MPs to replace leaders.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
There was no sane choice given the situation the Tories find themselves in.
Realistically the public have had enough of the Tories and it will take some time for anyone to be listened to.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
I've got a funny feeling she's somehow going to end up as the next non-Labour PM of the country.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.
It's the land of the free, not the land of the free-for-all.
I notice you cut the following from @Nigelb's comment so that you didn't have to face into it:
"Armed ICE agents trapped U.S. citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Do you carry your papers?
Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside Tuesday. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers.
Every single person was a U.S. citizen.
AP videographer/journalist and Council Member Jamal Osman witnessed it. Osman has been warning his Somali constituents to carry their passports everywhere...
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
Insane in your view but increasingly one to watch with her own approval now ahead of Farage and out of sight of Starmer
This was always going to be a long haul but there are upto 4 years to change the narrative
Certainly she is the conservatives best bet as nobody else would be a better choice
It was very funny, he said it about a poll that had the Tories losing 1 point, but the rest of the evening there were I think three other polls showing Labour being minus 2 to 4 points.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
Yes, but with Truss no longer in Parliament they had no obvious alternative.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.
Or, rephrasing it (and take this as your trigger warning)...
Someone or something can be a bad choice, but if the alternatives are worse, they can still be the best choice.
Though we should probably stop and work out why so many of our political choices seem to boil down to "bad or worse" rather than "good or better".
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.
Or, rephrasing it (and take this as your trigger warning)...
Someone or something can be a bad choice, but if the alternatives are worse, they can still be the best choice.
Though we should probably stop and work out why so many of our political choices seem to boil down to "bad or worse" rather than "good or better".
We used to laugh when the message in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election was 'vote for the lizard not the wizard.'
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.
Or, rephrasing it (and take this as your trigger warning)...
Someone or something can be a bad choice, but if the alternatives are worse, they can still be the best choice.
Though we should probably stop and work out why so many of our political choices seem to boil down to "bad or worse" rather than "good or better".
We used to laugh when the message in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election was 'vote for the lizard not the wizard.'
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
The broad 50/50 split between parties of the right and parties of the left has remained pretty much constant for 100 years, so Reform at 35% and Tories at 25-30% is not plausible imo.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
¿Que?
It doesn't seem too controversial to say that there is more serious thinking going on about what to do if they actually win power than Labour did before 2024.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
¿Que?
It doesn't seem too controversial to say that there is more serious thinking going on about what to do if they actually win power than Labour did before 2024.
It may not seem controversial, but given Farage's long history of vacuous populism and the very limited ability and number of his lieutenants it would seem to put it mildly exceedingly optimistic.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
The broad 50/50 split between parties of the right and parties of the left has remained pretty much constant for 100 years, so Reform at 35% and Tories at 25-30% is not plausible imo.
Labour + Lib Dem got ~60% in 1997 and 2001 and I think the closest equivalent to the current situation is the 1992-1997 parliament.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.
Or, rephrasing it (and take this as your trigger warning)...
Someone or something can be a bad choice, but if the alternatives are worse, they can still be the best choice.
Though we should probably stop and work out why so many of our political choices seem to boil down to "bad or worse" rather than "good or better".
We used to laugh when the message in the 1991 Louisiana gubernatorial election was 'vote for the lizard not the wizard.'
The Reform led Council in Leicestershire brought in consultants at a cost of £1.4 million to find cost millions of pounds of cost savings. They have actually found £1 million of potential savings.
Reform financial illiteracy vs BBC financial illiteracy? Fight!
I assume recurring savings, but I suspect "savings" are probably the elimination of lower priority services rather than pure waste. Whereas the consultants probably are pure waste. Also the supposed savings are potential and may not happen while the consultants are upfront cost.
Sure, but the typical mutiple is 25x for one year vs permanent savings. So £25m vs £1.4m. In theory.
Councils have statutory duties, and other stuff. Cutting the other stuff is easy. Delivering the statutory stuff more efficiently is hard. Both are probably swamped by national funding trends. And so, local democracy is rather limited in effect.
25 years seems an excessively long payback period.
Just an observation.
8x is the more normal multiplier
I was working off the multiplier for capital vs income when it comes to, say, university endowments. Perhaps I'm wrong.
25x implies a 4% yield which is about right for capital vs income
A capital investment needs a minimum return of about 12% to cover the cost of capital hence 8x (a 12.5% yield)
Right, but councils spending doesn't (normally?) come from borrowing.
Debt costs are a lot lower. It’s really about what the expected return on investment.
Spending £1.4m to save £1m annually seems very reasonable. Spending £6-8m to save £1m annually would be ok. Of course in this case the £1.4m is just the cost of the consultants - we don’t know how much it will cost to close whatever they plan to do
Police are investigating after a council sold a college building worth £4.6m for just £1, it has emerged.
Peterborough City Council officers are "concerned" its disposal of the John Mansfield Centre (JMC) – occupied by City College Peterborough – to a charity in 2020 and "associated financial transactions were unlawful".
After the sale, the council – which owns the college – paid rent of nearly £800,000 to the charity City College Peterborough Foundation (CCPF), but a cabinet report says there is "no evidence of any written lease or agreement for lease".
Cambridgeshire Police said three people had been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. CCPF has been contacted by the BBC.
I don’t know the details of the case, but the charity’s purpose sounds reasonable
The charity operates to advance education, advance health, relieve unemployment, relieve poverty and promote the provision of facilities for recreation and other leisure time occupations, promote community participation and to promote social inclusion.
Interesting the charity accounts refer to the property as a donation from Peterborough Council rather than a sale. The £1 is presumably because you need consideration to perfect a contract.
It sounds like the paperwork was a mess, but it doesn’t seem like the objective was wrong
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
A strange one alright, but a leader who is more popular than their party is surely not in danger of being replaced?
If they think another leader would be even more popular they might. What limited polling there is might not support that idea, but parties can convince themselves it might work.
I would think she is safe until at least May though.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
¿Que?
It doesn't seem too controversial to say that there is more serious thinking going on about what to do if they actually win power than Labour did before 2024.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
The broad 50/50 split between parties of the right and parties of the left has remained pretty much constant for 100 years, so Reform at 35% and Tories at 25-30% is not plausible imo.
Labour + Lib Dem got ~60% in 1997 and 2001 and I think the closest equivalent to the current situation is the 1992-1997 parliament.
Fair point. I was wrong, the historic left/right split is more like 55/45.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
¿Que?
It doesn't seem too controversial to say that there is more serious thinking going on about what to do if they actually win power than Labour did before 2024.
That's hard to say, as the lack of preparation within Labour was not as obvious beforehand as it was afterwards - it could be there is some good preparation, but it could just be surface level. Plus hundreds of new MPs are always hard to wrangle, even when they owe a lot to the Leader in getting elected, as Boris and Keir could both lament.
If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
Are you starting something?
Isn't it sherry one chucks into trifle ? Cherries are for a quite different desert.
It's a single glacé cherry that one *places* onto trifle.
My late mother's sherry trifle for Christmas dinner, as an alternative or complement to clootie dumpling, had plenty of cream, and sherry, and ratafia biscuits, and home-made raspberry jam, and home-made egg custard, and several dozen dragees, but just one cherry.
Edit: also some candied angelica stem pieces.
Christmases have never been the same since she departed.
I'm not a fan of unnecessary embellishment, but have to admit your mother's trifle (which sounds not dissimilar to my mum's*) sounds pretty good.
*homemade sponge (or occasionally ladyfingers) similarly spread with jam, and then drowned in sherry; grapes and bananas in the same homemade egg custard; finally topped with whipped cream.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible...they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government..
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
¿Que?
It doesn't seem too controversial to say that there is more serious thinking going on about what to do if they actually win power than Labour did before 2024.
Consider the evidence from Reform councils...
Local councils can be an odd one, as I see some criticism online of how perfidious council officials are able to run rings around politicians (whilst also, counterintuitively, all being useless in every way apparently), even referring to local government as being potemkin democracy where the real power is in the hands of officials, and this is why councillors are never able to deliver (including but not limited to Reform).
Yet the idea of full time professional politicians tends to upset the same people making the former criticism, so I'm not sure what they really want.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible...they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government..
Is that an example of begging the question ?
Seems fairly implausible to me.
Unless by professional you simply mean paid for.
I think you're Russian to judgement on their operations.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
She was the sane choice when the alternative was Robert Jenrick.
True but by then the Conservatives had got rid of the actual sane choice, James Cleverly. Or perhaps he did it himself with his 4D chess.
They also got rid of Priti Patel who had more baggage than an American on a cruise ship, but had thought about how a right wing non Farage party could operate in a today's low trust populist world.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
Those numbers would mean a landslide for Farage even more "loveless" than the one Starmer got.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9 Labour -9 Conservatives -5 Liberal Democrats +2 Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It's plausible that over the course of the next year, Reform will stabilise in the mid-30s as they increasingly look like a professional operation preparing for government, Labour fall to the mid-teens as they continue to alienate their own voters, the Greens fall back to 10% as Polanski gets exposed as a lightweight, the Lib Dems continue to tread water, and the Tories climb up to the high-20s and look like the only plausible alternative to Farage.
¿Que?
It doesn't seem too controversial to say that there is more serious thinking going on about what to do if they actually win power than Labour did before 2024.
Consider the evidence from Reform councils...
Local councils can be an odd one, as I see some criticism online of how perfidious council officials are able to run rings around politicians (whilst also, counterintuitively, all being useless in every way apparently), even referring to local government as being potemkin democracy where the real power is in the hands of officials, and this is why councillors are never able to deliver (including but not limited to Reform).
Yet the idea of full time professional politicians tends to upset the same people making the former criticism, so I'm not sure what they really want.
And when they get somebody who actually does bang heads together, very often nothing happens anyway.
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
She was an insane choice given the situation the tories found themselves in after the GE.
Not many to choose from of course. And given they continue to be riven with factional infighting, including Reformphobes and Reformites, if she was an insane choice, was there an obvious sane choice?
I still think the lack of honeymoon period for Labour has actually hurt the Tories too, since no one was ready to listen to them again, but they were desperate to go somewhere other than Labour. Not that Green and Your Party fans would have been flocking that way, and Reform are not all closet Tories, but with both the big two rating poorly, it meant they could not even sway any middle ground people.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
It was the longest period without a crossing since 2018.
It's the land of the free, not the land of the free-for-all.
I notice you cut the following from @Nigelb's comment so that you didn't have to face into it:
"Armed ICE agents trapped U.S. citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Do you carry your papers?
Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside Tuesday. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers.
Every single person was a U.S. citizen.
AP videographer/journalist and Council Member Jamal Osman witnessed it. Osman has been warning his Somali constituents to carry their passports everywhere...
A new report from The New York Times reveals how the Trump administration and some members of the president's family may have been involved in a larger movement in conservative circles to support Andrew and Tristan Tate, right-wing influencers charged with rape, human trafficking and other crimes. https://x.com/NewsHour/status/1999319297496056246
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
It was the longest period without a crossing since 2018.
Which is equivalent to saying it was the longest period of sustained bad weather since 2018.
I’ve found my favourite anti-trump US social media talking head, Loren Piretra. She makes good arguments but most importantly she absolutely ridiculously hot.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
It was the longest period without a crossing since 2018.
Which is equivalent to saying it was the longest period of sustained bad weather since 2018.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
It led the Classic FM news bulletins all afternoon. Eyes were rolled.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
Absurd that no-one checked the weather for the time period.
Then again, journalists were asking about Murder Tuesday 6 months into COVID, so expecting learning is probably a bit much.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
It was the longest period without a crossing since 2018.
Which is equivalent to saying it was the longest period of sustained bad weather since 2018.
If you are the government, any good stuff is down to your brilliance, anything bad is due to global factors out of your control.
If you are the opposition, reverse that.
(The lack of wind in the first part of 2025 even shows up on the electricity generation stats; https://grid.iamkate.com/ Only a graceless oaf would deny that...)
If I may toss a cherry into the trifle - if individual countries all start tooling up to the max to defend themselves against allcomers that's going to lead to nothing good at all.
Are you starting something?
Isn't it sherry one chucks into trifle ? Cherries are for a quite different desert.
It's a single glacé cherry that one *places* onto trifle.
My late mother's sherry trifle for Christmas dinner, as an alternative or complement to clootie dumpling, had plenty of cream, and sherry, and ratafia biscuits, and home-made raspberry jam, and home-made egg custard, and several dozen dragees, but just one cherry.
Edit: also some candied angelica stem pieces.
Christmases have never been the same since she departed.
Sounds very risky to go around trumpeting period of low numbers, given the natural ebb and flows. Stats may be dry, but an annual figure showing success would probably be more effective, if they have success to show.
It was the longest period without a crossing since 2018.
Which is equivalent to saying it was the longest period of sustained bad weather since 2018.
Comments
Cherries are for a quite different desert.
After a period of zero-friction immigration from a given country, followed by a period of high-friction immigration rules for the same country, you would of course expect emmigration to outweigh immigration, simply due to natural churn. Mawkish language doesn't illuminate.
My late mother's sherry trifle for Christmas dinner, as an alternative or complement to clootie dumpling, had plenty of cream, and sherry, and ratafia biscuits, and home-made raspberry jam, and home-made egg custard, and several dozen dragees, but just one cherry.
Edit: also some candied angelica stem pieces.
Christmases have never been the same since she departed.
But my actual take is Trump wants to play the big man without risk. He's keen to talk tough, gets a massive buzz from the idea he commands this shock and awe military, but he'll only use it in soft David v Goliath situations. Eg Iran, Houthis, Venezuela, Cuba etc.
He's fundamentally unserious about war and geopolitics.
This is something that might damage Reform here given their support from platforming antivaxxers.
The Councils had to take on the staff and find office space for them as well as for the promotional material, again with no financial support.
Now, we see the Reform sympathisers backpedalling frantically on this as another of their vacuous claims is shown to be rubbish.
Good to see Badenoch above Farage in tonight's poll
https://x.com/i/status/1999941143027740821
And another policy
Badenoch to ditch ban on sale of ICE cars in 2030
The EU is looking at extending it to 2040 apparently
@ElectionMapsUK
Westminster Voting Intention:
RFM: 31% (=)
LAB: 20% (-1)
CON: 18% (+1)
LDM: 13% (+2)
GRN: 12% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via @OpiniumResearch, 10-12 Dec
Changes w/ 26-28 Nov."
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1999936388335300724
Spending £1.4m to save £1m annually seems very reasonable. Spending £6-8m to save £1m annually would be ok. Of course in this case the £1.4m is just the cost of the consultants - we don’t know how much it will cost to close whatever they plan to do
Brexit and Europe: Appetite for closer ties
More than half of adults (56%) want the UK to either rejoin the EU (31%) or move to a closer relationship (25%). Only 14% want a more distant relationship.
Significantly, a decade after the referendum, re-engagement with Europe is seen as increasingly acceptable:
Rejoining the Customs Union: +24 net acceptable
Rejoining the Single Market: +20
Rejoining the EU: +11
A shift suggesting the long-term politics of Brexit remain unsettled.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdrryge7ego
Police are investigating after a council sold a college building worth £4.6m for just £1, it has emerged.
Peterborough City Council officers are "concerned" its disposal of the John Mansfield Centre (JMC) – occupied by City College Peterborough – to a charity in 2020 and "associated financial transactions were unlawful".
After the sale, the council – which owns the college – paid rent of nearly £800,000 to the charity City College Peterborough Foundation (CCPF), but a cabinet report says there is "no evidence of any written lease or agreement for lease".
Cambridgeshire Police said three people had been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office. CCPF has been contacted by the BBC.
Badenoch has made a definitive decision
Kemi Badenoch and her allies are pointing our her improving ratings yet the Tories are doing worse than 2024 (which was their worst general election defeat ever).
The context makes it worse considering how badly Starmer/Reeves/Labour are polling.
The UK policy is 100% ICE cars by 2030, which is easy because there won't be any non-hybrid ICE cars for sale from volume manufacturers by then.
The EU policy is zero emissions by 2035, which is hard because that implies BEV/synthetic fuel.
Compared with the Opinium poll the weekend before Christmas twelve months ago:
Reform +9
Labour -9
Conservatives -5
Liberal Democrats +2
Greens +2
I think that's the message of the political year 2025 - final twists and turns notwithstanding.
It is in the nature of Tory MPs to replace leaders.
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/12/08/the-tory-scorpion-and-kemi-the-frog/
Realistically the public have had enough of the Tories and it will take some time for anyone to be listened to.
"Armed ICE agents trapped U.S. citizens in a restaurant and demanded their papers. Do you carry your papers?
Federal agents walked into East African restaurants in Cedar-Riverside Tuesday. They closed and blocked the doors. Then they demanded to see everyone’s papers.
Every single person was a U.S. citizen.
AP videographer/journalist and Council Member Jamal Osman witnessed it. Osman has been warning his Somali constituents to carry their passports everywhere...
https://x.com/LittleCongress/status/1999866399909404935
"
A pox on him.
This was always going to be a long haul but there are upto 4 years to change the narrative
Certainly she is the conservatives best bet as nobody else would be a better choice
It was very funny, he said it about a poll that had the Tories losing 1 point, but the rest of the evening there were I think three other polls showing Labour being minus 2 to 4 points.
Someone or something can be a bad choice, but if the alternatives are worse, they can still be the best choice.
Though we should probably stop and work out why so many of our political choices seem to boil down to "bad or worse" rather than "good or better".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Louisiana_gubernatorial_election
They later had in common that they were both convicted and jailed on fraud charges.
Why, oh why, oh why. The BBC.
(Oh and there was that chap yesterday - a great friend of the BBC that went all in with Putin - Brian Kurze or something like that)
The charity operates to advance education, advance health, relieve unemployment, relieve poverty and promote the provision of facilities for recreation and other leisure time occupations, promote community participation and to promote social inclusion.
Interesting the charity accounts refer to the property as a donation from Peterborough Council rather than a sale. The £1 is presumably because you need consideration to perfect a contract.
It sounds like the paperwork was a mess, but it doesn’t seem like the objective was wrong
I would think she is safe until at least May though.
*homemade sponge (or occasionally ladyfingers) similarly spread with jam, and then drowned in sherry; grapes and bananas in the same homemade egg custard; finally topped with whipped cream.
Large Ukrainian drone attack on Simferopol thermal power plant has blown up a fuel depot.
#explodey
Good Christmas card from Ed Davey this year
https://bsky.app/profile/rentouljohn.bsky.social/post/3m7vjpsxetk2w
Seems fairly implausible to me.
Unless by professional you simply mean paid for.
Yet the idea of full time professional politicians tends to upset the same people making the former criticism, so I'm not sure what they really want.
It’s called the weather... now over 700 have arrived today!
https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1999906039253360787?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Both increasingly, as here, being flouted.
They also got rid of Priti Patel who had more baggage than an American on a cruise ship, but had thought about how a right wing non Farage party could operate in a today's low trust populist world.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c14vv3yez00o
Government sets out path to zero emission vehicles by 2035
80% of new cars and 70% of new vans sold in Great Britain set to be zero emission by 2030, increasing to 100% by 2035.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-path-to-zero-emission-vehicles-by-2035
I still think the lack of honeymoon period for Labour has actually hurt the Tories too, since no one was ready to listen to them again, but they were desperate to go somewhere other than Labour. Not that Green and Your Party fans would have been flocking that way, and Reform are not all closet Tories, but with both the big two rating poorly, it meant they could not even sway any middle ground people.
Earlier this week, Kristi Noem told me under oath that she has not deported veterans. I then introduced her to one that she did deport.
But it’s much worse than that:
@RepMoulton got DHS to admit that they’ve deported at least 8 vets and are planning to deport dozens more.
https://x.com/Rep_Magaziner/status/1999886866988868080
https://x.com/NewsHour/status/1999319297496056246
https://weather.metoffice.gov.uk/warnings-and-advice/uk-storm-centre/uk-storm-season-2023-24
Then again, journalists were asking about Murder Tuesday 6 months into COVID, so expecting learning is probably a bit much.
Second Tory MP in a month joins the Liberals.
Carney now one short of a majority.
If you are the government, any good stuff is down to your brilliance, anything bad is due to global factors out of your control.
If you are the opposition, reverse that.
(The lack of wind in the first part of 2025 even shows up on the electricity generation stats;
https://grid.iamkate.com/ Only a graceless oaf would deny that...)
NEW THREAD
Kemi Badenoch’s direction may be helping to repair the Conservative Party's brand:
📈 Knowing what it stands for: now -4 (up 12 pts)
📈 Having a clear sense of purpose: -10 (up 13 pts)
📈 Being united: -16 (up 12 pts)
https://x.com/opiniumresearch/status/1999954985686048868?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q