Okay, so not only are the Russians losing ground and surrendering, but Russia is also now trying to block Telegram - where much of the criticism of the operation has been going down in the past few days.
The man with the second worst attendance record at the European Parliament wants to ban working from home.
For someone who says you need to attend your place of work, he spends precious little time in his, the HoC.
Didn't even turn up for the debate on Russian influence. I'm pretty sure he could have shed some interesting light on that.
It is all a bit nanny state. Instructing organisations independent of government how to arrange their business.
Remember that Reform voters mostly want a nanny state.
The key thing is that nanny will give sweeties to those who deserve them and a sound spanking to naughty boys and girls.
....and we come full circle to Epstein.
The rumours about Epstein still being alive are fascinating to watch, as they grow and grow
And, given how bizarre this story is, in the first place (“billionaire private pedo island for US presidents and British princes”) I don’t entirely dismiss them. It does solve the profound mystery of his suicide/murder. It’s no longer a mystery because he’s STILL ALIVE
I think it is much, much more likely that he is dead. He had too many holds over too many people in positions of power. Murdering him was the simple option. The idea that it was suicide is frankly laughable.
I've always assumed it was a Frank Pentangeli-style suicide (indeed we know Trump's gang have previously referenced that). I wonder if Epstein had secret children he was trying to protect. Something like that.
It’s pretty clear from the Files that Epstein had at least one kid, maybe more
My theory has always been that he was pressured to commit suicide by using menaces against someone he loved
“We’ll cut the cameras and send the guards to sleep and then you’ve got 2 hours to off yourself, or your kid dies”
That covers most of the bases and explains most of the mystery
However like @Cookie i feel its impossible to rule out wilder explanations as the whole thing already reads like a QAnon fantasy yet it is indisputably true and getting weirder by the day
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
* They hate Westminster and both parties more than ever. 'It's like they hate us' is a common view.
* Voters greatly UNDER-estimate the scale of immigration by ~5-30X, contrary to the conventional wisdom. They are already angry about the immigration farce of Tories and Labour before they are given the real numbers. So there is huge scope for *much greater hatred for the old parties* and much more support for *much tougher action*. Millions of LAB voters want much tougher action on immigration than Tories like Gawke and Barwell.
*They HATE HATE HATE the utility companies - the hate is the same across CON/LAB/REF etc. This is an open goal for all political entrepreneurs.
*Voters are much more angry about benefit scams than MPs of any party. This issue seems less polarised than immigration.
*Voters have few views on Kemi because they ignore the Tories because ‘they’re just not relevant any more’. They know nothing she's said or done. 'Useless but irrelevant'.
Focus group commissioned by Cummings is all you need to know about that.
It was conducted by Merlin Strategy, a member of the BPC. I thought members of the BPC were afforded respect here
Are you doubting their integrity.
Just because you may not like who commissioned it does not make it wrong.
I’ve read the whole Cummings post and find the attitudes of the people in the focus group hard to disagree with (with a few exceptions)
I think some of it is problematic. For example the question around immigration asks the surveyees to estimate emigration since January 2021, and then pivots it to 'Conservative and Labour have not done enough', whilst afaics not mentioning that net immigration is 80% down between summer 2023 and summer 2025 in either the question or the twitter essay.
I hope that BPC standards are such that that is not up to scratch. I wonder if the attitudes would be the same had they asked for estimates of immigration since summer 2024 or in the last 12 months.
In reality net immigration is back to what it was before the post-Brexit hump, and some are trying politically to keep it central beyond its sell-by date.
(I'm not commenting on Merlin Strategy, run by Scarlett Maguire; I don't know enough to comment.)
You still don’t understand do you?
The argument has gone beyond “immigration is too high” and on to “there are far too many immigrants HERE”
So net migration could drop to zero and you’d still have an awful lot of people deeply concerned about “immigration” - amongst them the Home Secretary, who is promising to toughen up the laws on the right to remain in the UK for the Boriswave
ie - people already HERE
I read Dom's latest effusion, or at least tried to, (tbf, he is very thought-provoking) and one of his points about immigration is the number of incomers from the "very worst places", ie, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. Young men from war-torn countries with heritage views about women, religion, etc. By inference his point is if you import people from areas where radical Islamism is a thing, you are likely to be importing radical Islamism.
He does have a point.
Well, yeah, derrrrrr
Is this some amazing surprise to you? Who did you think we were importing from the Middle East? Lib Dem voting feminists?
Up to a point, but many of those coming here are escaping oppressive theocratic regimes like the Taliban rather than seeking to establish similar regimes here. Refugees from the Taliban are not the Taliban, just as refugees from the Nazis were not Nazis.
Noted that merlinstrategy has now had her application for BPC membership processed
I have met Scarlett Macguire, I am sure that any polling Merlin Strategy does will abide by BPC standards but she definitely came across as having a political lean.
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Trudeau for Carney is the modern best-case example.
Okay, so not only are the Russians losing ground and surrendering, but Russia is also now trying to block Telegram - where much of the criticism of the operation has been going down in the past few days.
I must admit to getting a teeny weeny bit optimistic, for the first time in a long while.
Agreed. I know these things happen slowly then happen quickly, but it does appear that the Starlink ban was a game changer on the front lines, the Russians relying on dodgy terminals much more than was previously thought.
They made the mistake of putting them onto drones that crashed in Ukraine, and it took UKR gov and SpaceX about a week to work out a way of blocking non-Ukranian Starlinks in Ukraine.
Apparently the Ukranians, with possibly some help from the British and Americans, cracked the encryption on Russian radios a couple of years ago, and they’ve been using unconventional methods of communication ever since.
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
Well, this should be easy enough to analyse.
Let's take a random selection of -say- 10,000 Betfair markets, and put them into probability buckets, and see how accurate they are.
I'm going to go with pretty accurate, but there's only one way to find out.
In todays Guardian there's an article headlined 'Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push children to learn French?' The writer points out that Spanish is much more useful than French. When I was at secondary school we did French and Latin in the first year, then added either German or Spanish in the second. In the fourth year if one did Science, as I did, one dropped Latin. I did German because I (and my father) thought it was 'the language of science'. I'm sure I'd have been better off doing Spanish.
The future's bright. The future's orange. Well. Mandarin anyways.
Chinese and Russian are popular subjects at public schools. I don't know about the state sector.
Very often that is Chinese and Russian children studying them because it's a fairly straightforward way of getting a top A-level grade.
Also the same in the state sector, students are often encouraged to stay their/their parents' native language to A Level if it can be facilitated. Never had a Russian native speaker, but plenty of Chinese, Italian, Spanish and Polish speakers.
(Only been defeated once, when the student spoke fluent Swedish - his mum was from Stockholm - sadly there is no A Level).
Had that problem with an Uzbek once. He did Russian instead.
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Trudeau for Carney is the modern best-case example.
Wasn't much choice with changing PM when Callaghan took over: Wilson had resigned on health grounds.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Policy Policy Policy.
Is the right move for Labour
Policy Delivery
Tangible benefits
Let the Mail and Telegraph Badenoch and Davey bleat on and on about Epsten
There comes a time in the public psyche when they sit on the settee and "I'm sick and tired it's this every night" however gruesome it is.
Epstein is dead allegedly Mandelson will hopefully soon be inside Andrew Windsor ditto
The Country cannot be goaded by weak politicians with nothing to offer or say a our real issues, real people, every day life.
Policy Delivery Tangible Delivery
PS if by some million to one chance Epstein has been secreted to Israel we should strike down him and the bastards who have shielded him. If that requires military force so be it.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
In todays Guardian there's an article headlined 'Spanish is clearly now the world’s coolest language. So why do we push children to learn French?' The writer points out that Spanish is much more useful than French. When I was at secondary school we did French and Latin in the first year, then added either German or Spanish in the second. In the fourth year if one did Science, as I did, one dropped Latin. I did German because I (and my father) thought it was 'the language of science'. I'm sure I'd have been better off doing Spanish.
The future's bright. The future's orange. Well. Mandarin anyways.
Chinese and Russian are popular subjects at public schools. I don't know about the state sector.
Very often that is Chinese and Russian children studying them because it's a fairly straightforward way of getting a top A-level grade.
Also the same in the state sector, students are often encouraged to stay their/their parents' native language to A Level if it can be facilitated. Never had a Russian native speaker, but plenty of Chinese, Italian, Spanish and Polish speakers.
(Only been defeated once, when the student spoke fluent Swedish - his mum was from Stockholm - sadly there is no A Level).
Had that problem with an Uzbek once. He did Russian instead.
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Douglas-Home took the Conservatives from trailing by a long way to losing by four, and at one point there seemed the strong possibility they would pull off a narrow win. Indeed, there has always been a school of thought that had Butler finally become PM he would very likely have won.
Eden for Churchill might be mentioned too, of course, or Baldwin for Macdonald. Equally you could add Baldwin (1923), Balfour, Asquith and Rosebery as options against.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
Well, this should be easy enough to analyse.
Let's take a random selection of -say- 10,000 Betfair markets, and put them into probability buckets, and see how accurate they are.
I'm going to go with pretty accurate, but there's only one way to find out.
You'll find that matters are as you suspect on the whole, but anomalous volume or anomalous pricing (against some model ) produces anomalous results.
* They hate Westminster and both parties more than ever. 'It's like they hate us' is a common view.
* Voters greatly UNDER-estimate the scale of immigration by ~5-30X, contrary to the conventional wisdom. They are already angry about the immigration farce of Tories and Labour before they are given the real numbers. So there is huge scope for *much greater hatred for the old parties* and much more support for *much tougher action*. Millions of LAB voters want much tougher action on immigration than Tories like Gawke and Barwell.
*They HATE HATE HATE the utility companies - the hate is the same across CON/LAB/REF etc. This is an open goal for all political entrepreneurs.
*Voters are much more angry about benefit scams than MPs of any party. This issue seems less polarised than immigration.
*Voters have few views on Kemi because they ignore the Tories because ‘they’re just not relevant any more’. They know nothing she's said or done. 'Useless but irrelevant'.
Focus group commissioned by Cummings is all you need to know about that.
It was conducted by Merlin Strategy, a member of the BPC. I thought members of the BPC were afforded respect here
Are you doubting their integrity.
Just because you may not like who commissioned it does not make it wrong.
I’ve read the whole Cummings post and find the attitudes of the people in the focus group hard to disagree with (with a few exceptions)
I think some of it is problematic. For example the question around immigration asks the surveyees to estimate emigration since January 2021, and then pivots it to 'Conservative and Labour have not done enough', whilst afaics not mentioning that net immigration is 80% down between summer 2023 and summer 2025 in either the question or the twitter essay.
I hope that BPC standards are such that that is not up to scratch. I wonder if the attitudes would be the same had they asked for estimates of immigration since summer 2024 or in the last 12 months.
In reality net immigration is back to what it was before the post-Brexit hump, and some are trying politically to keep it central beyond its sell-by date.
(I'm not commenting on Merlin Strategy, run by Scarlett Maguire; I don't know enough to comment.)
You still don’t understand do you?
The argument has gone beyond “immigration is too high” and on to “there are far too many immigrants HERE”
So net migration could drop to zero and you’d still have an awful lot of people deeply concerned about “immigration” - amongst them the Home Secretary, who is promising to toughen up the laws on the right to remain in the UK for the Boriswave
ie - people already HERE
I read Dom's latest effusion, or at least tried to, (tbf, he is very thought-provoking) and one of his points about immigration is the number of incomers from the "very worst places", ie, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. Young men from war-torn countries with heritage views about women, religion, etc. By inference his point is if you import people from areas where radical Islamism is a thing, you are likely to be importing radical Islamism.
He does have a point.
Well, yeah, derrrrrr
Is this some amazing surprise to you? Who did you think we were importing from the Middle East? Lib Dem voting feminists?
Up to a point, but many of those coming here are escaping oppressive theocratic regimes like the Taliban rather than seeking to establish similar regimes here. Refugees from the Taliban are not the Taliban, just as refugees from the Nazis were not Nazis.
Noted that merlinstrategy has now had her application for BPC membership processed
I have met Scarlett Macguire, I am sure that any polling Merlin Strategy does will abide by BPC standards but she definitely came across as having a political lean.
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Trudeau for Carney is the modern best-case example.
The Aussies had a bit of a run with it from 2007 onwards as well actually.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
Some Democrats sound like they want to foment a civil war.
You mean, they threaten to put gangs of masked violent criminals on the street and have them shoot people with compelte impunity while threatening martial law to postpone elections?
Gee, I hadn't realised Trump had rejoined the Dems.
Okay, so not only are the Russians losing ground and surrendering, but Russia is also now trying to block Telegram - where much of the criticism of the operation has been going down in the past few days.
I must admit to getting a teeny weeny bit optimistic, for the first time in a long while.
Agreed. I know these things happen slowly then happen quickly, but it does appear that the Starlink ban was a game changer on the front lines, the Russians relying on dodgy terminals much more than was previously thought.
They made the mistake of putting them onto drones that crashed in Ukraine, and it took UKR gov and SpaceX about a week to work out a way of blocking non-Ukranian Starlinks in Ukraine.
Apparently the Ukranians, with possibly some help from the British and Americans, cracked the encryption on Russian radios a couple of years ago, and they’ve been using unconventional methods of communication ever since.
The Ukrainians warn that the families of Ukrainian POWs are being coerced into registering Russian starlink terminals. There's nothing the Russians won't stoop to.
Also seems like the Ukrainian defence of Yampil is in some difficulty - the Russians taking advantage of a frozen river.
The situation still looks extremely hard for the Ukrainians.
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Trudeau for Carney is the modern best-case example.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
I mean, the KKK would be quite offended at the idea they were doing it for money.
Offended? Maybe
But the First Klan was big on “liberating” wealth. Some say that one reason they were suppressed so effectively, was that the Southern Top Chaps found the banditry and lawlessness was threatening *their* position.
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
Well, this should be easy enough to analyse.
Let's take a random selection of -say- 10,000 Betfair markets, and put them into probability buckets, and see how accurate they are.
I'm going to go with pretty accurate, but there's only one way to find out.
You'll find that matters are as you suspect on the whole, but anomalous volume or anomalous pricing (against some model ) produces anomalous results.
But this is precisely what you'd expect anyway.
I'm not claiming betting markets are perfect.
I'm disputing the claim that something being the favorite means they always win.
The crowd is not expressing certainty, but a measure of probability. And those measures of probabiltiy -in aggregate- are broadly right.
10-1 shots come in around 9% of the time, as you would expect.
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Trudeau for Carney is the modern best-case example.
Canada is different rules.
Also, would Carney have won without Trump's actions? It seems Carney benefited (as almost any Liberal leader in Canada would have done) from the Conservatives being seen as too close to a suddenly very unfriendly US administration.
Okay, so not only are the Russians losing ground and surrendering, but Russia is also now trying to block Telegram - where much of the criticism of the operation has been going down in the past few days.
I must admit to getting a teeny weeny bit optimistic, for the first time in a long while.
Agreed. I know these things happen slowly then happen quickly, but it does appear that the Starlink ban was a game changer on the front lines, the Russians relying on dodgy terminals much more than was previously thought.
They made the mistake of putting them onto drones that crashed in Ukraine, and it took UKR gov and SpaceX about a week to work out a way of blocking non-Ukranian Starlinks in Ukraine.
Apparently the Ukranians, with possibly some help from the British and Americans, cracked the encryption on Russian radios a couple of years ago, and they’ve been using unconventional methods of communication ever since.
The Ukrainians warn that the families of Ukrainian POWs are being coerced into registering Russian starlink terminals. There's nothing the Russians won't stoop to.
Also seems like the Ukrainian defence of Yampil is in some difficulty - the Russians taking advantage of a frozen river.
The situation still looks extremely hard for the Ukrainians.
Neverrtheless, four or five months ago, it looked like Ukraine was losing on all fronts.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
The govt has a solution to solve the problem it is making worse.
Also the decline in hospitality will also not help youth unemployment and this decline seems intentional given influential think tank, Resolution Foundation, has previously advocated for it.
The man with the second worst attendance record at the European Parliament wants to ban working from home.
For someone who says you need to attend your place of work, he spends precious little time in his, the HoC.
Didn't even turn up for the debate on Russian influence. I'm pretty sure he could have shed some interesting light on that.
It is all a bit nanny state. Instructing organisations independent of government how to arrange their business.
I see every Leaver's favourite Remoaner has also opined:
Asda and Marks and Spencer chief executive Lord Rose said in January last year that remote working policies had spawned a generation who are 'not doing proper work'.
He was right when he said Brexit would give everyone a wage increase and he'll be right again!
If you strip away the culture war bullshit
1) some jobs can be done with certain amounts of WFH. 2) this varies between 0% and 100% depending on the job 3) it further varies according to the phase of the work - a team working on a long term project with stable membership vs a team being assembled (say! 4) it further varies according to the management methodology and the quality of its implementation. 5) it further varies according to the technical assistance put in by the company and the employee 6) if further varies according to the level of motivation of the employee and employee.
So if you are doing steady development work in IT, using Agile, with high quality technical support (VMs, messaging and collaboration tools) with a good quality management and colleagues. And everyone has a nice home office setup… then Yay!
If you have a bullshit job where everyone has been told to fuck off home, log in from their own computer somehow (laptop balanced on the ironing board), with no collaboration setup or feedback. And management are incompetent and don’t give a shit… then nothing will get done.
I’ve encountered both.
Back in the 20th Century there were surveys and experiments showing work was best done in private offices rather than open plan where concentration was constantly broken by noise more than interruptions. Management saw offices as status symbols, with open plan for the riff-raff. WFH often reverses that.
When I started lecturing in 1969 virtually all staff were in rooms with 8-10 desks. When I finished in 2001 nearly everyone had their own room.
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
A market starts as someone's opinion of probability and that becomes "distorted" by the money placed into the market.The greater the liquidity in the market, the more likely it is to be representative of sentiment within the betting community.
I once spoke to a professional punter at Lingfield of all places - he told me he kept his betting very selective (he only played in particular types of races ignoring all others). He would seek out the races he tended to play and worked up his own tissue based on his assessment of the chances of the individual runners based on detailed form study and would play on the discrepencies - backing or laying as appropriate.
I'm not sure how successful he was but as a strategy it made a lot of sense. Unless you know as much if not more than the odds makers or the general betting community, you've not got much chance.
There was a time when political betters knew more than the bookmakers and some of us did very well - now, the bookies have a better feel and the arbs are just not there as they were.
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Is that really true? If a bookie or an exchange has BOB to win at 2/1 (p=0.33) that's not actually a probability despite the fact that we treat it as a probability of 33% or whatever. It's actually the number at which, when considered with the other elements of the book, the bookie will maximise his profit. I know we treat it as a probability and the bookie will use calibration to assess the accuracy of his book over time (which you only do with probablistic predictions), but what is the theoretical justification for treating it as a probability percentage?
I realise this is the old French objection of "yes it works in practice but does it work in theory?", but I'd like to know.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
Follow that thought through in relation to competing in a global market.
The man with the second worst attendance record at the European Parliament wants to ban working from home.
For someone who says you need to attend your place of work, he spends precious little time in his, the HoC.
Didn't even turn up for the debate on Russian influence. I'm pretty sure he could have shed some interesting light on that.
It is all a bit nanny state. Instructing organisations independent of government how to arrange their business.
I see every Leaver's favourite Remoaner has also opined:
Asda and Marks and Spencer chief executive Lord Rose said in January last year that remote working policies had spawned a generation who are 'not doing proper work'.
He was right when he said Brexit would give everyone a wage increase and he'll be right again!
If you strip away the culture war bullshit
1) some jobs can be done with certain amounts of WFH. 2) this varies between 0% and 100% depending on the job 3) it further varies according to the phase of the work - a team working on a long term project with stable membership vs a team being assembled (say! 4) it further varies according to the management methodology and the quality of its implementation. 5) it further varies according to the technical assistance put in by the company and the employee 6) if further varies according to the level of motivation of the employee and employee.
So if you are doing steady development work in IT, using Agile, with high quality technical support (VMs, messaging and collaboration tools) with a good quality management and colleagues. And everyone has a nice home office setup… then Yay!
If you have a bullshit job where everyone has been told to fuck off home, log in from their own computer somehow (laptop balanced on the ironing board), with no collaboration setup or feedback. And management are incompetent and don’t give a shit… then nothing will get done.
I’ve encountered both.
Back in the 20th Century there were surveys and experiments showing work was best done in private offices rather than open plan where concentration was constantly broken by noise more than interruptions. Management saw offices as status symbols, with open plan for the riff-raff. WFH often reverses that.
Only for people with enough space at home to have a genuine office without distractions.
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
A market starts as someone's opinion of probability and that becomes "distorted" by the money placed into the market.The greater the liquidity in the market, the more likely it is to be representative of sentiment within the betting community.
I once spoke to a professional punter at Lingfield of all places - he told me he kept his betting very selective (he only played in particular types of races ignoring all others). He would seek out the races he tended to play and worked up his own tissue based on his assessment of the chances of the individual runners based on detailed form study and would play on the discrepencies - backing or laying as appropriate.
I'm not sure how successful he was but as a strategy it made a lot of sense. Unless you know as much if not more than the odds makers or the general betting community, you've not got much chance.
There was a time when political betters knew more than the bookmakers and some of us did very well - now, the bookies have a better feel and the arbs are just not there as they were.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
If it wasn't, then the favourite would always win.
That's not necessarily true:
Betting markets are indicators of probability. If a runner is available at evens, then you should expect them to win approximately half the time.
Betting markets are at best perceived probability. There's no truth in them, and they are easily distorted. Brian Rose spent some money and distorted the market so that it was entirely unrepresentative of anyone's view.
A market starts as someone's opinion of probability and that becomes "distorted" by the money placed into the market.The greater the liquidity in the market, the more likely it is to be representative of sentiment within the betting community.
I once spoke to a professional punter at Lingfield of all places - he told me he kept his betting very selective (he only played in particular types of races ignoring all others). He would seek out the races he tended to play and worked up his own tissue based on his assessment of the chances of the individual runners based on detailed form study and would play on the discrepencies - backing or laying as appropriate.
I'm not sure how successful he was but as a strategy it made a lot of sense. Unless you know as much if not more than the odds makers or the general betting community, you've not got much chance.
There was a time when political betters knew more than the bookmakers and some of us did very well - now, the bookies have a better feel and the arbs are just not there as they were.
Your last paragraph is particularly accurate, Stodge. It's part of the reason why I no longer bet seriously, but just for fun and to modest amounts.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
The govt has a solution to solve the problem it is making worse.
Also the decline in hospitality will also not help youth unemployment and this decline seems intentional given influential think tank, Resolution Foundation, has previously advocated for it.
Loads of bar work in France. They could get a job and learn a language and have a great time. Don't blame the government blame Badenoch and Farage.
...Your last paragraph is particularly accurate, Stodge. It's part of the reason why I no longer bet seriously, but just for fun and to modest amounts.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
A former Labour councillor sent a video of his penis to what he thought was a 13-year-old girl, a court has heard.
Liron Velleman, 30, sent online messages to the “girl” asking to see her in her pyjamas and bra, Highbury Corner magistrates’ court was told. He did not know he was actually in contact with a Metropolitan Police officer. Velleman carried out the offences from Dec 3 to Dec 10 2024, during his time as a councillor for Barnet, north London.
He was elected in 2022 and assisted in drafting the Online Safety Act.
The man with the second worst attendance record at the European Parliament wants to ban working from home.
For someone who says you need to attend your place of work, he spends precious little time in his, the HoC.
Didn't even turn up for the debate on Russian influence. I'm pretty sure he could have shed some interesting light on that.
It is all a bit nanny state. Instructing organisations independent of government how to arrange their business.
I see every Leaver's favourite Remoaner has also opined:
Asda and Marks and Spencer chief executive Lord Rose said in January last year that remote working policies had spawned a generation who are 'not doing proper work'.
He was right when he said Brexit would give everyone a wage increase and he'll be right again!
If you strip away the culture war bullshit
1) some jobs can be done with certain amounts of WFH. 2) this varies between 0% and 100% depending on the job 3) it further varies according to the phase of the work - a team working on a long term project with stable membership vs a team being assembled (say! 4) it further varies according to the management methodology and the quality of its implementation. 5) it further varies according to the technical assistance put in by the company and the employee 6) if further varies according to the level of motivation of the employee and employee.
So if you are doing steady development work in IT, using Agile, with high quality technical support (VMs, messaging and collaboration tools) with a good quality management and colleagues. And everyone has a nice home office setup… then Yay!
If you have a bullshit job where everyone has been told to fuck off home, log in from their own computer somehow (laptop balanced on the ironing board), with no collaboration setup or feedback. And management are incompetent and don’t give a shit… then nothing will get done.
I’ve encountered both.
Back in the 20th Century there were surveys and experiments showing work was best done in private offices rather than open plan where concentration was constantly broken by noise more than interruptions. Management saw offices as status symbols, with open plan for the riff-raff. WFH often reverses that.
Only for people with enough space at home to have a genuine office without distractions.
Yes. We were WFH years before the pandemic and it was noticeable how many carved out "home offices" in the garage, shed or spare bedroom.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
The govt has a solution to solve the problem it is making worse.
Also the decline in hospitality will also not help youth unemployment and this decline seems intentional given influential think tank, Resolution Foundation, has previously advocated for it.
Loads of bar work in France. They could get a job and learn a language and have a great time. Don't blame the government blame Badenoch and Farage.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
The govt has a solution to solve the problem it is making worse.
Also the decline in hospitality will also not help youth unemployment and this decline seems intentional given influential think tank, Resolution Foundation, has previously advocated for it.
Loads of bar work in France. They could get a job and learn a language and have a great time. Don't blame the government blame Badenoch and Farage.
Spot on again Roger
At least Labour will deliver that option soon.
Youth unemployment is higher in France than in the U.K.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
The man with the second worst attendance record at the European Parliament wants to ban working from home.
For someone who says you need to attend your place of work, he spends precious little time in his, the HoC.
Didn't even turn up for the debate on Russian influence. I'm pretty sure he could have shed some interesting light on that.
It is all a bit nanny state. Instructing organisations independent of government how to arrange their business.
I see every Leaver's favourite Remoaner has also opined:
Asda and Marks and Spencer chief executive Lord Rose said in January last year that remote working policies had spawned a generation who are 'not doing proper work'.
He was right when he said Brexit would give everyone a wage increase and he'll be right again!
If you strip away the culture war bullshit
1) some jobs can be done with certain amounts of WFH. 2) this varies between 0% and 100% depending on the job 3) it further varies according to the phase of the work - a team working on a long term project with stable membership vs a team being assembled (say! 4) it further varies according to the management methodology and the quality of its implementation. 5) it further varies according to the technical assistance put in by the company and the employee 6) if further varies according to the level of motivation of the employee and employee.
So if you are doing steady development work in IT, using Agile, with high quality technical support (VMs, messaging and collaboration tools) with a good quality management and colleagues. And everyone has a nice home office setup… then Yay!
If you have a bullshit job where everyone has been told to fuck off home, log in from their own computer somehow (laptop balanced on the ironing board), with no collaboration setup or feedback. And management are incompetent and don’t give a shit… then nothing will get done.
I’ve encountered both.
Back in the 20th Century there were surveys and experiments showing work was best done in private offices rather than open plan where concentration was constantly broken by noise more than interruptions. Management saw offices as status symbols, with open plan for the riff-raff. WFH often reverses that.
Only for people with enough space at home to have a genuine office without distractions.
Yes. We were WFH years before the pandemic and it was noticeable how many carved out "home offices" in the garage, shed or spare bedroom.
The slight problem is those who do not have garages, shed or spare bedrooms.
Very large numbers of people are either living in flats which are tiny or in MHOs.
Balancing a laptop on the ironing board in the living room, with 3 other people trying to work etc.
If you want WFH, then a spare bedroom is needed as standard, usually. Which will upset the contingent on PB who want everyone carefully slotted into the minimum accommodation space.
Just saw the rubbish trailor for Baby Yoda movie that they ran during the Hand Egg Championship, the VFX were really bad...Seed Dance could make a better trailer.
Okay, so not only are the Russians losing ground and surrendering, but Russia is also now trying to block Telegram - where much of the criticism of the operation has been going down in the past few days.
I must admit to getting a teeny weeny bit optimistic, for the first time in a long while.
Agreed. I know these things happen slowly then happen quickly, but it does appear that the Starlink ban was a game changer on the front lines, the Russians relying on dodgy terminals much more than was previously thought.
They made the mistake of putting them onto drones that crashed in Ukraine, and it took UKR gov and SpaceX about a week to work out a way of blocking non-Ukranian Starlinks in Ukraine.
Apparently the Ukranians, with possibly some help from the British and Americans, cracked the encryption on Russian radios a couple of years ago, and they’ve been using unconventional methods of communication ever since.
The Ukrainians warn that the families of Ukrainian POWs are being coerced into registering Russian starlink terminals. There's nothing the Russians won't stoop to.
Also seems like the Ukrainian defence of Yampil is in some difficulty - the Russians taking advantage of a frozen river.
The situation still looks extremely hard for the Ukrainians.
Neverrtheless, four or five months ago, it looked like Ukraine was losing on all fronts.
Not really. The situation was not as bad then as some reported it, and I'd say it's not as good as you and Sandpit would have it today. Little has changed.
Ukraine continue to be let down by the West who are failing to provide it with enough support to win, and also failing to ensure that critical Western components don't make their way to Russia. Just recently Russian plans for a big expansion of a plant manufacturing artillery barrels has emerged - using western machinery.
The enforcement of sanctions against Russia has been half-hearted, and European leaders still behave as though Trump will strongarm the Russians into a ceasefire so that they don't have to do anything difficult.
The Ukrainians are doing amazingly against the odds, but I feel very bad about how we've failed them.
...Your last paragraph is particularly accurate, Stodge. It's part of the reason why I no longer bet seriously, but just for fun and to modest amounts.
Peter_the_not_Punter
Well, only occasional and then mostly for fun, but that's a bit of a mouthful.
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Boosting minimum wage is creating a whole set of incentives not to employ anyone young without experience
The govt has a solution to solve the problem it is making worse.
Also the decline in hospitality will also not help youth unemployment and this decline seems intentional given influential think tank, Resolution Foundation, has previously advocated for it.
Loads of bar work in France. They could get a job and learn a language and have a great time. Don't blame the government blame Badenoch and Farage.
Just saw the rubbish trailor for Baby Yoda movie that they ran during the Hand Egg Championship, the VFX were really bad...Seed Dance could make a better trailer.
I've not seen it, but I recall seeing a comment once saying people shouldn't condemn poor CGI in trailers, as the movie is not yet a finished product.
Which is true, but a really dumb way to look at things, since even if they've not finished the whole movie the visual effects in the trailer at least should be done, since it is supposed to convince us to watch the damn thing.
Not every movie would then be able to pull a Sonic and fix the problems.
Just saw the rubbish trailor for Baby Yoda movie that they ran during the Hand Egg Championship, the VFX were really bad...Seed Dance could make a better trailer.
I've not seen it, but I recall seeing a comment once saying people shouldn't condemn poor CGI in trailers, as the movie is not yet a finished product.
Which is true, but a really dumb way to look at things, since even if they've not finished the whole movie the visual effects in the trailer at least should be done, since it is supposed to convince us to watch the damn thing.
Not every movie would then be able to pull a Sonic and fix the problems.
Well now we have these amazing video ML models peoples expectations are way higher. Reallly bad VFX really stands out.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
Some of you may remember that it was only when Ivan Boesky in the US started spilling the beans that the Guinness / Distillers scandal was uncovered. And now Mandelson's behaviour was only uncovered because of what the US authorities held and released.
This doesn't really say much for our authorities' ability to catch wrongdoers here.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
Some of you may remember that it was only when Ivan Boesky in the US started spilling the beans that the Guinness / Distillers scandal was uncovered. And now Mandelson's behaviour was only uncovered because of what the US authorities held and released.
This doesn't really say much for our authorities' ability to catch wrongdoers here.
Yes. The fear is that there's lots of wrongdoing not caught up in a US scandal that's consequently not being discovered.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
Some of you may remember that it was only when Ivan Boesky in the US started spilling the beans that the Guinness / Distillers scandal was uncovered. And now Mandelson's behaviour was only uncovered because of what the US authorities held and released.
This doesn't really say much for our authorities' ability to catch wrongdoers here.
Yes. The fear is that there's lots of wrongdoing not caught up in a US scandal that's consequently not being discovered.
Just sticking with the leaking stuff for a moment, I would be astonished if Mandelson had been the only one at it, the casual treatment of state secrets and basic data security seems to be part of the standard politician package.
Lol Labour are trying to manifest a recovery by wishing it. I hear CCHQ are certain Susan Hall has a real chance too
Yes, I recall a number of tweets claiming she had won on the Thursday evening and Friday after the polls closed and before a single vote had been counted....
Lol Labour are trying to manifest a recovery by wishing it. I hear CCHQ are certain Susan Hall has a real chance too
Yes, I recall a number of tweets claiming she had won on the Thursday evening and Friday after the polls closed and before a single vote had been counted....
One of the more bizarre moments of 2022 (edit 2024!)
The one at the bottom makes him look like a boybander. From the nineties.
This was apparently done out of frustration with Farage alleging that all Turkish barbers were fronts for criminal activity, rather than genuine businesses.
When I was in Edinburgh I did end up using the local Turkish barber who had a cage of songbirds on the premises. Not sure if that was a sign for the police of their willingness to talk if necessary.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
Some of you may remember that it was only when Ivan Boesky in the US started spilling the beans that the Guinness / Distillers scandal was uncovered. And now Mandelson's behaviour was only uncovered because of what the US authorities held and released.
This doesn't really say much for our authorities' ability to catch wrongdoers here.
Yes. The fear is that there's lots of wrongdoing not caught up in a US scandal that's consequently not being discovered.
Just sticking with the leaking stuff for a moment, I would be astonished if Mandelson had been the only one at it, the casual treatment of state secrets and basic data security seems to be part of the standard politician package.
Yes. They get used to doing it with the Press in exchange for favourable coverage, and then why not to friends and donors?
Other than switching Thatcher for Major, which happened less than 18 months before a GE, I'm struggling to see where changing a PM horse midway worked well.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
Trudeau for Carney is the modern best-case example.
Canada is different rules.
Also, would Carney have won without Trump's actions? It seems Carney benefited (as almost any Liberal leader in Canada would have done) from the Conservatives being seen as too close to a suddenly very unfriendly US administration.
The EU has moved closer to creating offshore centres for migrants and asylum seekers, after centre-right and far-right MEPs united for tougher migration policies.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
Starmer will likely survive until May, whether he survives beyond that depends largely on whether Labour beat the Tories for second on NEV and seats won then in the local and devolved elections
The man with the second worst attendance record at the European Parliament wants to ban working from home.
For someone who says you need to attend your place of work, he spends precious little time in his, the HoC.
Didn't even turn up for the debate on Russian influence. I'm pretty sure he could have shed some interesting light on that.
It is all a bit nanny state. Instructing organisations independent of government how to arrange their business.
I see every Leaver's favourite Remoaner has also opined:
Asda and Marks and Spencer chief executive Lord Rose said in January last year that remote working policies had spawned a generation who are 'not doing proper work'.
He was right when he said Brexit would give everyone a wage increase and he'll be right again!
If you strip away the culture war bullshit
1) some jobs can be done with certain amounts of WFH. 2) this varies between 0% and 100% depending on the job 3) it further varies according to the phase of the work - a team working on a long term project with stable membership vs a team being assembled (say! 4) it further varies according to the management methodology and the quality of its implementation. 5) it further varies according to the technical assistance put in by the company and the employee 6) if further varies according to the level of motivation of the employee and employee.
So if you are doing steady development work in IT, using Agile, with high quality technical support (VMs, messaging and collaboration tools) with a good quality management and colleagues. And everyone has a nice home office setup… then Yay!
If you have a bullshit job where everyone has been told to fuck off home, log in from their own computer somehow (laptop balanced on the ironing board), with no collaboration setup or feedback. And management are incompetent and don’t give a shit… then nothing will get done.
I’ve encountered both.
Back in the 20th Century there were surveys and experiments showing work was best done in private offices rather than open plan where concentration was constantly broken by noise more than interruptions. Management saw offices as status symbols, with open plan for the riff-raff. WFH often reverses that.
Only for people with enough space at home to have a genuine office without distractions.
Yes. We were WFH years before the pandemic and it was noticeable how many carved out "home offices" in the garage, shed or spare bedroom.
The slight problem is those who do not have garages, shed or spare bedrooms.
Very large numbers of people are either living in flats which are tiny or in MHOs.
Balancing a laptop on the ironing board in the living room, with 3 other people trying to work etc.
If you want WFH, then a spare bedroom is needed as standard, usually. Which will upset the contingent on PB who want everyone carefully slotted into the minimum accommodation space.
I worked from home before the pandemic and of course during the pandemic. Before, it started at a day per week and was eventually three days a week before COVID.
The transition to full time home working wasn't too difficult but not without some issues. For others in the team, it was very difficult and after the initial couple of weeks of "Dunkirk Spirit" and daily Teams calls you could tell who was hating every second of it and those who were wondering why they had never worked at home before.
It was down not just to circumstances (both physical and emotional) but to character and it was a real eye opener as far as I was concerned. People who I thought were resilient suddenly looked vulnerable while others blossomed both personally and professionally.
It should never be forced on anyone (the pandemic was hopefully a unique event) but nor it should be forcibly denied to anyone (J P Morgan and Reform take note). Mature organisations should be flexible enough and empathic enough to recognise that for some individuals working outside the office at times can be beneficial but it's not for everyone and those organisations for whom the physical and psychological wellbeing of staff matters (not all by any stretch) will be able to assess the individual and corporate requirement and create mutually beneficial solutions.
Starmer will likely survive until May, whether he survives beyond that depends largely on whether Labour beat the Tories for second on NEV and seats won then in the local and devolved elections
Whatever is going on in the turmoil of politics, I know that for you and for millions of people, what matters is the cost of living.
That's why we are taking urgent steps to tackle it head on.
Freezing rail fares, rolling out free breakfast clubs and free school meals, boosting the National Living Wage and easing energy bills.
Putting more money in people’s pockets.
That’s my government’s focus.
I am, on the whole, in favour of free school meals and stuff like free breakfast clubs. As a recurring USP for the Labour party and government, I think it lacks something. The need for these things is (a) because too many people are too poor and (b) because too many people are too busy. Neither of these factors in any sense commends a Labour (or any) government.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
It's not just inadequate, it's disastrous. Breakfast provided by schools might be a good idea where family life has been broken and the alternative is a hungry child. Starmer's loathsome post is presenting not giving your child breakfast as a handy dodge to get you through the cost of living crisis. It is despicable, and typically Labour. Blair (or it could have been Brown) complained that people in Britain were not dependent enough on the State. It's clearly Starmer's plan to have the state involved to the extent that people can't even be arsed to pour milk over a bowl of Cheerios. The ghoul.
Comments
My theory has always been that he was pressured to commit suicide by using menaces against someone he loved
“We’ll cut the cameras and send the guards to sleep and then you’ve got 2 hours to off yourself, or your kid dies”
That covers most of the bases and explains most of the mystery
However like @Cookie i feel its impossible to rule out wilder explanations as the whole thing already reads like a QAnon fantasy yet it is indisputably true and getting weirder by the day
I must have missed Willie Whitelaw becoming LOTO in 1975 and Michael Heseltine becoming PM in 1990.
Quite often the favourite shouldn't be.
Few of the recipients who are actually helped will spend any time whatsoever thinking about voting or parliament or government. For the rest of us, 'Free Breakfast Clubs' is a trope as done to death as 'toolmaker'.
Callaghan? No. Brown? No. May? Not really? Boris, yes, but he very quickly called a GE. Truss? Lol. Sunak? No. Macmillan for Eden? Fair enough, yes.
Douglas-Home? No. Even Chamberlain for Churchill (very long wait). No.
They made the mistake of putting them onto drones that crashed in Ukraine, and it took UKR gov and SpaceX about a week to work out a way of blocking non-Ukranian Starlinks in Ukraine.
Apparently the Ukranians, with possibly some help from the British and Americans, cracked the encryption on Russian radios a couple of years ago, and they’ve been using unconventional methods of communication ever since.
Let's take a random selection of -say- 10,000 Betfair markets, and put them into probability buckets, and see how accurate they are.
I'm going to go with pretty accurate, but there's only one way to find out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD0kXDKtW7o
Rep. Delia Ramirez to DHS officials: "I have as much respect for you as I do for the last white men who put on masks to terrorize communities of color. I have no respect for the inheritors of the Klanhood and the slave patrol. Those activities were criminal and so are yours."
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mejhgv77yv2r
Policy
Policy.
Is the right move for Labour
Policy
Delivery
Tangible benefits
Let the Mail and Telegraph
Badenoch and Davey bleat on and on about Epsten
There comes a time in the public psyche when they sit on the settee and "I'm sick and tired it's this every night" however gruesome it is.
Epstein is dead allegedly
Mandelson will hopefully soon be inside
Andrew Windsor ditto
The Country cannot be goaded by weak politicians with nothing to offer or say a our real issues, real people, every day life.
Policy
Delivery
Tangible Delivery
PS if by some million to one chance Epstein has been secreted to Israel we should strike down him and the bastards who have shielded him. If that requires military force so be it.
Trump would nuke some Countries for lesd
I have to believe the scroat is dead
Eden for Churchill might be mentioned too, of course, or Baldwin for Macdonald. Equally you could add Baldwin (1923), Balfour, Asquith and Rosebery as options against.
https://x.com/i/status/2021273785601601999
https://x.com/i/status/2021273795378520278
I mean, the KKK would be quite offended at the idea they were doing it for money.
But this is precisely what you'd expect anyway.
Keir Starmer on Peter Mandelson: Then vs Now.
The only difference? He got caught.
https://x.com/conservatives/status/2021270534785310993?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Gee, I hadn't realised Trump had rejoined the Dems.
https://x.com/owenjonesjourno/status/2021276742275444966
Peter Mandelson wasn't just the Ambassador to the US.
He was one of the influential figures in the Starmer government.
A fact that was concealed from the British public.
Also seems like the Ukrainian defence of Yampil is in some difficulty - the Russians taking advantage of a frozen river.
The situation still looks extremely hard for the Ukrainians.
But the First Klan was big on “liberating” wealth. Some say that one reason they were suppressed so effectively, was that the Southern Top Chaps found the banditry and lawlessness was threatening *their* position.
https://x.com/i/status/2021273788415881319
I'm disputing the claim that something being the favorite means they always win.
The crowd is not expressing certainty, but a measure of probability. And those measures of probabiltiy -in aggregate- are broadly right.
10-1 shots come in around 9% of the time, as you would expect.
The govt has a solution to solve the problem it is making worse.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c997xyg1r3eo
Also the decline in hospitality will also not help youth unemployment and this decline seems intentional given influential think tank, Resolution Foundation, has previously advocated for it.
I once spoke to a professional punter at Lingfield of all places - he told me he kept his betting very selective (he only played in particular types of races ignoring all others). He would seek out the races he tended to play and worked up his own tissue based on his assessment of the chances of the individual runners based on detailed form study and would play on the discrepencies - backing or laying as appropriate.
I'm not sure how successful he was but as a strategy it made a lot of sense. Unless you know as much if not more than the odds makers or the general betting community, you've not got much chance.
There was a time when political betters knew more than the bookmakers and some of us did very well - now, the bookies have a better feel and the arbs are just not there as they were.
I realise this is the old French objection of "yes it works in practice but does it work in theory?", but I'd like to know.
Are we looking forward to the next gold standard FoN? What do we reckon? MY PREDICTION Ref 35, Con 25 Green 20 Lib Dem 10 Lab 5 Others 5 RefCon60!
Unlike Boris
He's owned it
He's apologised for it.
Now it may suit some to drone on and on and on.
Starmer is PM
He has a mandate
He has a mandate to deliver policy and to deliver results
If others with no policy, no agenda other than to drone on and on day after day. Let them.
The public will soon see who are serious and who are playing junior school debating and poorly.
From a Turkish Barber in Glasgow.
The one at the bottom makes him look like a boybander. From the nineties.
Liron Velleman, 30, sent online messages to the “girl” asking to see her in her pyjamas and bra, Highbury Corner magistrates’ court was told. He did not know he was actually in contact with a Metropolitan Police officer. Velleman carried out the offences from Dec 3 to Dec 10 2024, during his time as a councillor for Barnet, north London.
He was elected in 2022 and assisted in drafting the Online Safety Act.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/10/former-labour-councillor-sent-video-penis-to-13-year-old/
At least Labour will deliver that option soon.
MEPs voted for legal changes that will give authorities more options to deport asylum seekers, including sending people to countries they have never been to.
Under the new rules, expected to apply from June, a person seeking asylum can be deported to a country outside the EU, even if they have only passed through it, or to a place to which they have no link, as long as a European government has signed an agreement with the receiving state.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/10/eu-moves-closer-to-creating-offshore-centres-for-migrants-and-asylum-seekers
“Afghan asylum seeker found guilty of abducting and raping 12-year-old girl in Nuneaton, UK”
He’d been in the country FOUR MONTHS then he kidnapped raped and strangled a twelve year old girl who was just playing on a swing
https://x.com/bbcbreaking/status/2021250960014668262?s=46
https://x.com/DeborahMeaden/status/2019447197226443006
All immigrants are net contributors.
Very large numbers of people are either living in flats which are tiny or in MHOs.
Balancing a laptop on the ironing board in the living room, with 3 other people trying to work etc.
If you want WFH, then a spare bedroom is needed as standard, usually. Which will upset the contingent on PB who want everyone carefully slotted into the minimum accommodation space.
https://www.reddit.com/r/boybands/comments/1cm6m7i/a1_have_been_around_for_26_years_but_theyre_still/
As for Jack Groilish, as he pronounces it, yeah, he too.
A tool factory owner and a nurse used to sit their kids down at the kitchen table to tell them that there was no money to pay the bills
Or maybe someone is fabricating
Ukraine continue to be let down by the West who are failing to provide it with enough support to win, and also failing to ensure that critical Western components don't make their way to Russia. Just recently Russian plans for a big expansion of a plant manufacturing artillery barrels has emerged - using western machinery.
The enforcement of sanctions against Russia has been half-hearted, and European leaders still behave as though Trump will strongarm the Russians into a ceasefire so that they don't have to do anything difficult.
The Ukrainians are doing amazingly against the odds, but I feel very bad about how we've failed them.
‘ NEW: Labour is increasingly confident that it could hold Gorton and Denton
And after blocking Andy Burnham from running as the candidate, it is relying on him to help win the by-election’
https://x.com/siennamarla/status/2021273348165017658?s=61
Which is true, but a really dumb way to look at things, since even if they've not finished the whole movie the visual effects in the trailer at least should be done, since it is supposed to convince us to watch the damn thing.
Not every movie would then be able to pull a Sonic and fix the problems.
Lol Labour are trying to manifest a recovery by wishing it.
I hear CCHQ are certain Susan Hall has a real chance too
This doesn't really say much for our authorities' ability to catch wrongdoers here.
She also credited Rachel Reeves with the FTSE100 exceeding 10,000 🙄
When I was in Edinburgh I did end up using the local Turkish barber who had a cage of songbirds on the premises. Not sure if that was a sign for the police of their willingness to talk if necessary.
The transition to full time home working wasn't too difficult but not without some issues. For others in the team, it was very difficult and after the initial couple of weeks of "Dunkirk Spirit" and daily Teams calls you could tell who was hating every second of it and those who were wondering why they had never worked at home before.
It was down not just to circumstances (both physical and emotional) but to character and it was a real eye opener as far as I was concerned. People who I thought were resilient suddenly looked vulnerable while others blossomed both personally and professionally.
It should never be forced on anyone (the pandemic was hopefully a unique event) but nor it should be forcibly denied to anyone (J P Morgan and Reform take note). Mature organisations should be flexible enough and empathic enough to recognise that for some individuals working outside the office at times can be beneficial but it's not for everyone and those organisations for whom the physical and psychological wellbeing of staff matters (not all by any stretch) will be able to assess the individual and corporate requirement and create mutually beneficial solutions.