Nigelb said:

Astronomers Say They Have Spotted the Universe’s First Stars
https://www.quantamagazine.org/astronomers-say-they-have-spotted-the-universes-first-stars-20230130/

The JWST launched a year ago, so we are six months into what’s likely to be a 20 or even 30-year mission.

Yet we already have the most astonishing insight into the past Universe, that’s ever been seen.

What an outstanding legacy, for all those people who spent two decades on this project.

Mexicanpete said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Today's Tories would have called him a Communist probably.

Hope you are well

Err, I rated Harold, but national hero and right-wing treasure Peter Wright was convinced Wilson was a Soviet spy and in his book Spycatcher claims to have been involved in a coup plot to overthrow the Wilson Government.

I suspect Wilson was broadly sympathetic to some elements of Soviet Russia, but I doubt he was ever a Communist (back in the day Denis Healey of course was a member of the British Communist Party- but few doubted his later life credentials as a moderate) despite Wilson's connections to Driberg, Kagan and Maxwell.

I wonder what Peter Wright would have made of a Foreign Secretary slipping his minders to party on the yacht of a former KGB officer?

Mexicanpete said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Today's Tories would have called him a Communist probably.

Hope you are well

Err, I rated Harold, but national hero and right-wing treasure Peter Wright was convinced Wilson was a Soviet spy and in his book Spycatcher claims to have been involved in a coup plot to overthrow the Wilson Government.

I suspect Wilson was broadly sympathetic to some elements of Soviet Russia, but I doubt he was ever a Communist (back in the day Denis Healey of course was a member of the British Communist Party- but few doubted his later life credentials as a moderate) despite Wilson's connections to Driberg, Kagan and Maxwell.

I wonder what Peter Wright would have made of a Foreign Secretary slipping his minders to party on the yacht of a former KGB officer?

In his early days Wilson was a Liberal.

dixiedean said:

Sandpit said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Sandpit said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

Heath should be 3rd tier as should Brown (in retrospect Major who left a growing economy, low inflation and a largely balanced budget in 1997, replaced the poll tax with council tax and won the Gulf War and began the NI peace process should be second tier).

Johnson should arguably be tier 1, having delivered Brexit and the vaccines.

Time will tell if Sunak is Tier 2 or 3

I am not sure you understand this game. Johnson is in a category all on his own. If he comes back and finishes the job of crashing the nation into oblivion, you may have a point.

I suppose Sunak might have time to turn the supertanker around before it hits the rocks, although my money would be on a massive pollution incident.

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

swing_voter said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

I think you are generous to Cameron & Brown..... but like the idea (mainly agree)

I agree. Cameron resides in Box 2 until 2015 after which he firmly sits in Box 3. He was red carded mid way through the second half. Brown always was and always will be Box 3.

Home was not a weak PM if not a great one either. He left a reasonable economy in 1964 and won most seats in England against the odds in 1964 even if he lost across the UK very narrowly overall, he was also an outstanding diplomat and came back as Heath's Foreign Secretary

Home is definitely Box 3 too.

No he isn't, I would in fact put Home as the second best PM between 1955 and 1979 after MacMillan, at least in terms of foreign policy and leaving relative prosperity and stability when they left office.

Though Wilson left a longer legacy admittedly with legal homosexuality and abortion and comprehensive schools and the Open University coming when he was PM

So you pretty much only need boxes 1, which is now very crowded, 3 and 5.

Anyway I thought you wanted to replace Comprehensive Schools.

HYUFD doesn't approve of the Open University either, one is forced to conclude. Not posh enough?

I approve of the Open University rather more than I approve of comprehensive schools replacing grammar schools

OU is a massive opportunity for upskilling the country in an online world.

A massive opportunity that it appears isn’t being taken.

There was a really interesting trailing of an announcement over the weekend, with Dr Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast. He’s about to launch a genuine online university, with a plan to charge $4,000 for a degree, and has a lot of backers for the project from all over academia, people fed up with the artificial scarcity around higher education who want to educate the world.

Harvard (or possibly MIT???) has put entire courses on YouTube for free. Weird that it should be a US fee-taking institution rather than something that started like the OU (remember the broadcasts of the OU on late-night TV and Saturday/Sunday mornings?)

I have done a whole bunch of courses from Stanford, that they put online. But they can’t ever lead to assessment, that’s the problem. Dr Peterson wants to use a similar model of online lectures, but with assessment and actually awarding degrees.

Yes, BBC2 in the ‘80s used to have OU programming overnight. I recall all sorts of science lectures I watched as a primary school kid, some of which occasionally made a little bit of sense to me.

Although the lecturers' sartorial choices made absolutely none whatsoever.

Wonderfully parodied by John Thompson

tlg86 said:

dixiedean said:

WhisperingOracle said:

JosiasJessop said:

Sandpit said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Sandpit said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

Heath should be 3rd tier as should Brown (in retrospect Major who left a growing economy, low inflation and a largely balanced budget in 1997, replaced the poll tax with council tax and won the Gulf War and began the NI peace process should be second tier).

Johnson should arguably be tier 1, having delivered Brexit and the vaccines.

Time will tell if Sunak is Tier 2 or 3

I am not sure you understand this game. Johnson is in a category all on his own. If he comes back and finishes the job of crashing the nation into oblivion, you may have a point.

I suppose Sunak might have time to turn the supertanker around before it hits the rocks, although my money would be on a massive pollution incident.

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

swing_voter said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

I think you are generous to Cameron & Brown..... but like the idea (mainly agree)

I agree. Cameron resides in Box 2 until 2015 after which he firmly sits in Box 3. He was red carded mid way through the second half. Brown always was and always will be Box 3.

Home was not a weak PM if not a great one either. He left a reasonable economy in 1964 and won most seats in England against the odds in 1964 even if he lost across the UK very narrowly overall, he was also an outstanding diplomat and came back as Heath's Foreign Secretary

Home is definitely Box 3 too.

No he isn't, I would in fact put Home as the second best PM between 1955 and 1979 after MacMillan, at least in terms of foreign policy and leaving relative prosperity and stability when they left office.

Though Wilson left a longer legacy admittedly with legal homosexuality and abortion and comprehensive schools and the Open University coming when he was PM

So you pretty much only need boxes 1, which is now very crowded, 3 and 5.

Anyway I thought you wanted to replace Comprehensive Schools.

HYUFD doesn't approve of the Open University either, one is forced to conclude. Not posh enough?

I approve of the Open University rather more than I approve of comprehensive schools replacing grammar schools

OU is a massive opportunity for upskilling the country in an online world.

A massive opportunity that it appears isn’t being taken.

There was a really interesting trailing of an announcement over the weekend, with Dr Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast. He’s about to launch a genuine online university, with a plan to charge $4,000 for a degree, and has a lot of backers for the project from all over academia, people fed up with the artificial scarcity around higher education who want to educate the world.

Harvard (or possibly MIT???) has put entire courses on YouTube for free. Weird that it should be a US fee-taking institution rather than something that started like the OU (remember the broadcasts of the OU on late-night TV and Saturday/Sunday mornings?)

I have done a whole bunch of courses from Stanford, that they put online. But they can’t ever lead to assessment, that’s the problem. Dr Peterson wants to use a similar model of online lectures, but with assessment and actually awarding degrees.

Yes, BBC2 in the ‘80s used to have OU programming overnight. I recall all sorts of science lectures I watched as a primary school kid, some of which occasionally made a little bit of sense to me.

As a kid, I occasionally used to see my uncle, in typical 1970s flairs, teaching geology on OU programs. This was in the 1980s, and the clothing was rather (ahem) outdated.

I've just looked him up on Linkedin, and he's been at the same university for 50 years! (He's mostly retired now, though).

This was a huge part of the charm of 80's OU. Beardedly earnest academics with flares who already seemed to belong to a slightly different world ; as I remember the spoof series Look Around You satirised parts of this ethos perfectly. Now it's gone I'd rather see it back.

Gosh.
Look Around You.
A little gem with a very young Olivia Colman.

I don't remember that. This is amusing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-MlkvAVqUI

A deep fake before it was a thing. According to Wiki, Peter Serafinowicz did the voice. He is a truly superb impersonator.

He also - bizarrely, but quite wonderfully - played the lead character of The Tick, a giant blue superhero, in the Amazon series of the same name.

tlg86 said:

dixiedean said:

WhisperingOracle said:

JosiasJessop said:

Sandpit said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Sandpit said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

Heath should be 3rd tier as should Brown (in retrospect Major who left a growing economy, low inflation and a largely balanced budget in 1997, replaced the poll tax with council tax and won the Gulf War and began the NI peace process should be second tier).

Johnson should arguably be tier 1, having delivered Brexit and the vaccines.

Time will tell if Sunak is Tier 2 or 3

I am not sure you understand this game. Johnson is in a category all on his own. If he comes back and finishes the job of crashing the nation into oblivion, you may have a point.

I suppose Sunak might have time to turn the supertanker around before it hits the rocks, although my money would be on a massive pollution incident.

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

swing_voter said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

I think you are generous to Cameron & Brown..... but like the idea (mainly agree)

I agree. Cameron resides in Box 2 until 2015 after which he firmly sits in Box 3. He was red carded mid way through the second half. Brown always was and always will be Box 3.

Home was not a weak PM if not a great one either. He left a reasonable economy in 1964 and won most seats in England against the odds in 1964 even if he lost across the UK very narrowly overall, he was also an outstanding diplomat and came back as Heath's Foreign Secretary

Home is definitely Box 3 too.

No he isn't, I would in fact put Home as the second best PM between 1955 and 1979 after MacMillan, at least in terms of foreign policy and leaving relative prosperity and stability when they left office.

Though Wilson left a longer legacy admittedly with legal homosexuality and abortion and comprehensive schools and the Open University coming when he was PM

So you pretty much only need boxes 1, which is now very crowded, 3 and 5.

Anyway I thought you wanted to replace Comprehensive Schools.

HYUFD doesn't approve of the Open University either, one is forced to conclude. Not posh enough?

I approve of the Open University rather more than I approve of comprehensive schools replacing grammar schools

OU is a massive opportunity for upskilling the country in an online world.

A massive opportunity that it appears isn’t being taken.

There was a really interesting trailing of an announcement over the weekend, with Dr Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast. He’s about to launch a genuine online university, with a plan to charge $4,000 for a degree, and has a lot of backers for the project from all over academia, people fed up with the artificial scarcity around higher education who want to educate the world.

Harvard (or possibly MIT???) has put entire courses on YouTube for free. Weird that it should be a US fee-taking institution rather than something that started like the OU (remember the broadcasts of the OU on late-night TV and Saturday/Sunday mornings?)

I have done a whole bunch of courses from Stanford, that they put online. But they can’t ever lead to assessment, that’s the problem. Dr Peterson wants to use a similar model of online lectures, but with assessment and actually awarding degrees.

Yes, BBC2 in the ‘80s used to have OU programming overnight. I recall all sorts of science lectures I watched as a primary school kid, some of which occasionally made a little bit of sense to me.

As a kid, I occasionally used to see my uncle, in typical 1970s flairs, teaching geology on OU programs. This was in the 1980s, and the clothing was rather (ahem) outdated.

I've just looked him up on Linkedin, and he's been at the same university for 50 years! (He's mostly retired now, though).

This was a huge part of the charm of 80's OU. Beardedly earnest academics with flares who already seemed to belong to a slightly different world ; as I remember the spoof series Look Around You satirised parts of this ethos perfectly. Now it's gone I'd rather see it back.

Gosh.
Look Around You.
A little gem with a very young Olivia Colman.

I don't remember that. This is amusing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-MlkvAVqUI

A deep fake before it was a thing. According to Wiki, Peter Serafinowicz did the voice. He is a truly superb impersonator.

Excellent. "Here is Sir Prince Charles to present the award".

This is also excellent satire, on the theme of early computer music, with a '70s rock video thrown in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqkUISJej2o

Foxy said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Supporting Parliamentary time to allow legalisation of abortion, homosexuality and the first Race Relations Act were certainly "Woke" in the context of the times.

Also, the abolition of the death in Britain.

Benpointer said:

Foxy said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Supporting Parliamentary time to allow legalisation of abortion, homosexuality and the first Race Relations Act were certainly "Woke" in the context of the times.

Also, the abolition of the death in Britain.

So you have to go abroad to die now? They just keep making everything only accessible to the wealthy.....

MoonRabbit said:

LostPassword said:

Is there any reason why the obvious solution to this problem can't be used?

The number of pigs being abandoned is on the rise, according to Ireland's only pig shelter 'My Lovely Pig Rescue'.

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2023/0130/1352639-pig-rescue/

On no. The poor things will be attached to their owners like dogs will be.

Very upsetting to listen to 🥺

Micro Piggies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5YO607enLo

At 7.25 you will just melt

JK Rowling not holding her punches...

@jk_rowling: I don't know about you, but excluding women from women's prisons just because they've got penises, male pattern bal… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1620107934364745728

Mexicanpete said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Today's Tories would have called him a Communist probably.

Hope you are well

Err, I rated Harold, but national hero and right-wing treasure Peter Wright was convinced Wilson was a Soviet spy and in his book Spycatcher claims to have been involved in a coup plot to overthrow the Wilson Government.

I suspect Wilson was broadly sympathetic to some elements of Soviet Russia, but I doubt he was ever a Communist (back in the day Denis Healey of course was a member of the British Communist Party- but few doubted his later life credentials as a moderate) despite Wilson's connections to Driberg, Kagan and Maxwell.

I wonder what Peter Wright would have made of a Foreign Secretary slipping his minders to party on the yacht of a former KGB officer?

I read Wright's book Spycatcher and it did not exactly paint the security services of the time in a flattering light.

Well that’s Gaby Logan’s career done for. Notable the critical comments in response are from bearded men.

Plus ca change.

https://twitter.com/gabbylogan/status/1619819571950800897?s=61&t=INecYdQ8LUeYxnCgnjXQSw

@martinboon: I helped run focus groups for the Tories before and after ‘97 and the hostility and invective toward them now feels… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1620113763381960704

Beibheirli_C said:

Mexicanpete said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Today's Tories would have called him a Communist probably.

Hope you are well

Err, I rated Harold, but national hero and right-wing treasure Peter Wright was convinced Wilson was a Soviet spy and in his book Spycatcher claims to have been involved in a coup plot to overthrow the Wilson Government.

I suspect Wilson was broadly sympathetic to some elements of Soviet Russia, but I doubt he was ever a Communist (back in the day Denis Healey of course was a member of the British Communist Party- but few doubted his later life credentials as a moderate) despite Wilson's connections to Driberg, Kagan and Maxwell.

I wonder what Peter Wright would have made of a Foreign Secretary slipping his minders to party on the yacht of a former KGB officer?

I read Wright's book Spycatcher and it did not exactly paint the security services of the time in a flattering light.

Especially Peter Wright. He made himself appear a conspiracy obsessed loon who was grossly insubordinate, and borderline treasonous. Which he was.

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

MoonRabbit said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Starmer leads Sunak by 6%, his largest lead since Sunak became PM.

At this moment, which of the following do British voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK? (29 Jan.)

Keir Starmer 41% (+1)
Rishi Sunak 35% (–)

Changes +/- 22 Jan.

Rishi's favourite pollster showing he's finished.

Different pollsters get different results with this measurement. Trend across all of them though is the gap widening.

Redfield were the only one to show any lead for Sunak

Not sure. Opinium probably did.

The point is, the gaps opening the longer the voters are exposed to PM Sunak.

The Tories really would, get a better election result with Boris, even now.

"Army’s ‘information warfare’ unit monitored Covid lockdown critics

Whistleblower reveals specialist military team spent time ‘monitoring the social media posts of ordinary, scared people’"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/01/29/armys-information-warfare-unit-monitored-covid-lockdown-critics/

American charity law seems to be totally screwed up:

Mr and Mrs Sussex ‘raised’ $13m, and ‘donated’ $3m last year, according to accounts. Apparently, that’s okay.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/30/duke-duchess-sussex-archewell-foundation-afghan-refugees-donate/

Sandpit said:

American charity law seems to be totally screwed up:

Mr and Mrs Sussex ‘raised’ $13m, and ‘donated’ $3m last year, according to accounts. Apparently, that’s okay.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/30/duke-duchess-sussex-archewell-foundation-afghan-refugees-donate/

$10m was the 'service' charge.

OldKingCole said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Mexicanpete said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Beibheirli_C said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Wilson would have been called woke by today's nutty Tories

You mean Wilson was not a grasping, callous b******d who would rather promote and maintain social prejudice than see it called out and rolled back?

I suspect he might have worn a badge reading "Woke and proud" ...

Today's Tories would have called him a Communist probably.

Hope you are well

Err, I rated Harold, but national hero and right-wing treasure Peter Wright was convinced Wilson was a Soviet spy and in his book Spycatcher claims to have been involved in a coup plot to overthrow the Wilson Government.

I suspect Wilson was broadly sympathetic to some elements of Soviet Russia, but I doubt he was ever a Communist (back in the day Denis Healey of course was a member of the British Communist Party- but few doubted his later life credentials as a moderate) despite Wilson's connections to Driberg, Kagan and Maxwell.

I wonder what Peter Wright would have made of a Foreign Secretary slipping his minders to party on the yacht of a former KGB officer?

I read Wright's book Spycatcher and it did not exactly paint the security services of the time in a flattering light.

Wasn’t the best written as I recall

I have read worse. It was interesting in a slow car crash sort of way.....

Has anyone heard of an EV startup called Arrival?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/30/23577753/arrival-layoff-50-percent-ev-startup-new-ceo

Arrival, which announced last year that it was winding down its UK operations in favor of refocusing its business in the US, became a publicly traded company in March 2021 after merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Founded in 2015, Arrival was developing electric delivery vans for UPS as a customer, as well as ridehailing cars for Uber and public buses. It also has backing from Hyundai and Kia. Arrival's layoffs will bring the company down to a workforce of 800 employees. The company claims that it expects to halve its ongoing cost of operating the business to approximately $30 million per quarter when accounting for reductions in real estate and other third-party costs. Arrival says it currently has $205 million in cash on hand.

Sandpit said:

American charity law seems to be totally screwed up:

Mr and Mrs Sussex ‘raised’ $13m, and ‘donated’ $3m last year, according to accounts. Apparently, that’s okay.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/30/duke-duchess-sussex-archewell-foundation-afghan-refugees-donate/

So a considerable amount to reserves, so as to be able to pay out long term? As a Charity Trustee, I approve.

CarlottaVance said:

Sandpit said:

CarlottaVance said:

Two things can be true at the same time:
1) Johnson has used - and is again using - Ukraine to make himself look impressive. But that does not have to be his only motive.
2) Johnson’s actions in the early days of the war have made a real difference for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/HeleneBismarck/status/1620089317015293952

Boris Johnson is a genuine Ukranian national hero.

Without the UK involvement a year ago, many other leaders and countries might not have been persuaded of the need to commit to arming the defenders.

Especially since a lot of the talk out of European capitals was “what’s the point, they’re going to lose anyway”?

In fairness to his predecessors, the UK’s pro Ukraine policy predated Johnson, but Johnson was an effective salesman.

Correct on all counts. Though the "they're going to lose anyway" argument was also being pushed here on PB.

CarlottaVance said:

Sandpit said:

CarlottaVance said:

Two things can be true at the same time:
1) Johnson has used - and is again using - Ukraine to make himself look impressive. But that does not have to be his only motive.
2) Johnson’s actions in the early days of the war have made a real difference for Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/HeleneBismarck/status/1620089317015293952

Boris Johnson is a genuine Ukranian national hero.

Without the UK involvement a year ago, many other leaders and countries might not have been persuaded of the need to commit to arming the defenders.

Especially since a lot of the talk out of European capitals was “what’s the point, they’re going to lose anyway”?

In fairness to his predecessors, the UK’s pro Ukraine policy predated Johnson, but Johnson was an effective salesman.

Yes, due credit to Mr Cameron and Mrs May, for the long-standing policy of arming and training the Ukranian army after the 2014 invasion.

Johnson and Zelensky were both brilliant when it mattered, possibly the right men at the right time.

MoonRabbit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken SNP on the slide.

Labour leads by 21%.

Westminster VI (29 January):

Labour 49% (+1)
Conservative 28% (+2)
Liberal Democrat 8% (-1)
Reform UK 5% (-1)
Green 5% (+1)
Scottish National Party 4% (-1)
Other 1% (–)

Changes +/- 22 January

https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1620104678968070150?s=46&t=yVyUPcTYx2Bgt5APc3wDeg

Good poll for the Tories that, a leap of +2 despite nothing but Tory bashing across all the news.

Labour went up by +1, so the net Tory gain is only +1.

https://twitter.com/SVPhillimore/status/1620099691101954048

Luckyguy1983 said:

Foxy said:

Sandpit said:

American charity law seems to be totally screwed up:

Mr and Mrs Sussex ‘raised’ $13m, and ‘donated’ $3m last year, according to accounts. Apparently, that’s okay.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/30/duke-duchess-sussex-archewell-foundation-afghan-refugees-donate/

So a considerable amount to reserves, so as to be able to pay out long term? As a Charity Trustee, I approve.

Presumably it's just when Tories fuck over Afghan refugees that you take issue.

This is just a bizarre comment. Do you have any evidence they have done anything wrong? They might have done, but there was nothing in that article to suggest so, so what is your beef?

CarlottaVance said:

ohnotnow said:

JosiasJessop said:

I just watched a short bit of the 1968 film "The Swimmer", with Burt Lancaster. A girl in it references how she met her boyfriend through computer dating...

(The olden sort, where you send in details and they put it in a computer (yeah, right), and you get matches sent back.)

Computer dating, 55 years ago.

It's quite a peculiar film all round. Haven't watched it for years mind you (I think it was part of the 'Moviedrome' series) - but my memory of it was 'this is quite odd'. I should dig up a copy and give it another go.

I remember having been told it was a “great movie” watching it with growing bewilderment. “Man having a nervous breakdown in upper middle class America” seemed to be the plot

Sounds like perfect movie to appeal to movie critics in that case, if there isn't something about the holocaust or lesbians in a time/place where it homosexuality is illegal.

Driver said:

MoonRabbit said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

Starmer leads Sunak by 6%, his largest lead since Sunak became PM.

At this moment, which of the following do British voters think would be the better Prime Minister for the UK? (29 Jan.)

Keir Starmer 41% (+1)
Rishi Sunak 35% (–)

Changes +/- 22 Jan.

Rishi's favourite pollster showing he's finished.

Different pollsters get different results with this measurement. Trend across all of them though is the gap widening.

One consequence of "Labour, Lib Dem and Green votes are all interchangeable", as we've been repeatedly assured here BTL, is that surely those answering Sunak will mostly vote Tory, whereas the same can't be said of Sir Keir and Labour.

Some will be interchangeable, some won't. Mine isn't. I have never voted Labour.

Theuniondivvie said:

SeaShantyIrish2 said:

Sandpit said:

American charity law seems to be totally screwed up:

Mr and Mrs Sussex ‘raised’ $13m, and ‘donated’ $3m last year, according to accounts. Apparently, that’s okay.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/royal-family/2023/01/30/duke-duchess-sussex-archewell-foundation-afghan-refugees-donate/

They actually gave something to someone.

You DO like to paint with a VERY broad brush. As in "totally screwed up" based on one media report?

(I apologize IF you've actually done extensive research on US laws regarding tax-deductible charities.)

It is a little miserly. The Duke of York gave away £12m (with a little help from mama) ENTIRELY from the goodness of his heart with no self interest whatsoever involved.

There was a great ditty at the time

The Grand Old Duke of York
He had twelve million quid
So he gave it to someone he never met
For something he never did…

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

This certainly feels more run up to 1997 than 1992. Ahead of 1992, Major's popularity helped drive a rebound for his party. Ahead of 1997, entrenched public hostility to Cons dragged Major's ratings down.

Since taking office, a more popular Sunak has only been able to stabilise Con polling at post-partygate Johnson levels. Better than Truss but still awful. Prospects of further recovery are dim if the weight of public hostility to Cons is now dragging PM's personal approvals down.

Rob Ford is calling it

https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1620026958003245056

If the Tories ratings don't improve by the end of the year I think they'll probably replace Sunak with Badenoch.

Andy_JS said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

This certainly feels more run up to 1997 than 1992. Ahead of 1992, Major's popularity helped drive a rebound for his party. Ahead of 1997, entrenched public hostility to Cons dragged Major's ratings down.

Since taking office, a more popular Sunak has only been able to stabilise Con polling at post-partygate Johnson levels. Better than Truss but still awful. Prospects of further recovery are dim if the weight of public hostility to Cons is now dragging PM's personal approvals down.

Rob Ford is calling it

https://twitter.com/robfordmancs/status/1620026958003245056

If the Tories ratings don't improve by the end of the year I think they'll probably replace Sunak with Badenoch.

That last bit sounds like wishcasting.

WhisperingOracle said:

MoonRabbit said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

MoonRabbit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken SNP on the slide.

Labour leads by 21%.

Westminster VI (29 January):

Labour 49% (+1)
Conservative 28% (+2)
Liberal Democrat 8% (-1)
Reform UK 5% (-1)
Green 5% (+1)
Scottish National Party 4% (-1)
Other 1% (–)

Changes +/- 22 January

https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1620104678968070150?s=46&t=yVyUPcTYx2Bgt5APc3wDeg

Good poll for the Tories that, a leap of +2 despite nothing but Tory bashing across all the news.

Oh Moon, not again

What are you arguing about? A government has the sort of ultimate bad weeks on news this one just had and leaps +2 in polls and cuts Labours lead.

As much as I would argue, and as much as I loved being a shepherdess, I am now back in London as I was getting to feel very sex starved. Good Night 😇

MoonRabbit said:

CorrectHorseBattery3 said:

MoonRabbit said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Sleazy broken SNP on the slide.

Labour leads by 21%.

Westminster VI (29 January):

Labour 49% (+1)
Conservative 28% (+2)
Liberal Democrat 8% (-1)
Reform UK 5% (-1)
Green 5% (+1)
Scottish National Party 4% (-1)
Other 1% (–)

Changes +/- 22 January

https://twitter.com/redfieldwilton/status/1620104678968070150?s=46&t=yVyUPcTYx2Bgt5APc3wDeg

Good poll for the Tories that, a leap of +2 despite nothing but Tory bashing across all the news.

Oh Moon, not again

What are you arguing about? A government has the sort of ultimate bad weeks on news this one just had and leaps +2 in polls and cuts Labours lead.

As much as I would argue, and as much as I loved being a shepherdess, I am now back in London as I was getting to feel very sex starved. Good Night 😇

As there's been so much discussion of old films today, perhaps you need a 1960's dose of the immaculately catlike Imogen Hassall, from Carry on Loving and "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HkkoxuOyxxE

A wonderful woman, so sad how her life ended. Her second husband, Andrew Knox, also took his own life. Jumped off the Jersey ferry and drowned.

kle4 said:

Taz said:

Well that’s Gaby Logan’s career done for. Notable the critical comments in response are from bearded men.

Plus ca change.

https://twitter.com/gabbylogan/status/1619819571950800897?s=61&t=INecYdQ8LUeYxnCgnjXQSw

The criticisms of JK Rowling could all be true (they're not), and the hysteria about her would still be unhinged.

Someone yesterday made a rather defamatory claim about her on here.

Not wise with someone so litigious.

I’ve asked people, who make absurd claims about her, to demonstrate exactly where and when she has posted hatred for trans people. Her position is known but I’ve never seen her demonstrate hatred. I’ve seen threats against her, many threats against her, but I’ve never seen her mark any threats.

Richard_Tyndall said:

JosiasJessop said:

WhisperingOracle said:

JosiasJessop said:

Sandpit said:

Beibheirli_C said:

Sandpit said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

HYUFD said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

Heath should be 3rd tier as should Brown (in retrospect Major who left a growing economy, low inflation and a largely balanced budget in 1997, replaced the poll tax with council tax and won the Gulf War and began the NI peace process should be second tier).

Johnson should arguably be tier 1, having delivered Brexit and the vaccines.

Time will tell if Sunak is Tier 2 or 3

I am not sure you understand this game. Johnson is in a category all on his own. If he comes back and finishes the job of crashing the nation into oblivion, you may have a point.

I suppose Sunak might have time to turn the supertanker around before it hits the rocks, although my money would be on a massive pollution incident.

HYUFD said:

Mexicanpete said:

swing_voter said:

TimS said:

Sunak is securing his place in box 3 of the pantheon of PMs. It becomes ever harder for him to shift boxes as time goes on.

Box 1: important PMs. Love them or hate them, these PMs marked a political turning point and defined an epoch. Lloyd George, Churchill, Atlee, Thatcher, Blair

Box 2. Notable but second tier: MacMillan, Wilson, Heath, possibly Brown, Cameron

Box 3: weak PMs/ victims of forces outside their control: Chamberlain, Eden, Callaghan, Major, May, Sunak

Box 4 (new category) complete plonkers: Johnson

Box 5: glitches in the matrix. Truss

I think you are generous to Cameron & Brown..... but like the idea (mainly agree)

I agree. Cameron resides in Box 2 until 2015 after which he firmly sits in Box 3. He was red carded mid way through the second half. Brown always was and always will be Box 3.

Home was not a weak PM if not a great one either. He left a reasonable economy in 1964 and won most seats in England against the odds in 1964 even if he lost across the UK very narrowly overall, he was also an outstanding diplomat and came back as Heath's Foreign Secretary

Home is definitely Box 3 too.

No he isn't, I would in fact put Home as the second best PM between 1955 and 1979 after MacMillan, at least in terms of foreign policy and leaving relative prosperity and stability when they left office.

Though Wilson left a longer legacy admittedly with legal homosexuality and abortion and comprehensive schools and the Open University coming when he was PM

So you pretty much only need boxes 1, which is now very crowded, 3 and 5.

Anyway I thought you wanted to replace Comprehensive Schools.

HYUFD doesn't approve of the Open University either, one is forced to conclude. Not posh enough?

I approve of the Open University rather more than I approve of comprehensive schools replacing grammar schools

OU is a massive opportunity for upskilling the country in an online world.

A massive opportunity that it appears isn’t being taken.

There was a really interesting trailing of an announcement over the weekend, with Dr Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast. He’s about to launch a genuine online university, with a plan to charge $4,000 for a degree, and has a lot of backers for the project from all over academia, people fed up with the artificial scarcity around higher education who want to educate the world.

Harvard (or possibly MIT???) has put entire courses on YouTube for free. Weird that it should be a US fee-taking institution rather than something that started like the OU (remember the broadcasts of the OU on late-night TV and Saturday/Sunday mornings?)

I have done a whole bunch of courses from Stanford, that they put online. But they can’t ever lead to assessment, that’s the problem. Dr Peterson wants to use a similar model of online lectures, but with assessment and actually awarding degrees.

Yes, BBC2 in the ‘80s used to have OU programming overnight. I recall all sorts of science lectures I watched as a primary school kid, some of which occasionally made a little bit of sense to me.

As a kid, I occasionally used to see my uncle, in typical 1970s flairs, teaching geology on OU programs. This was in the 1980s, and the clothing was rather (ahem) outdated.

I've just looked him up on Linkedin, and he's been at the same university for 50 years! (He's mostly retired now, though).

This was a huge part of the charm of 80's EU. Beardedly earnest academics with flares who already seemed to belong to a slightly different world ; as I remember Look Around You satirised parts of this ethos perfectly. Now it's gone I'd rather see it back.

He's a highly intelligent, and very nice, man. Oddly enough, one of my nieces is studying something at a different university, and it turned out my uncle (her grand-uncle) created part of the course. They honestly did not know before she started at the uni, as it's not strictly geology.

When I did Geology at Cardiff in the mid 80s the OU Geology course was considered possibly the best Geology degree course in the country. Certainly most of the Geology departments around the country would sign up to take their 1st year students on the OU Field study week which was based at Durham.

And to do that with Geology, which is incredibly hands and eyes on, is a heck of an achievement. Remote learning is awfully hard to do well, because you don't get the second-by-second feedback from students.

All that really useful experience, and we kind of let it turn to mush.

NEW THREAD

NEW THREAD

Evening all

A busy day of polling and a lot to consider.

Plenty of coverage of the Ipsos numbers (understandably) but the fieldwork was 18-25 January so in essence ancient history. I note a 22 point Labour lead (49-27) among those expressing a preference.

On then to Deltapoll (fieldwork 26-30 January) so more recent and the pollster which recently has given the lowest Labour and highest Conservative vote shares and therefore the smallest gap between the parties. It also consistently finds fewer Reform supporters but the addition of Conservative and Reform (33%) mirrors the numbers in other polls.

Looking at the Deltapoll data tables, Labour ahead by just 10 among men (44-34) and the Conservatives lead by 12 (41-29) among those aged 65 or over. The LDs are at 13% among the over 65s and 12% among the 35-54 age group but 3-4% elsewhere which seems odd.

The Conservative 2019 vote splits 71% Loyal, 14% Labour and 7% Reform but this excludes Don't Knows and the cynic in me might think they've simply shoved all the DKs into the "Loyal" column. We also have Labour only 10 points ahead in London (42-32), but six points ahead in rest of the South (41-35).

If you want this evening's first giggle, look at the Deltapoll Midlands subsample which splits Conservative 42%, Labour 36%, LD 17%. The Scottish sub sample is another to savour so plenty of ifs, buts and maybes around @HYUFD's favourite pollster if I'm being honest.

Redfield & Wilton has the headline gap down to 21 points (49-28). Among those intending to vote, Labour leads 43-24 with DKs on 13%. The Conservatives lead 36-30 among those aged 65 and over. The 2019 Conservative vote splits 52% Conservative, 23% Labour, 14% DK and 7% Reform (that's one of the biggest direct-to-Labour numbers I've seen).

Taking out the DKs, the Labour lead among men is just 10% but among women it's 34%. Among those aged 65 and over, the Conservative lead is 7 points (41-34). The 2019 Conservative vote splits 61% Conservative, 27% Labour.

The area sub samples once again interest - whereas Deltapoll had the SNP ahead of Labour by 43-39, R&W has SNP on 38%, Conservative on 25% and Labour on 21%.

The one I always look at is England - this time Labour leads 52-29 with the LDs on 8%.

In 2019, England voted for the Conservatives 47-34 so that's an 18% swing from Conservative to Labour. That takes us to Wellingborough, the 250th most marginal Conservative seat which would fall on that swing. Consider tactical voting and a seat like Stratford-on-Avon with its near 20,000 majority could be vulnerable if Labour voters switched in sufficient numbers to the LDs.

The R&W numbers would suggest the Conservatives holding their vote in Scotland and dropping 18 points in England - yes, I'm not convinced either.