What To Watch Out For Now – politicalbetting.com
What To Watch Out For Now – politicalbetting.com
This statement was said about the children’s heart unit at Bristol Royal Infirmary in a report published in 2001 about events over a nine-year period between 1984 – 1995. Nine years: it doesn’t take much thought or imagination to realise how many people at all levels there must have been over such a period who knew or suspected that something was wrong.
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Edit: And First!
I do wish the media didn't gorge itself on a single story. Part of the reason I hardly ever watch TV news any more.
(moot because of various local issues but if this kind of trend continues you might want to start looking at the YouGov figures more closely. They might have quite a low ceiling. )
It doesn't even need to be the rich, or positions that make them especially powerful - I could name two former school heads in Staffordshire who were both sacked for multiple criminal offences including against children but have never faced prosecution despite multiple whistleblowing attempts. Indeed, one is still working for OFSTED (and still committing safeguarding breaches) while the other runs his own consultancy business.
The amount of goods bought rose by 1.8% in January, up from 0.4% in December, the ONS reported.
City economists had expected a rise of 0.2%.
This is welcome news Ms Badenoch!
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The government's finances had a record monthly surplus in January as it took in more tax receipts than it spent.
The surplus - the difference between public spending and the tax take - was £30.4bn in January, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The ONS said it was the highest surplus in any month since records began in 1993, and nearly double last January's £15.4bn monthly surplus.
Analysts had expected the surplus to be £23.8bn. The government usually collects more tax than it spends in January compared with other months due to the collection of self-assessed taxes, but higher levels of capital gains tax payments to HMRC pushed the figure to a record.
Borrowing in the 10 months to January was £112.1bn - 11.5% lower than the same 10 month period a year ago - although the ONS noted that it was the fifth-highest borrowing for the period on record.
HM Treasury said borrowing for 2026 is forecast to be "the lowest since before the pandemic."
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray said: "We know there is more to do to stop one in every £10 the government spends going on debt interest, and we will more than halve borrowing by 2030-31 so that money can be spent on policing, schools and the NHS."
One of whom lived a life of indulgence and opulence off the back of the state with wealth stolen from the people over a long period of time the other has an airport in Harare named after them.
I dunno. We're obviously reading too much into this single local election result but I think Reform would really need to sweeping up a much higher percentage in somewhere like this, regardless of local issues or political history.
My best wishes to you & your family.
Good morning, everyone.
Not just the huge budget surplus but big bounce back in retail sales .
Next Wednesday the new energy price cap is expected to show a decent fall . This better all round news too late to effect the by-election result but looking forward to May .
Reeves delivers her spring statement next month and although there’s unlikely to be some major announcements given the much better than expected borrowing figures we might see a few smaller changes aimed at boosting Labour in the run up to the May elections .
So it goes
Richest wards - were Lib Dem now Green
Next wards were Lab, then Tory now Lib Dem
Next set Lab went Tory back Lab will go Reform
Poorest continual Lab will go Reform.
Labour will likely lead a poll this year and then the entire narrative changes. Sir Keir should quit and a new leader will be very far ahead IMHO
In theory, being genuinely good at whatever one's nominal role is, and that certainly helps. But there's also a chunk of wanting to climb the greasy pole and having generic greasy-pole-climbing skills. Those arts are dark at the best of times and end up in the sort of behaviours we're lamenting here.
But as long as there are greasy poles to climb, and sinful men and women with a desire to climb them, we're kind of stuck. The nearest I have to an answer is to distribute power more- have more but shorter poles. But ardent pole-climbers would hate that almost as much as they hate scrutiny of their pole-climbing methods.
The more responsive economic signals are looking much more promising. The doom and gloom regarding our outlook over the next few years may be well overdone.
Interesting how that one worked out, eh?
F1 considering format changes, 12 sprints from 2027
Formula 1 is keen to shake up its format and add more sprint races as Stefano Domenicali discusses the potential of new races in Turkey, Asia and Africa
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/f1-considering-format-changes-12-sprints-from-2027/10799096/
What unfounded accusations, @Roger? There’s oceans of court cases, tribunal, researched stories that illustrate every single point @Cyclefree is making.
Or is it that you feel we should owe a certain deference to The Right People?
Ridiculous. But there we are.
Also, I've heard about Turkey as well, possibly next year (I think) or even this year if Madrid doesn't get its arse in gear.
Murray is supposed to be one of the smarter ones. That is frighteningly illiterate for a Chief Secretary.
Cheaper to roll the same tapes I suppose.
https://x.com/MattCartoonist/status/2024172713854562335
You don't reduce the interest rate bill by halving borrowing, in those circumstances it is still going up. You reduce debt interest by repaying debt.
It also depends a fair bit on the nature of the borrowing. Taking week's sensible taxonomy, there's continual spending, maintaining current assets and building new assets, and borrowing becomes increasingly acceptable as you go down that list.
With hindsight, it rather looks like Osbourne and Hammond did austerity by cutting maintenance and new builds (because that's politically easier) with the consequences we see around us.
The figure was also helped by a drop in debt interest .
With inflation set to fall in the run up to the May elections and an improving economy Labours May prospects could improve .
Of course outside events could still effect this but the doomsday scenario for Labour is looking less likely at the moment.
Given Reeves survival as chancellor relies on Starmer staying in No 10 I expect we will see more cost of living measures announced in the spring statement .
But yes, given the alternatives, anything that keeps Reeves in place and boosts her authority is a good thing right now.
Daphne: Oh, come on now, Dr Crane. It's not like men have never used sex to get what they want.
Frasier: How can we possibly use sex to get what we want? Sex is what we want.
Actually, the case of Mandelson shows it's a bit more complicated than that. There are other manifestations of power and excitement that can be craved just as much. But sex is the main one.
I understand the point - the creation of the kind of scapegoat Cyclefree refers to in her header might prevent light being shed elsewhere - but I don't really buy it.
The long running stories on Mandelson and Andrew are just as likely to increase pressure to take action on the rest of the Epstein class. In support of that you only need look at the reaction to those stories in the US - "why is no one facing such consequences here ?".
Thanks for the header, @Cyclefree , and I hope you are getting through more or less OK.
I'm not around much today, but let me drop in a quote that has been on my mind, about the institutionalisation of contempt for women. This is from a gent called Pastor Doug Wilson - who is one of Pete Hegseth's lodestars:
“The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party. A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts... True authority and true submission are therefore an erotic necessity.”
https://theramm.substack.com/p/the-pentagon-confirmed-hegseth-admires
Does the top tier of the USA consist of such people?
They eventually went to prison a decade and a half later.
That's just not how national politics has worked. Probably since WWII.
Solving that problem and the min wage conundrum will define the next 12 months.
Could we see a return to some form of Community based Workfare and greater investment in Apprenticeships
No work no benefits and proper out of work face to face health assessment.
Probably a prime motivation for your senior trader, everybody around him and senior to him had probably known what was going on before him. but he knew full well that he'd be the one scapegoated.
Nonetheless, a strong start to the day for the Government.
The Epstein case is unusual in that it does actually does involve those levels of wealth and power.
In a report on the BBC last night, they detailed how organised crime, down to the lowest levels, used vulnerable children as commodities, accomplices and victims. The entire structure was a mirror of what Esptein was doing - just happening in damp flats in nasty housing estates. The perpetrators have enough power over their victims.
The teachers mentioned above had all the power they need, in their sphere, to commit and get away with their crimes.
At some point the government is spending over £100bn per year on debt interest.
At a later point the country imitates Greece or Argentina.
"The public inquiry into the abuse of girls by grooming gangs is proceeding very slowly indeed. 13 months after the Casey report was commissioned, the public inquiry’s Terms of Reference have finally been published in the last week."
I keep mentioning this but as no-one else seems to: a significant (circa 100) of the Rotherham victims were boys. While this is obviously a crime primarily with female victims we shouldn't forget or overlook that a large number of boys are also affected. Framing it as entirely a 'women's issue' or 'violence against women's and girls' cuts out a significant part of the truth and makes it easy to just pretend Males = Perpetrators, neglecting/hiding the reality that boys can be victims too.
Not a knock against Miss Cyclefree.
I've long believed for under 30s that there should be no direct route on to unemployed status.
Structured apprenticeship in trades, structured work fare for community benefit, break the NEET mould.
Indeed Yougov now has the Greens back behind the Tories with upper middle class ABs who are 22% Labour, 19% Conservative, and 18% LD and Green and only 17% Reform.
Amongst large employers and higher managerial and administrative occupations the Conservatives now lead on 24%, Labour, the LDs and Reform are tied on 19% with the Greens on just 14%. Amongst higher professional occupations the Tories and Labour are tied on 21%, Reform are on 18%, the LDs on 17% and the Greens 16%.
Amongst the highest earners earning over £70,000 a year, Labour lead on 23%, the Tories and LDs are tied for second on 19% and the Greens on 17% only just pip Reform on 16%
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/53923-how-would-britain-vote-at-the-start-of-2026
Do you wish for the rest of Labour's vote to decamp to the Greens? Because that sounds an excellent way to do it.
Some alternatives, which might actually work and not collapse Labour to 5% -
- Investigate the collapse in the mechanism of recruitment. I keep coming across employers who can't recruit. They talk of fake CVs, candidates who don't show up. Meanwhile candidates report fake jobs, vast numbers of applications sent without reply.
- Merging apprenticeships with degrees, fully and formally. The Universities are complaining of a collapse in foreign students. And we can guess that down the line a few year, the problem with some apprenticeships will be they are not transferable - an apprenticeship from Rolls-Royce Nuclear will probably be good in the job market, but what about XYZZY Metals? Make the universities responsible for the quality, rigor and the academic portion, in conjunction with the companies.
- Some actual programs have been tried for getting long term unemployed back into work. They tend to be expensive, require detailed work and depend on the quality of people working in them. But they actually exist. And some even work.
We all have different attitudes to the deficit/debt, but I think it's fair to say that a very large chunk of the problem dissipates as long as this remains the case. We should never have got into it in the first place - the unfunded mitigation of fossil fuel shock and COVID-19 measures was always going to be deeply problematic.
My new favourite person in history is now “Emperor Wu of the Han, who daily drank a potion of jade powder, mixed with dew water, which was collected in his gardens in bronze plates and jade cups. He thereby hoped to achieve immortality”
I believe he failed, but 5 stars for ambition
I'm feeling happier this morning because my pensions and investments are up a few thousand from yesterday.
But I'm not going to give Starmer and Reeves credit for that.
Other people will have other economic requirements - more jobs, better jobs, higher pay, cheaper workers, lower prices, reduced taxes, affordable housing - which are harder to achieve and which can be incompatible with what someone else wants.
But the political pressure to change that is continuing to build. I have not yet completely abandoned faith in democracy, and the next twelve months in US politics will be a key test of that.
As is the motives of those who commit fraud in the City, Mandy emailing people on how to blackmail the Government he is working in or McBride committing conspiracies while working in No. 10.
Interesting that you are so resistant to the message of personal responsibility. Which is what @Cyclefree is advocating. Why does that upset you so?
I think it is part of what our far-righters-on-the-street mean when they talk about "masculine faith". Ours are generally taking their "violence is good" model from medieval culture (eg crusade symbols); the USA has a more serious problem as they have a modern theological tradition that affirms the values.
Easier to prove and potential for higher sentence in UK
The other as yet unknown angle is who other than Epstein received this information
Political people
Rich benefactors
Lords of the Realm
People in Arts and Culture
Then the bloody great elephant in the room that either no one is considering or too afraid to confront
Other members of the Royal family
Receipt of such sensitive information is not something deniable unless you immediately report it.
I sincerely hope that no other senior Royal is implicated as that would mean a full on Constitutional crisis the like of which we've not seen for over 400 years.
We cannot afford to build prisons to house all the people who have been convicted of the possession of child pornography: The UK population won’t stand for the tax rises required to pay for that enormous expense, as has been repeatedly made clear at the ballot box. Nor is it clear that society would be well served by spending such a vast sum on imprisonment when other punishments are available.
1. Intense nationalist pride. It is one of THE great civilisations. Only Europe - in total - compares
2. Intense anger at the lunacy and self harm of the Maoist era
3. Intense desire to have Taiwan returned to the fold, if only to get the contents of the national museum restored to Beijing
‘It’s not the good ones that get to the top. It’s the ambitious ones.’
The vast majority of the offenders in those cases were also men, of course.
It thinks it can sit in Westminster and idly float ideas about Europe without the slightest understanding of what Brussels will entertain. It thinks that British industry, technology, farming, and finance are pining for the firm smack of European commissars and judges.
The greatest illusion of all is to think that crawling back under the EU’s legal order will somehow unleash a turbo-blast of economic growth.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/02/20/if-labour-wants-a-fresh-fight-on-europe-let-battle-begin/
'Twas ever thus. Good news rarely leads.
It'll be the next Govt that takes the plaudits just as they initiate the stall and start the uncontrolled dive
Within their small sphere, the power of a school head is very great indeed - especially in the absence of a strong governing body.
And while the perpetrators of sexual abuse are generally men, I've come across more than one genuinely sociopathic female head.
Not sure that there aren't large parts of Labour who would have a problem with that.
A big problem is that the chumocracy we have actively despises real domain knowledge. They promote for "Safe pair of hands", "One of Us" and "Team Player". As in people who aren't going to embarrass everyone by succeeding too much - And certainly won't embarrass everyone by going to the police or regulators about crimes they see.
And what's the next step? The government refused to say that degree-level apprenticeships would stay. Instead, the money will switch to FE level, which have seen a large drop in take-up (so likely to save money rather than provide skills). But do we really need training for advanced diagnostics at the pre-degree level, or to train existing doctors in the latest treatments?
I'd argue that's not how the less partisan might see it and Labour may well gain undeserved credit for this.
This doesn’t change the fundamental issues that we face around excessive debt, low productivity and over-regulation. Those will continue to be millstones for any government and Reeves has shown a striking disinterest in them. But at least for today the Treasury can bask in a good headline for once.