Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
When something needs to be corrected I will happily correct it as I have done before.
No correction needs to be issued here.
Well here is the community note that goes with it and should also be shown here:
In the interview Kemi ruled out any kind of deal or pact to prop up Reform as shown in the clip below.👇
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
There'd be huge variation based on whether you lucked into a few decent players.
Japan is my guess. Likes football, low smoking and obesity rates. Even a couple of overweight smokers is going to limit team performance.
Probably the most important position would be goalkeeper. So I guess maybe tall nations like Netherlands might have an advantage too.
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
You want a country where a random set of men aged 17-40 are nearer to 17 than 40, so that rules out most Western nations and probably South America too.
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Well maybe we start by stopping all PIP payments to people with household income over £100k per year.
Astonishingly there are 200,000 such people getting PIP.
I would go much further - just for starters no welfare (exc state pension) to anyone earning over £50k.
If anyone has complex needs requiring expensive equipment etc the Govt purchases the equipment for them.
No cash handed to anyone earning over £50k. Not one penny.
I would be tempted to announce that in a year unemployment benefits will be slashed so everyone has a year to find a job or prove that they cannot work - low paid shitty jobs have to become better than unemployment. Once people get into work they find psychological and health advantages so a win win.
I would announce a scaled reduction in certain treatments where the age at which certain treatments are given is gradually reduced so that expensive treatments to those in their 80’s up are removed - I know this sounds harsh and I inevitably would be a victim if I survive that long but there has to be a massive realisation that we cannot keep people barely alive at great cost - create an insurance system if people want to dodge that.
Issue golden visas with special tax rates to individuals and institutions who buy and hold UK defence bonds. 10000 global wealthy moving in buying 20m of bonds towards state owned defence manufacturing for essentials such as shells and drones relieves some pressure but those 10,000 don’t cost the state or truly change negatively the lives of most Britons.
Offer NEETs the chance to remove their student loans by joining the forces to reduce the recruitment shortage. Offer 20% cuts for each year served.
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Sorry but I think that's missing the point. If you're the captain of a team it is your responsibility to follow the rules. If Stokes was so against the curfew he should have argued it in private or refused to serve. You can't have a team captain not obeying the rules that the rest of the players followed.
The purpose of the England Cricket team is to win cricket matches. Currently, Stokes is essential to that as a captain and as a player. Key and Baz are not.
Nothing else matters.
Since the start of 2024 in 24 tests he averages 27 with the bat and takes 2 wickets per test. He is replaceable nowadays even if a legend at his best.
He is worth far more than that makes it sound on the field of play. He bowls the tricky overs and he takes the batting risks.
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
O/T I saw that there is a very well received play in London at the moment about the saga with the Number 11 private Urinal.
Reeves made a thing about having it removed for some sort of women bollocks and then it turned out it couldn’t be removed due to building listing and the fact that it was considered of great historical importance.
Sort of sums up the gov, big talk, pointless gestures, foiled by reality.
Rach needs to get herself a she-pee so that she can make use of the facilities.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
When something needs to be corrected I will happily correct it as I have done before.
No correction needs to be issued here.
Well here is the community note that goes with it and should also be shown here:
In the interview Kemi ruled out any kind of deal or pact to prop up Reform as shown in the clip below.👇
See Tim Shipman's post, also watch the full interview.
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties. That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt. Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly. Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating. The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Sorry but I think that's missing the point. If you're the captain of a team it is your responsibility to follow the rules. If Stokes was so against the curfew he should have argued it in private or refused to serve. You can't have a team captain not obeying the rules that the rest of the players followed.
The purpose of the England Cricket team is to win cricket matches. Currently, Stokes is essential to that as a captain and as a player. Key and Baz are not.
Nothing else matters.
Since the start of 2024 in 24 tests he averages 27 with the bat and takes 2 wickets per test. He is replaceable nowadays even if a legend at his best.
He is worth far more than that makes it sound on the field of play. He bowls the tricky overs and he takes the batting risks.
No problems him staying in the side, I'm a fan and would pick him for now, but he is 35 struggles to stay fit and hasn't been delivering. Of course he is replaceable.
"How migration surge changed Belfast Tensions in Northern Irish capital reach boiling point amid rapid growth in foreign-born population
A surge in migration across Northern Ireland had already caused racial tensions to spiral long before Monday night’s knife attack.
The country’s foreign population has risen at almost twice the rate of that of mainland Britain. Race crimes are at a record high in the year to this March – up from 1,806 in the previous year to 2,367."
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Or remove 2% of pensioners. To govern is to choose…
The Admiral Anson approach. Use pensioners as cannon fodder, a great British tradition.
Retirees to carry out a year’s national service before they can receive their pension. Kills two birds with one stone. Also kills some oldies, so three birds with one stone!
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
Key must go. The only thing wrong the other night was having the curfew in place at all. Stokes did nothing wrong.
Down with this puritanical bullshit.
The ECB should have defended him last time as well. The statement from them should consistently be “beating up bullies is EXACTLY the behaviour we expect from the England captain”.
Sorry but I think that's missing the point. If you're the captain of a team it is your responsibility to follow the rules. If Stokes was so against the curfew he should have argued it in private or refused to serve. You can't have a team captain not obeying the rules that the rest of the players followed.
The purpose of the England Cricket team is to win cricket matches. Currently, Stokes is essential to that as a captain and as a player. Key and Baz are not.
Nothing else matters.
Since the start of 2024 in 24 tests he averages 27 with the bat and takes 2 wickets per test. He is replaceable nowadays even if a legend at his best.
He is worth far more than that makes it sound on the field of play. He bowls the tricky overs and he takes the batting risks.
No problems him staying in the side, I'm a fan and would pick him for now, but he is 35 struggles to stay fit and hasn't been delivering. Of course he is replaceable.
That’s what my anniversary card from my wife said…
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
When something needs to be corrected I will happily correct it as I have done before.
No correction needs to be issued here.
Well here is the community note that goes with it and should also be shown here:
In the interview Kemi ruled out any kind of deal or pact to prop up Reform as shown in the clip below.👇
See Tim Shipman's post, also watch the full interview.
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties. That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt. Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly. Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating. The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
I once watched a Bolivian league football match in Potosi (the highest city in the world, I *think*). They were playing a team from the lowlands. It was genuinely laughable. The lowlands team could hardly walk around the pitch by the end, Potosi were running rings around them. I think it ended up about 13-0.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
So if Stokes is out, who is in? And do we think they can end up not out?
So, Stokes went out when he should have stayed in, so now he is out, which means he won’t be in, so can’t be out. Next time he should stay in, and not go out.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Or remove 2% of pensioners. To govern is to choose…
The Admiral Anson approach. Use pensioners as cannon fodder, a great British tradition.
Retirees to carry out a year’s national service before they can receive their pension. Kills two birds with one stone. Also kills some oldies, so three birds with one stone!
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
I once watched a Bolivian league football match in Potosi (the highest city in the world, I *think*). They were playing a team from the lowlands. It was genuinely laughable. The lowlands team could hardly walk around the pitch by the end, Potosi were running rings around them. I think it ended up about 13-0.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
See, this is where we should have had the England training camp. For two years.
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
When something needs to be corrected I will happily correct it as I have done before.
No correction needs to be issued here.
Well here is the community note that goes with it and should also be shown here:
In the interview Kemi ruled out any kind of deal or pact to prop up Reform as shown in the clip below.👇
See Tim Shipman's post, also watch the full interview.
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties. That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt. Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly. Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating. The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
Healey was right on defence and if he does back Burnham after his resignation and Burnham does increase defence spending that will be good for NATO and our national security.
In terms of Kemi's comments she is taking a risk, while about half of Conservatives would back making Farage PM the other half would prefer the Tories to abstain in a hung parliament. Some would even prefer to deal with Labour or the LDs. It also won't help Conservative incumbents gain anti Reform tactical votes
'This is bullshit.
What I ACTUALLY said is we "cannot have another left-wing government. But I'm afraid that Reform has quite a lot of left-wing ideas. They want more benefits. They want nationalisation” I then said. On "deals, non-aggression pacts and so on....I'm just saying no. It's just no, no, no, no, no, no, no."
Kemi now rules out any deals with Reform, at least until a GE result is through
That's not very Prime Ministerial language from her.
Lee Cain's post has been community noted for being bullshit / utterly wrong. Tim Montgomerie deleted his post and admitted it was incorrect as she said nothing of the sort.
Maybe something like that should be used on here for dodgy headers.
When something needs to be corrected I will happily correct it as I have done before.
No correction needs to be issued here.
Well here is the community note that goes with it and should also be shown here:
In the interview Kemi ruled out any kind of deal or pact to prop up Reform as shown in the clip below.👇
See Tim Shipman's post, also watch the full interview.
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties. That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt. Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly. Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating. The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
1 It was a gaffe, because KB knows she can't be seen to side with Farage or Lowe. But she can't help herself.
2 It can't be a gaffe, because KB Doesn't Do Gaffes.
3 it's more evidence that KB has an advanced case of "Something is WRONG on the internet" twitter brain
No, it doesn't matter tonight. But as long as the Conservatives aren't in clear second place, the question "if it's an inconclusive election in 2028/9, which way will you jump?" isn't going away. And the Conservatives are going to find it harder to answer than the Inbetweeners have- and I'm not sure they have ever answered it well.
39% of Britons think the WASPI Women should be given compensation
Sympathise, should compensate: 36% Do not sympathise, should compensate: 3% Sympathise, should not compensate: 13% Do not sympathise, should not compensate: 7%
I knew something was wrong on Sunday, poor George Russell.
F1 admits pitlane blunder as Alpine win first stage of Pierre Gasly appeal
Pitlane speeding penalties cost French driver spot on Monaco GP podium but team win right of review after timing error emerges
Alpine have won a right of review on Pierre Gasly’s Monaco penalties after Formula One Management (FOM) admitted it inaccurately measured the distance of the pitlane and overestimated the speed of his car.
Pierre Gasly was one of five drivers — alongside Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Franco Colapinto — who received penalties for pitlane speeding, which immediately sparked intrigue given it is rare for so many drivers to be punished for the same offence.
Gasly crossed the line in third, but his two penalties cost him a spot on the podium and demoted him to seventh. He described it as “the hardest day I’ve ever had in F1”.
Alpine winning the first stage of the hearing was a significant victory in itself given they were required to present a “significant and relevant new element” which wasn’t available to the stewards at the time. This is a notably high bar to pass.
FOM runs Formula 1 and is owned by Liberty Media, while the FIA is the sport’s governing body. The FIA and its stewards were using the FOM data, as it is the timekeeping supplier for the competition.
Remarkably, it was revealed in an FIA document as part of the hearing that “FOM, as Official Timekeeping Supplier to the Competition, provided evidence that the distance used in calculating the F1 Official Timing (and hence the pitlane speed) was inaccurate and overestimated the speed of Car 10 [Gasly]”
That would most likely mean that all the drivers penalised were in fact not speeding, as many of them insisted directly after the race, given they all have a pitlane speed limiter they press. It is another example of the remarkable bad luck that Russell, in particular, has had this season.
His first five-second penalty for pitlane speeding was not served, resulting in a drive-through penalty that left him out of the points entirely. If the distance had been calculated correctly, it is likely he would not have had the initial penalty at all.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
I once watched a Bolivian league football match in Potosi (the highest city in the world, I *think*). They were playing a team from the lowlands. It was genuinely laughable. The lowlands team could hardly walk around the pitch by the end, Potosi were running rings around them. I think it ended up about 13-0.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
I would suggest Ethopia. Young, fit, tall. Live at high altitude.
"John Healey’s dramatic resignation has stunned Westminster – but it did not come out of a clear blue sky.
Storm clouds were gathering over the Ministry of Defence 24 hours earlier when the former defence secretary had what friends describe as a ‘stand-up row’ with Rachel Reeves.
The Chancellor told him bluntly that she would not sign up to his demand that defence spending should rise to three per cent of GDP by the end of the decade.
And she warned him that, after months of wrangling, he would effectively be offered just £10billion to shore up Britain’s defences – barely a third of the £28billion deemed necessary.
Mr Healey, who was due to be unveiling the first elements of the plan on Friday morning, was appalled.
He told Keir Starmer that the Treasury’s position was unacceptable and urged him to intervene.
After a night’s deliberation and tense talks with Ms Reeves, the PM rang Mr Healey on Thursday morning to say he was siding with the Chancellor. Sir Keir invited him in to discuss the situation face to face, arguing that the cash injection would still amount to the largest for years.
Mr Healey took the PM’s call while he was travelling to Gosport for an event with his Australian counterpart Richard Marles. He declined the invitation for a further discussion with the PM and tendered his resignation with immediate effect."
Apparently the difference is 14 billion
Welfare is 300 billion
Less than 5% cut in welfare pays for the defence of our nation
It is absolute nonsense to put us at risk by not investing in defence as required by the defence review
No. It is £14bn over 4 years.
£3.5bn per year.
Approx 1% of welfare budget.
So 2% off pensions, then.
I'm sure that will cause no blowback whatsoever.
Or remove 2% of pensioners. To govern is to choose…
The Admiral Anson approach. Use pensioners as cannon fodder, a great British tradition.
Retirees to carry out a year’s national service before they can receive their pension. Kills two birds with one stone. Also kills some oldies, so three birds with one stone!
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
I once watched a Bolivian league football match in Potosi (the highest city in the world, I *think*). They were playing a team from the lowlands. It was genuinely laughable. The lowlands team could hardly walk around the pitch by the end, Potosi were running rings around them. I think it ended up about 13-0.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
I would suggest Ethopia. Young, fit, tall.
Brazil. Huge population, few fatties, football is a religion, everyone grows up playing. Ethiopians are built like twiglets so useless in the hurly burly of the penalty box.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
I once watched a Bolivian league football match in Potosi (the highest city in the world, I *think*). They were playing a team from the lowlands. It was genuinely laughable. The lowlands team could hardly walk around the pitch by the end, Potosi were running rings around them. I think it ended up about 13-0.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
I would suggest Ethopia. Young, fit, tall.
Brazil. Huge population, few fatties, football is a religion, everyone grows up playing. Ethiopians are built like twiglets so useless in the hurly burly of the penalty box.
Is this a different Brazil to the one with 68% overweight and 30% obesity?
The whole thing is a farce, FOM's timing system can indicate a driver was speeding when they were not, they just took a sharp line on the pit entrance. Trying to measure speed to one-tenth of a km/h using an average speed system doesn't work unless the cars all take exactly the same path.
It looks like a slam dunk Gasly will get his podium back.
But the drivers who got invalid penalties and served them during the race are still screwed.
Do you think they should put one in for DEI reasons?
(They do have one on the bench btw)
Isn't that what their cricket and rugby teams have to do with black players?
7% of South Africans are white. So the chance of no white player in a randomly selected team would be 44%. The chance of no blacks in an 11 man random team is 0.000001%
It is one of those much beloved false equivalences.
I have a theory -and it's just a theory mind- that they don't select their teams randomly.
Would be a significantly more interesting competition if they did. And would actually get us a decent public health system.
I wonder who would win a random World Cup? (Men between 17-40)
I reckon Uruguay. They consistently do better than should be expected from the size of their population.
Nepal I reckon, if totally random. Purely based on fitness.
I once watched a Bolivian league football match in Potosi (the highest city in the world, I *think*). They were playing a team from the lowlands. It was genuinely laughable. The lowlands team could hardly walk around the pitch by the end, Potosi were running rings around them. I think it ended up about 13-0.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
I would suggest Ethopia. Young, fit, tall.
Brazil. Huge population, few fatties, football is a religion, everyone grows up playing. Ethiopians are built like twiglets so useless in the hurly burly of the penalty box.
Is this a different Brazil to the one with 68% overweight and 30% obesity?
Yes. That’s Fat Brazil. I’m thinking of Beach Brazil.
The whole thing is a farce, FOM's timing system can indicate a driver was speeding when they were not, they just took a sharp line on the pit entrance. Trying to measure speed to one-tenth of a km/h using an average speed system doesn't work unless the cars all take exactly the same path.
It looks like a slam dunk Gasly will get his podium back.
But the drivers who got invalid penalties and served them during the race are still screwed.
Just re-run the whole race, mid-week without rebuilding the circuit and having it open to normal traffic.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn? Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
Government sources say Darren Jones is going around telling people how confident he is that he will score the Defence Sec job.
Al Carns is reluctant apparently. I am of the opinion that Dazza should hold off until at least next Friday.
Who on earth would want that poisoned chalice right now, and especially if they wanted the confidence of the Military brass? Right now I would also have Al Carns on resignation watch if like Healey he really cares about the need for enough Defence funding to keep our armed forces safe and as a viable functioning military force.
I had a gut feeling that Al Carns especially being ex military would follow John Healey out the door of the Ministry of Defence tonight. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have now got to seriously be the worst and definitely the weakest PM and Chancellor we have had in my adult living memory and I say that following on from the disaster that was Liz Truss's premiership!
Good luck to Dan Jarvis taking on the poisoned chalice of Defence Secretary, and I bloody well hope he got some decent concessions on Defence spending as a condition of taking on what might well be a very brief tenure in the job or I will think a hell of a lot less of him. It really does feel like they are rearranging the deckchairs on this sinking Labour Government in No10 and No11 tonight.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
In Healey’s defence (no pun intended), and I hate to defend a Labour minister, he’s probably been unable to change anything as he has been hamstrung by the treasury and the defence review.
Dura makes a regular point that if you cut off advancement to senior positions then you potentially lose good people and the cost of these roles is a drop in the ocean.
There should be two separate spending streams - one for kit based on the new realities of war where it’s expected it will get used and depleted and the other, which would also help growth to a small extent, in funding factories building ammo and drones etc. I don’t care if Labour pork barrel it and put these new factories in their constituencies, just offer a fast track planning for national security, lend the money for the infrastructure and get on with it.
Government sources say Darren Jones is going around telling people how confident he is that he will score the Defence Sec job.
Al Carns is reluctant apparently. I am of the opinion that Dazza should hold off until at least next Friday.
Who on earth would want that poisoned chalice right now, and especially if they wanted the confidence of the Military brass? Right now I would also have Al Carns on resignation watch if like Healey he really cares about the need for enough Defence funding to keep our armed forces safe and as a viable functioning military force.
I had a gut feeling that Al Carns especially being ex military would follow John Healey out the door of the Ministry of Defence tonight. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have now got to seriously be the worst and definitely the weakest PM and Chancellor we have had in my adult living memory and I say that following on from the disaster that was Liz Truss's premiership!
Good luck to Dan Jarvis taking on the poisoned chalice of Defence Secretary, and I bloody well hope he got some decent concessions on Defence spending as a condition of taking on what might well be a very brief tenure in the job or I will think a hell of a lot less of him. It really does feel like they are rearranging the deckchairs on this sinking Labour Government in No10 and No11 tonight.
I'd be surprised if much substantive happens; as you say it's likely to be a brief tenure. Military background and former security minister I think, so vetting should be rapid.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
I am sorry but the “more admirals than ships” nonsense is unworthy of you. “Large, complex, organisation operating complex machinery requires senior managers” is not news and not the problem.
Compare us with our peers and we do better than most, and much the same as the French (the best comparison). This stuff is just hard, and expensive.
Can improvements be made? Of course. Is there some deep underlying scandal? Nah. Well maybe Ajax.
Edit - and when looking at the NOD budget remember that pre-2010 operations were an extra budget line, and now MOD must find room for them, including support to Ukraine. The cupboard is bare.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
I am sorry but the “more admirals than ships” nonsense is unworthy of you. “Large, complex, organisation operating complex machinery requires senior managers” is not news and not the problem.
Compare us with our peers and we do better than most, and much the same as the French (the best comparison). This stuff is just hard, and expensive.
Can improvements be made? Of course. Is there some deep underlying scandal? Nah. Well maybe Ajax.
I would question whether a navy the size of our current fleet actually requires a single admiral. Its simply too small and the resources used for their staffing etc needs to be deployed to the front line. The Admiralty is a complex organisation that would cope with a much, much larger navy than we are ever likely to have again. We need to downsize our administration and focus on fighting capability.
Government sources say Darren Jones is going around telling people how confident he is that he will score the Defence Sec job.
Al Carns is reluctant apparently. I am of the opinion that Dazza should hold off until at least next Friday.
Who on earth would want that poisoned chalice right now, and especially if they wanted the confidence of the Military brass? Right now I would also have Al Carns on resignation watch if like Healey he really cares about the need for enough Defence funding to keep our armed forces safe and as a viable functioning military force.
I had a gut feeling that Al Carns especially being ex military would follow John Healey out the door of the Ministry of Defence tonight. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have now got to seriously be the worst and definitely the weakest PM and Chancellor we have had in my adult living memory and I say that following on from the disaster that was Liz Truss's premiership!
Good luck to Dan Jarvis taking on the poisoned chalice of Defence Secretary, and I bloody well hope he got some decent concessions on Defence spending as a condition of taking on what might well be a very brief tenure in the job or I will think a hell of a lot less of him. It really does feel like they are rearranging the deckchairs on this sinking Labour Government in No10 and No11 tonight.
He's weak because the party have decided to ditch him. They've decided to ditch him because he's hugely unpopular. He's hugely unpopular because (opinions vary but mine is) he cannot connect with the public.
I wonder how many games in this WC are going to finish 11 aside. Hopefully the players will take notice and be a lot more careful but frankly 2 of those red cards seemed absurd to me.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
I am sorry but the “more admirals than ships” nonsense is unworthy of you. “Large, complex, organisation operating complex machinery requires senior managers” is not news and not the problem.
Compare us with our peers and we do better than most, and much the same as the French (the best comparison). This stuff is just hard, and expensive.
Can improvements be made? Of course. Is there some deep underlying scandal? Nah. Well maybe Ajax.
Edit - and when looking at the NOD budget remember that pre-2010 operations were an extra budget line, and now MOD must find room for them, including support to Ukraine. The cupboard is bare.
Ajax is without doubt a scandal and some serious lawyers need to be all over procurement contracts to ensure that if what is promised isn’t delivered satisfactorily then the cost is on the manufacturer not the tax payer.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
There's certainly a lot of waste and the MoD's procurement process is a disaster that needs nuked from orbit, but I think it's fair to point out that a lot of the current operational issues are down to penny pinching in the last 20 years.
A ship that develops problems gets tied up at Portsmouth because there's no money in this year's budget to fix it. It sits there for two or three years, quietly deteriorating. When the money is found for repairs engineers get aboard and find those years of neglect have caused a whole set of new issues the repair budget can't cover. So it sits there for more months or years, and eventually gets raided for parts, further increasing the cost of actually getting it back into service.
Lack of a stable pipeline for new ships and submarines exacerbates this by forcing the few serviceable units to be worked to death (see Type 23).
Continue with the highest of 2.5% annually, inflation and earnings, but rather than continuing to calculate the highest of those on an annual basis, freeze the date against which these are baselined to 6th April 2025 (the latest calculated lock date).
Triple lock.protected, but no longer such an escalator.
That’s not a bad idea as a political solution. Still mad compared to just fixing to CPI like other benefits.
For me the perfect policy would be making landlords ineligible for the State Pension. Your retired lifestyle should not rely on milking young people dry, and anyone with more than one house is minted anyway.
That would simply result in a stampede to sell second homes..
Crashing house prices for first time buyers
"milking young people dry"?
Do you think rents are high because all landlords are grasping greedy bastards or because there are not enough houses for the population?
I think it’s because there are so many young people on decent salaries who can pay that high rent but can’t build the capital to compete with investors.
I was repeatedly outbid by cash buying pensioners when I bought my first flat, some going 25% over home report. If we make housing a rubbish investment then demand, and therefore price, will crater in places like Edinburgh.
Telegraph guy was proposing bringing back MIRAS for first time buyers for their first ten years of mortgage the other day. And some thinktank proposed young people cutting their state pension in exchange for a deposit for house when young.
Interesting ideas but again supply is the issue.
Labour have failed in spades to build their target house building. It has been dismal.
Supply is an issue, but not the only one. We’ve built millions of homes over the last 30 years but the number being rented out has grown even faster.
Labour’s target was to increase the housing stock by 6% , which would have decreased prices by about 3% on current price elasticity. To put that in perspective, house prices have increased by 26% in the last 10 years.
The owning vs renting thing is a sideshow. The root problem is that homes are really expensive either way, if the weren't, it wouldn't be possible to make loads of money out of renting them out.
The real problem is that every single one of those millions of houses built has been insufficient to keep up with population growth. This population growth stems almost entirely from 30 years of almost unfettered mass immigration, largely against the fairly clearly expressed will of the population.
We can't begin to fix house prices without stopping the population growing, and by far the easiest way to fix it quickly is to get the population shrinking via a near total block on immigration.
Housing stock has grown faster than the population, significantly so in Scotland. Population growth accounts for very little in the increase in housing costs - our population has grown by 9% over the past 30 years, dwellings up more than double that, and real house prices up 65%.
Having just crunched the numbers, we're both sort of wrong, although I'm a little closer to the truth.
UK population has increased by 22.3% 1996-2026. Total number UK dwellings has increased by 23% 1996-2026. I.e, despite three decades of building like mad, we're are pretty much the same ratio of people to houses as we were in 1996.
You can't take the Scottish numbers in isolation, it's market is too interlinked to England and Wales.
In real term, average house prices have slightly more than doubled (so says gemini) since 1996. I suspect that is mostly the influence of 2nd incomes counting for more with mortgage companies, which has boosted the amount of cash washing around the housing market.
There's also the fact that household sizes are trending down, which increases housing demand per head of population.
What is fairly indisputable is that if we'd built 22% more houses without importing the best part of 20% of the population at the same time, we'd actually have an oversupply of housing, and house prices would be rock bottom. Obviously, in practice, housing would only have been built where it was profitable to do so, so house prices would never have dropped below the build cost, however we would have saved ourselves concreting over a lot of the country by not building those houses.
We now have an almost unprecedented opportunity to have really cheap housing for the foreseeable future, potentially well below build costs, just by letting the inevitable happen, and the population drift down. All we have to do is stop enough immigration to turn it slightly negative, and demographics will do the rest.
I wonder how many games in this WC are going to finish 11 aside. Hopefully the players will take notice and be a lot more careful but frankly 2 of those red cards seemed absurd to me.
It could go two ways, teams who start later are at an advantage as they learn and adapt to new strange interpretations or as sometimes happens the powers that be aske them to tone it down having started with a no-nonsense disciplinary approach. No idea how it will go. Depends what Donald wants Gianni to do I guess.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
I am sorry but the “more admirals than ships” nonsense is unworthy of you. “Large, complex, organisation operating complex machinery requires senior managers” is not news and not the problem.
Compare us with our peers and we do better than most, and much the same as the French (the best comparison). This stuff is just hard, and expensive.
Can improvements be made? Of course. Is there some deep underlying scandal? Nah. Well maybe Ajax.
I would question whether a navy the size of our current fleet actually requires a single admiral. It’s simply too small and the resources used for their staffing etc needs to be deployed to the front line. The Admiralty is a complex organisation that would cope with a much, much larger navy than we are ever likely to have again. We need to downsize our administration and focus on fighting capability.
Sorry but that’s just a bit silly. It’s partly about managing the people, but it’s also about having senior experienced, and qualified people to oversee the maintenance (and post the last set of reforms, the procurement) of multiple multi-billion pound engineering projects more complex than most.
As opening games go nothing will ever beat Argentina v Cameroon.
After that match poor Claudio Caniggia spent the rest of the tournament looking for somebody with a bollock donor card.
I remember loving Caniggia, I even had an Argentina shirt with his name and number. He had perfect balance, football and partying. Darwin Nunez always reminds me of him in his style of play.
So, we are spending nearly £60bn on defence this year. We struggle to put a single ship to sea. Our carriers seem to spend all their time in dock. We have a pitiful number of planes. Our army is one of the smallest we have ever had and almost certainly incapable of putting 5k soldiers on the front line for anything other than the briefest of times (which is how long their ammunition would last anyway).
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn. Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
There's certainly a lot of waste and the MoD's procurement process is a disaster that needs nuked from orbit, but I think it's fair to point out that a lot of the current operational issues are down to penny pinching in the last 20 years.
A ship that develops problems gets tied up at Portsmouth because there's no money in this year's budget to fix it. It sits there for two or three years, quietly deteriorating. When the money is found for repairs engineers get aboard and find those years of neglect have caused a whole set of new issues the repair budget can't cover. So it sits there for more months or years, and eventually gets raided for parts, further increasing the cost of actually getting it back into service.
Lack of a stable pipeline for new ships and submarines exacerbates this by forcing the few serviceable units to be worked to death (see Type 23).
I agree that these are not new problems or, on the whole, problems that have arisen on Healey's watch. But I still await an answer about what he has done about it.
Sounds like testing the water for a leadership run:
In his resignation letter, Al Carns said: “Too many working people in this country feel insecure even when they are doing everything right. They work hard, contribute, pay their taxes and still feel one setback away from trouble. Public confidence in our institutions is weakening and politics increasingly looks performative while everyday life gets harder.
“The machinery of government itself has been left to decay. Decisions that should take days, take months. Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it. We are trying to govern a more dangerous world with processes designed for a calmer one, and the gap is now showing in the things that matter most.
“National resilience is about more than defence in the narrow sense. A strong country is not simply one with capable armed forces. It is one where working people feel economically secure, public services function, energy is resilient, communities are stable and young people can see a future worth working towards.”
As a Tory I could vote for that pitch, just depends on the route to that.
I wonder how many games in this WC are going to finish 11 aside. Hopefully the players will take notice and be a lot more careful but frankly 2 of those red cards seemed absurd to me.
It could go two ways, teams who start later are at an advantage as they learn and adapt to new strange interpretations or as sometimes happens the powers that be aske them to tone it down having started with a no-nonsense disciplinary approach. No idea how it will go. Depends what Donald wants Gianni to do I guess.
Comments
In the interview Kemi ruled out any kind of deal or pact to prop up Reform as shown in the clip below.👇
https://x.com/hackblackburn/status/2065049359541055946?s=61&t=QVr-A1_rJdv0TRPZiVFccA
Nothing in this clip says what you have written.
Japan is my guess. Likes football, low smoking and obesity rates. Even a couple of overweight smokers is going to limit team performance.
Probably the most important position would be goalkeeper. So I guess maybe tall nations like Netherlands might have an advantage too.
I would announce a scaled reduction in certain treatments where the age at which certain treatments are given is gradually reduced so that expensive treatments to those in their 80’s up are removed - I know this sounds harsh and I inevitably would be a victim if I survive that long but there has to be a massive realisation that we cannot keep people barely alive at great cost - create an insurance system if people want to dodge that.
Issue golden visas with special tax rates to individuals and institutions who buy and hold UK defence bonds. 10000 global wealthy moving in buying 20m of bonds towards state owned defence manufacturing for essentials such as shells and drones relieves some pressure but those 10,000 don’t cost the state or truly change negatively the lives of most Britons.
Offer NEETs the chance to remove their student loans by joining the forces to reduce the recruitment shortage. Offer 20% cuts for each year served.
BREAK: Dan Jarvis is the new Defence Secretary
Kemi Badenoch has conveniently cut the question I asked her, which was directly relating to propping up Reform AFTER an election as an alternative to Labour plus some crazy lefties.
That's when she said there must never be another left wing govt.
Her 'no, no, no...' answer was about pacts BEFORE an election. It did not follow on directly.
Yes, she says Reform has some left-wing policies, but she made totally clear she would work with a party pursuing a 'conservative' agenda, which is clearly what Reform is mostly advocating.
The proof is that she says she is already in a casual arrangement with Rupert Lowe. The lady doth protest too much. It was very clear in the room what I was asking
NO ONE, me or her, was talking about a coalition
https://x.com/ShippersUnbound/status/2065088777895202897
Tensions in Northern Irish capital reach boiling point amid rapid growth in foreign-born population
A surge in migration across Northern Ireland had already caused racial tensions to spiral long before Monday night’s knife attack.
The country’s foreign population has risen at almost twice the rate of that of mainland Britain. Race crimes are at a record high in the year to this March – up from 1,806 in the previous year to 2,367."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/06/11/migration-belfast-northern-ireland-racism-riots-asylum/
Well it might not have said “35”.
I don't know what proportion of Bolivians live on the Altiplano, but they might do surprising well on account of relative fitness.
First red card to SA
Sorry it was a free kick, outside the pen area.
1 It was a gaffe, because KB knows she can't be seen to side with Farage or Lowe. But she can't help herself.
2 It can't be a gaffe, because KB Doesn't Do Gaffes.
3 it's more evidence that KB has an advanced case of "Something is WRONG on the internet" twitter brain
No, it doesn't matter tonight. But as long as the Conservatives aren't in clear second place, the question "if it's an inconclusive election in 2028/9, which way will you jump?" isn't going away. And the Conservatives are going to find it harder to answer than the Inbetweeners have- and I'm not sure they have ever answered it well.
F1 admits pitlane blunder as Alpine win first stage of Pierre Gasly appeal
Pitlane speeding penalties cost French driver spot on Monaco GP podium but team win right of review after timing error emerges
Alpine have won a right of review on Pierre Gasly’s Monaco penalties after Formula One Management (FOM) admitted it inaccurately measured the distance of the pitlane and overestimated the speed of his car.
Pierre Gasly was one of five drivers — alongside Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Oscar Piastri and Franco Colapinto — who received penalties for pitlane speeding, which immediately sparked intrigue given it is rare for so many drivers to be punished for the same offence.
Gasly crossed the line in third, but his two penalties cost him a spot on the podium and demoted him to seventh. He described it as “the hardest day I’ve ever had in F1”.
Alpine winning the first stage of the hearing was a significant victory in itself given they were required to present a “significant and relevant new element” which wasn’t available to the stewards at the time. This is a notably high bar to pass.
FOM runs Formula 1 and is owned by Liberty Media, while the FIA is the sport’s governing body. The FIA and its stewards were using the FOM data, as it is the timekeeping supplier for the competition.
Remarkably, it was revealed in an FIA document as part of the hearing that “FOM, as Official Timekeeping Supplier to the Competition, provided evidence that the distance used in calculating the F1 Official Timing (and hence the pitlane speed) was inaccurate and overestimated the speed of Car 10 [Gasly]”
That would most likely mean that all the drivers penalised were in fact not speeding, as many of them insisted directly after the race, given they all have a pitlane speed limiter they press. It is another example of the remarkable bad luck that Russell, in particular, has had this season.
His first five-second penalty for pitlane speeding was not served, resulting in a drive-through penalty that left him out of the points entirely. If the distance had been calculated correctly, it is likely he would not have had the initial penalty at all.
https://www.thetimes.com/sport/formula-one/article/pitlane-blunder-alpine-win-first-stage-pierre-gasly-appeal-m6khlr5cc
It looks like a slam dunk Gasly will get his podium back.
But the drivers who got invalid penalties and served them during the race are still screwed.
Game's gone.
Down to 9 men.
John Healey may well be right that we need to invest in defence but what, as Secretary of State, has he done to improve our return on that £60bn? Last time I checked we had something like 31 flag officers for that frigate that we managed, with a fair bit of effort, to make seaworthy. According to CoPilot, the British Army currently has three full generals, nine lieutenant generals, and approximately 44 major generals on active duty. How many of these are in charge of a platoon? The money blown on the Atlas vehicle is almost beyond belief.
This chronic waste of resources is by no means all Healey's fault, of course, but I see precious little evidence that he has done much, if anything, to improve this chronic situation.
Good luck to Dan Jarvis taking on the poisoned chalice of Defence Secretary, and I bloody well hope he got some decent concessions on Defence spending as a condition of taking on what might well be a very brief tenure in the job or I will think a hell of a lot less of him. It really does feel like they are rearranging the deckchairs on this sinking Labour Government in No10 and No11 tonight.
Al Carns resignation apology to colleagues on WhatsApp opens with “Legends”, concludes: “Stay awesome!”
https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/2065166204013064616
Dura makes a regular point that if you cut off advancement to senior positions then you potentially lose good people and the cost of these roles is a drop in the ocean.
There should be two separate spending streams - one for kit based on the new realities of war where it’s expected it will get used and depleted and the other, which would also help growth to a small extent, in funding factories building ammo and drones etc. I don’t care if Labour pork barrel it and put these new factories in their constituencies, just offer a fast track planning for national security, lend the money for the infrastructure and get on with it.
Military background and former security minister I think, so vetting should be rapid.
Compare us with our peers and we do better than most, and much the same as the French (the best comparison). This stuff is just hard, and expensive.
Can improvements be made? Of course. Is there some deep underlying scandal? Nah. Well maybe Ajax.
Edit - and when looking at the NOD budget remember that pre-2010 operations were an extra budget line, and now MOD must find room for them, including support to Ukraine. The cupboard is bare.
A ship that develops problems gets tied up at Portsmouth because there's no money in this year's budget to fix it. It sits there for two or three years, quietly deteriorating. When the money is found for repairs engineers get aboard and find those years of neglect have caused a whole set of new issues the repair budget can't cover. So it sits there for more months or years, and eventually gets raided for parts, further increasing the cost of actually getting it back into service.
Lack of a stable pipeline for new ships and submarines exacerbates this by forcing the few serviceable units to be worked to death (see Type 23).
UK population has increased by 22.3% 1996-2026.
Total number UK dwellings has increased by 23% 1996-2026. I.e, despite three decades of building like mad, we're are pretty much the same ratio of people to houses as we were in 1996.
You can't take the Scottish numbers in isolation, it's market is too interlinked to England and Wales.
In real term, average house prices have slightly more than doubled (so says gemini) since 1996. I suspect that is mostly the influence of 2nd incomes counting for more with mortgage companies, which has boosted the amount of cash washing around the housing market.
There's also the fact that household sizes are trending down, which increases housing demand per head of population.
What is fairly indisputable is that if we'd built 22% more houses without importing the best part of 20% of the population at the same time, we'd actually have an oversupply of housing, and house prices would be rock bottom.
Obviously, in practice, housing would only have been built where it was profitable to do so, so house prices would never have dropped below the build cost, however we would have saved ourselves concreting over a lot of the country by not building those houses.
We now have an almost unprecedented opportunity to have really cheap housing for the foreseeable future, potentially well below build costs, just by letting the inevitable happen, and the population drift down. All we have to do is stop enough immigration to turn it slightly negative, and demographics will do the rest.
After that match poor Claudio Caniggia spent the rest of the tournament looking for somebody with a bollock donor card.
In his resignation letter, Al Carns said: “Too many working people in this country feel insecure even when they are doing everything right. They work hard, contribute, pay their taxes and still feel one setback away from trouble. Public confidence in our institutions is weakening and politics increasingly looks performative while everyday life gets harder.
“The machinery of government itself has been left to decay. Decisions that should take days, take months. Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it. We are trying to govern a more dangerous world with processes designed for a calmer one, and the gap is now showing in the things that matter most.
“National resilience is about more than defence in the narrow sense. A strong country is not simply one with capable armed forces. It is one where working people feel economically secure, public services function, energy is resilient, communities are stable and young people can see a future worth working towards.”
As a Tory I could vote for that pitch, just depends on the route to that.