Who will be the next Foreign Secretary? – politicalbetting.com
Who will be the next Foreign Secretary? – politicalbetting.com
Amusingly Wes Streeting is the favourite to be the next Foreign Secretary as well as the favourite to be the next Chancellor in the markets from Ladbrokes which says a lot about the way his star is in the ascendancy.
1
Comments
Oh it keeps getting better. Russian central bank admits to printing 5trn roubles (£25bn or so, c.2.5% of GDP) and says more is coming. Stock market falling.
https://x.com/realjakebroe/status/2069595528351092773
That might explain the queues at the banks we saw earlier.
Add the Moscow refinery being totally shut down at least into 2027, and they’re not having the best of weeks!
Sevastopol and Kerch are on fire as well.
Never mind.
But I think Starmer is just too hurt to accept it. And Vic wants him home.
Wes as next FS is just absurd - its a shame there is no money to lay on BF
My guess is that a Burnham government, events allowing, will be much more domestically focused than Starmer proved to be. I can see him leaving the position alone.
Give FS to Carns, with the sole brief of shaking Trump extremely firmly by the hand until he surrenders.
The oligarchs are going to be selling the Big Issue at this rate.
I am waiting for China to make a move - buying its old far-Russian territories at a few kopecks on the rouble.
What would be the price to Xi of feeding Moscow this winter?
https://x.com/shuttsapalooza/status/2069684743898059200?s=46
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1ue9yht/megathread_grand_theft_auto_vi_prices_announced/
Dan Jarvis would be excellent at Defence
Looks like the Vanilla/Cloudflare interface is screwed, perhaps a failed server in the pool that doesn’t show as actually failed.
*Might be able to slim it down enough to make it a drawer!
Not so sure about Jarvis at Defence. It concerns me he was willing to take the job on the basis of the settlement that clearly is not good enough to prevent the serious deterioration of our Armed Forces.
Let’s hope they actually stick to the GTA6 release date this time. Some of us have already booked the week off work in November!
Unless they've really made a mistake that's going to be the best selling entertainment product of the year.
I like GTA2 the best because they'd perfected the top-down version with that one. The move to 3D is nice and impressive and all that, and they are technically stunning games (especially stuff like Liberty City), but the sheer playability of GTA2 is the one I'd go for first.
The first item on the next full council meeting is revoking the existing Climate Emergency Declaration with a Practical Environmental and Resilience Strategy.
That meeting should be being held today but due to the weather being too hot they've moved it to next Thursday instead.
https://democracy.west-norfolk.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?CId=151&MId=7037
At $80, they only need to sell 12.5m copies worldwide for a billion dollars. Could be an order of magnitude more than that, just on release day.
I’m not the only fortysomething in my office buying a PS5 this summer in anticipation of it!!
Am I missing something?
When I was in Istanbul a couple of years ago, there was a 50% spread between the buy and sell price on Rubles.
My most fervent hope is that he gets it right with the US president. By which I mean he makes no effort with him whatsoever. Ignores him to the greatest extent possible. If he calls, ok take it, but pretty much nothing else. No response (positive or negative) to tweets or media comments. No squirmy fake 'chemistry'. No outgoing calls. No trip to Washington. No PM/Prez meetings at all other than what can't be avoided at summits. No entreaties on trade. No attempts to pander or to 'manage' on foreign or defence matters. Just put that 100% monstrosity of an individual in the fridge and close the door.
I'll be judging our new Labour PM on this more than anything. If he does it as above I'll be impressed and delighted. If he doesn't, if it's the same old same old, I'll be sad and disappointed.
Vanilla, Disqus etc are crappy products but possibly still better than the alternatives.
Less than 1 in 16 I think.
Perhaps find some new ones and put them in a frame, graded like baseball cards.
“He doesn’t even want to meet me, so if he doesn’t drop his country’s gratuitous attacks on American tech companies he can expect tariffs on British imports to rise from 5% to 50% next month. Sorry about all of those fancy cars and the Scotch whisky industry, where the US is the largest export market by far.”
I think Streeting is the only current/recent cabinet member that Burnham does need to offer a senior job to. I would actually make him Home Sec (although I have no particular expectations Burnham will do that). Streeting has a moral compass, which is useful in that job. Not exactly my moral compass, but he does have one and Burnham doesn't, so it's complementary. A Theresa May figure if you will.
The UK should treat Gagauzia’s crisis as a rule‑of‑law and security issue in Moldova’s neighbourhood: back Chişinău’s constitutional framework, push hard (but quietly) for rapid, credible elections under national law, and work with EU/US/OSCE to deter spoilers—especially those linked to Russian influence—while visibly engaging Gagauz society so this doesn’t look like “London vs Gagauzia” but “London for free elections in Gagauzia”.
I think that's probably a better answer than 87% of MPs could come up with unaided. It then offered to sketch a short ministerial statement that looked good. I hereby approve Selebian's plan.
Note that they are talking about episodes where the mean temperature hit… 22 and a bit degrees
And they were noticing deaths in the statistics.
Nah, I say we Take Back Control
As the site got more popular, though, it became unusable. In particular, it was very slow, and the site was absolutely spammed with adverts for certain pharmaceuticals that I know no PBer would ever need.
So, we changed first to Disqus (until the great threading disaster of 2011), and then Vanilla.
Candidly, Vanilla is expensive, and fragile. It does not work well with Cloudflare, and we've been getting duplicated posts.
And PB is now on a fairly high performance server in Finland. I suspect that it would be easily capable of handling comments on Wordpress. And I'm equally sure that spam management, etc is all much better.
So... when I next get a day off, I will almost certainly transition us over.
As the site got more popular, though, it became unusable. In particular, it was very slow, and the site was absolutely spammed with adverts for certain pharmaceuticals that I know no PBer would ever need.
So, we changed first to Disqus (until the great threading disaster of 2011), and then Vanilla.
Candidly, Vanilla is expensive, and fragile. It does not work well with Cloudflare, and we've been getting duplicated posts.
And PB is now on a fairly high performance server in Finland. I suspect that it would be easily capable of handling comments on Wordpress. And I'm equally sure that spam management, etc is all much better.
So... when I next get a day off, I will almost certainly transition us over.
Time to make the switch.
I have written to Europcar this week on behalf of constituents who were barred from renting a car in Glasgow without a passport, being told that this was because they were from a “British island”.
They were later told that this is defined as “one who, at the time of rental, is not resident in the United Kingdom or Northern Ireland. Included in this definition are residents of the Shetland, Orkneys, Hebrides, Isle of Man, Isle of Scilly, Channel Islands and the Isle of Wight.”
This is an utterly bizarre policy on the part of Europcar. At best it is a mistake, but one which demonstrates woeful ignorance on the part of the company or their staff about the basic composition of the United Kingdom. At worst it is intentional and wholly unjustified discrimination against people from island communities.
Shetland is as much a part of the United Kingdom as anywhere else. It is unclear why residents of any UK island community – whether Shetland, Orkney or indeed the Isle of Wight – should be treated differently from residents of mainland communities when hiring a vehicle within the UK.
There is no justification for islanders to be treated less favourably or subjected to unclear and unjustified requirements when accessing services on the mainland. I shall expect a clear explanation from Europcar on these points – and an apology to my constituents – in the coming days.
Xi has no need to go to war with Russia. It could all go horribly nuclear, and frankly the Chinese have no need to take any risks. The coffers in Beijing are full with money doing nothing. The Chinese might as well put it use it to secure historic lands around Vladivostok. That could be Xi's legacy, rather than the trauma of untold millions of dead taking Taiwan by force in the age of the sea drones.
Seriously, your efforts are much appreciated - if you need a call for funds just let us know*
(*Malc's minted, I believe ;-) )
https://www.trevorharley.com/hottest-day-of-each-year-from-1900.html
https://youtu.be/C9RJQPZsj8E?si=5g3zpZfs3fwGOryt
Probably the most played song containing the word "Chişinău" in the history of the world.
"British Islands" (not "British Isles") isn't a term of art, it has a defined legal meaning
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Islands
From memory, it's coterminous with the "British Realm": all those parts which have King Charles as King by virtue of his office as British King.
Focus on Europe
With the tensions between Poland and Ukraine in the past couple of weeks, Mrs Sandpit has found a daily sleeper train from Chişinău to Kyiv. Moldova is cheaper to fly to and stay in for 24 hours, than going through Krakow which is the alternative.
A quick Google says there’s not an awful lot to do there, but some nice parks and old Soviet monuments. Their local wine is apparently quite good too.
Such a model would obviously answer that the only solution is to buy billions in a meme coin owned by an orange guy.
My friend says his friend, the father, has been dead inside since that night, though he still goes through the motions.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2024/09/04/7473402/
Something to bear in mind, every time you see Lavrov or Peskov talking about how Russia doesn't target civilians.
Not going to happen
Macron might in a few years
This gung ho, bombs for all approach, would resonate with nutters like Bolton.
Let him retire, quietly, only to be seen in November placing a wreath. In a couple of decades he may have recovered a few percentage points as memories fade.