On the subject of zoning, I am familiar with a planning case in Finland where housebuilding is usually quite efficient and self build is a big thing. It is a zoning system. A neighbour wants to build a 500 sqm house. However it is 1 metre higher than allowed by the design code. So he has to go through a process of getting approval and a year on he is not there yet, the whole things sounds very much like planning committee in the UK.
The reality is that I don't think that people in England would like the 'computer says no' approach to development that would be achieved through fixed design codes and development orders. They would probably find it massively restrictive.
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
Surprised nobody has mentioned what the kids say when they are underwhelmed or thought something was a bit shit....its was mid....as in Gun n Roses at Glasto were mid.
Nah, they were just shit
Well, I am glad I didn't pay to see them. These old bands really need just retire when they can't sing anymore, its just embarrassing. And if you want to see Slash, with somebody who can still sing, Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators.
The Number 1 Conference for those involved, or just interested, in organised violence other than on the sea or in the air!
Don't knock it. I live rather near the Land Warfare Centre in Warminster, and we have had lots of activity in recent months, interestingly with lots of night practice.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
It matters not much. There are only two parties who can lead a government, so if it's time for a change, there is no alternative to Labour.
You may have said that about the Tories in 2009, yet we ended up with the Coalition instead.
So it is interesting. Somehow I'm rather sceptical about the prospects of a Daveygasm.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
If I were Ed Davey I would resign saying that he rebuilt the party after the coalition, but someone without the taint of it should be in charge, and they should coronate Daisy Cooper as their leader. I know she is a relatively new MP and her majority is also quite new - but she's a good public speaker, she is a relatively young woman, she didn't serve in the coalition and has been willing to say it was a mistake (even though she points out some of the positive things the LDs managed) and she is charismatic. The papers would hate her (she was involved in one of the campaigns to tighten media regulations post Levinson) but she'd go back to the days when the LDs could attack Labour on the left on some issues.
On the subject of linguistic monstrosities, the one I can't stand is "yourself" when people mean "you". It really grates for reasons I can't really explain.
And "myself" in the same usage.
"How's yourself", meanwhile makes me want to kill people.
Perfectly valid Scots/N Eng - but on the lines of "your self" as in "your good self".
As in g'oan yer self there, big man. Yeah it isn't that usage that bugs me. On this topic, one excellent Scottish linguistic innovation is the use of the second person plural, yous or yous yins, which can sometimes remove ambiguity.
Yous is a Geordie word. I use it regularly.
There used to be four words for 'you' in English: you, ye, thou and thee. I think you/ye was formal/plural and thou/thee familiar and singular. (Pleasingly, the CoE referred to God in the familiar rather than formal tone). The ou/e endings are equivalent to the continuing difference between I/me, him/he, her/she and whom/who, although the latter two are now used so interchangeably that even dyed in the wool pedants sometimes need to think a bit about it.
The Sunday Rawnsley, brought to you on a Monday, but then it takes a long time to drive to Arsland:
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
…some key questions for Labour have been under-scrutinised. Is it realistic to think that the UK can generate all its electricity from clean sources by the end of this decade? Sir Keir maintains that is still his mission, but a lot of expert opinion is sceptical. The polite say it sounds “highly ambitious”. The ruder say there’s not “a hope in hell” of achieving the target. Labour claims it can kickstart growth to turn the UK into the fastest-expanding economy in the G7. Does that still add up when investment in a critical component is going to start later than originally promised? A hard pledge has softened into a vaguer-sounding goal. The wary are suspicious that it will next dissolve into nothing better than a wispy aspiration. That would be bad for the country and for the planet.
It should not be beyond Sir Keir and his team to make the green prosperity plan attractive. If the Labour party cannot sell lower bills, more jobs, a healthier planet, energy self-sufficiency and screwing Vladimir Putin to the electorate it might as well get out of the business of politics altogether.
The Labour leader and his colleagues ought to be mindful of the dangers of giving the impression that they make grandiose-sounding pledges to change the world only then to retreat when they encounter challenge and resistance. That’s not the way for an opposition to generate confidence. As a method of running a government, it would be terrible.
Btw: networking bods*, Tailscale really is amazing isn't it?
* Bods is a word whose meaning has evolved. Sorry.
The remarkable thing is that it's not even that complex it just adds an incredibly easy to use front end on to Wireguard.
My one annoyance is that I can't connect it directly to a cloudflare front end and so need to add a small internet facing proxy server in the middle...
It's one of two new tech things that have significantly improved my life in the last six months, with the other being Proxmox.
I use Tailscale to access my home Internet from afar. Basically, my phone and laptop are always connected to our home automation stuff, and there's no need to mess with port forwarding or any of that stuff.
OpenVPN was never _that_ hard...
I've used OpenVPN many times. And it's not that hard. But it's still nowhere near as easy as Tailscale.
It’s simply a VPN bridge that links two outgoing connections, or it’s more than that?
The Tories won’t do themselves any favours overruling independent pay bodies on public sector pay.
We are just likely to see more and more strikes and disruption and not just from the likes of the RMT who are politically motivated.
They're in a complete bind. They'll trot out the wage-price spiral excuse to justify bearing down on public sector pay, but the plain fact is that they're struggling to find politically acceptable cuts to fund extra spending in this area, borrowing is enormous and becoming ever more expensive, and so they're left with either digging their heels in and offering workers peanuts, or raising taxes on their core supporters to pay for more generous rises. There's no violin small enough.
The reality we are reaching the end game for the Blairite/Thatcher-lite model
It used to be chunky public spending and low taxes with the difference funded by clever balance sheet tricks (PFI/securitisation) or straight up borrowing. Wages were kept down by relaxed views on immigration
Cost of borrowing is going up and the markets are twitchy after all that QE
Asset price bubbles have driven a reasonable standard of living beyond the reach of many
Effectively unlimited immigration has resulted in underinvestment in business (low wages partly due to immigration and partly due to tax credits) drove down returns (cost saving) on investment and increased the strain on public services (governments didn’t invest in capacity).
The electorate has been trained to believe the government will always bail them out
We need a grown up conversation. Either taxes have to go up massively or public services need to be completely rethought.
But neither politicians or the electorate are ready to have that conversation.
While much of this is true, it is also the case that other countries have had similar situations to us, and have managed to avoid excessively expensive housing or stagnant business investment.
They therefore cannot be the whole story.
It's almost as if our planning system might be different to theirs.
The largest cost in household budgets is Housing. Not food, not gas, not electricity or anything else it is housing.
A very large proportion of the cost of housing is the cost of land.
And the cost of land with planning permission is inflated over land without.
Resolve one and others follow.
Build new towns (or refurbish old ones) in the frozen north and left-behind regions. It solves the housing problem, levelling up and rebalancing the economy away from an overheated London in one fell swoop.
Not really
There are areas in the run down north with plenty of empty housing, just look at the photo at the top of this article....
Yes, hence the new town model, even if based on refurbishment, to include attracting new jobs. Rather than dumping grounds for borderline mentally ill drug addicts and thieves.
Why on earth would any company set up in a newly created new town that no doubt has awful connections to anywhere with any sort of existing economy ?
Government subsidies, tax concessions, northern powerhouse rail? Britain has built new towns before; there's nothing new.
NPR won't land until 2045 onwards and will connect Warrington, Manchester and Marsden, no new stops planned, just linking existing populations.
So you want to create new towns, with no links to existing economies and hope that lower taxes will attract businesses there ?
Our London based media's obsession over trains is part of the problem. Over 90% of the UK travels via Road, not Rail, especially in the North.
If you want new towns then new motorway junctions, or better yet new motorways with new junctions is the way to do it quickly. Rail can catch up afterwards.
Not just in the North, in the South away from London it's very possible too. Eg build a new motorway linking Oxford to Cambridge, extended to Bristol and Norwich perhaps, and with a junction approximately every 5 miles. New towns could spring up along that route, and not in or linked to London.
Sorry but new roads don’t solve problems - and it’s probably worth watching c4 to,or row to see Ben Elton comparing rail around London and the rest of the UK.
That sort of timid, self defeating attitude is part of the problem. Of course new roads do solve problems.
I live in a fast growing new town (they do still exist, just not enough of them). We have thousands of homes being built, all of which are getting snapped up. New shops, businesses, industry opening too.
And what is the key new transport infrastructure underpinning this? One new motorway junction, with one new A road.
There's talk we might get a train station in a few years time, I'm not holding my breath, but the new motorway junction? People who get about by road are happy with that. And outside London it's roads, not rail, that truly matters. Of course London is different but WE ARE NOT LONDON.
The problem here is that what you are now making is an argument for planning, which you claim to reject. The reason why everything is working in your development is more likely than not because decades of work went in to the new trunk roads and motorway junctions, negotiated by the Council with Highways England and the government, as well as the co-siting of commercial development and community infrastructure, and finding ways to fund all this, including through Section 106 contributions by developers. That is what planning is and the value that it adds. If you get rid of planning then none of that happens, houses get built but you can't get anywhere, there are crap roads, no shops, infrastructure etc.
You could say ok, why not just zone the land through the plan making process and then have a design code rather than having to go through the pain and delay of needing planning permission. You could well do that and some countries do. The main problem is it makes it harder to go through the first stage of the process (the plan making stage) because you need to be absolutely sure that everything is solved before you can confidently rely on a design code for the purposes of delivery.
A design code is just a delivery mechanism not an alternative to having a planning system. Looking at your example of Japan, my guess is just that they are better at planning because the state is more assertive and organised at building infrastructure. I'd guess the falling prices are more to do with historic deflation than falling demand. But I've never studied the Japanese system in detail so don't feel able to authoritively comment on it.
In summary the problem is not that a planning system exists in the first place, but because the one we have isn't working very well.
Sorry that's not remotely an argument for planning, you could not be more wrong. There isn't time for decades of work as our population levels weren't the same decades ago, and if decades of work are going into it then no wonder everything is so broken as the facts decades ago are not the facts today.
If everything is planned then I'm curious where the new railway station, new schools, new GPs and everything else are. None of them exist. I still am registered at my old GP in my old town, I've not transferred my kids schooling either, and drive across the river to a different town for those.
Organic development works better. If houses are built, but no schools etc then people will vote for what they need. Unsurprisingly at the local elections the local Lib Dem (who got elected) was not campaigning on NIMBYism, but supporting new GPs to built and new schools to be built. Because that's what the new residents need and its not all there yet. Supermarkets have opened etc because businesses like Aldi and ASDA will open branches where their customers are. Thousands of people move into an area, they'll be in like a shot to get a shot at those customers.
The state is bloody useless at planning. Design transportation, sure, then let it organically grow in what's zoned there.
Ok, so you don't think there should be planning, with the exception of road building. There should be no state provision for day to day needs etc - shops, healthcare etc, because this will follow where people choose to build houses because politicians will be elected to make it happen. There would be no public realm, or town centres, just housing and roads, and supermarkets.
This all sounds like a total disaster to me.
No. I think there should be healthcare, and schools etc but it should evolve depending upon what the voters need.
Not spend decades planning what was needed decades ago, but is totally obsolete decades later as the facts have changed so much all your plans were based on faulty assumptions.
" The public primary was the size of a country school and now has 19 demountables. The closest shops were 20 minutes away; if she forgot milk, it was a 40-minute round trip, often in traffic. Trains came hourly, even at the peak. Narrow roads were choked. The hospital repeatedly promised for nearby Rouse Hill didn’t exist, and still doesn’t. Meanwhile, the population grows exponentially."... “They knew we were coming. Where did they think we were going to shop? Where did they think our children would go to school? It comes down to better planning. Stop rushing to get people into these houses.”...
But people moving into those areas say it takes more than a bunch of rapidly constructed houses to create a community. “So here’s what’s missing,” said Angela Van Dyke of the Riverstone Neighbourhood Centre and Community Aid Service. “Everything. Public education. Public transport. Good urban design. Livability.”... Michelle Rowland, the Labor federal member for the north-west seat of Greenway (and also the communications minister), said the problem was due to a long-term failure of different levels of government to coordinate. “Developers, basically, in a lot of aspects, they do have free rein,” she said. “The incentive of the developer is to maximise land use to maximise profit. Which is why you have a lot of residents complaining [about] what normally they’d call overdevelopment, but a lot of it is to do with a lack of trees, a lack of environmental controls, houses are close together, streets are narrow.”
Presumably he'd say that given the people exist, that is better to have houses and no schools, than to have neither houses nor schools.
There is something in that argument , but I don't think that is what he is saying. I think he sees the idea of town planning as being socially destructive and a massive cost with no benefits. The usual libertarian thing. But the contradiction is, that when you go and look at the libertarian societies they hold up as examples they tend to actually be quite well planned, ie Singapore and the USA, there is always an active state authority doing the zoning, brokering the economic development etc. I am pretty sure Japan will come in to this category as well.
It kind of is what I'm saying actually, yes.
As far as zoning etc is concerned, I'm perfectly fine with that. Pick your agricultural, natural and residential zones etc and the let the Council get out of the way of development within residential zones, even if natural/agricultural zones can't be developed. Which incidentally can work with 'green belt' desires, since you don't zone the green belt residential then.
Now of course personally I'd prefer the residential zones to be bigger than they are now, but that's a semi-separate debate.
Beyond that though, I am saying since we have a shortage of 3 million homes today, and we don't have 3 million homes with planning permission let alone under construction, then JFDI applies. Just frigging do it.
Get the homes built. Better to not be homeless.
Once the homes are built, of course better ideally to have commerce, schools etc - but in the mean time better to have a home than no home.
And of course since this is the UK, not Australia or Canada, even if there's no school [yet] within your area there will be schools not very far away. This isn't rural Alberta or Western Australia where your nearest town is 400 km away.
As I said, my kids go to a different school, in a different town, than the one where I live. There is a small primary and secondary school where I live, which kind of used to be a village but is now a new town [the overwhelming majority of houses in this town did not exist in 2010], but they are small and I like my kids school so we're not transferring them. My kids still have places in the school over the river and I drive them there. Oh and if I didn't drive, there are school buses that come down our road to collect kids to take them to where my kids go to school. I'm guessing we're far from unique in crossing the river to get to school, and there's an option via dedicated school buses for those who don't drive.
OK then. Your planning reform is to have residential 'zones' with planning permission granted for 3 million plus new houses. You now seem to be accepting that there is a heavy sacrifice (over and beyond what was identified in the example in linked to above) in terms of infrastructure provision, placemaking etc, but consider it is all necessary to deal with the over-riding housing need. You believe that it can and will all be worked out in some way afterwards.
I think this would be a disaster. It bakes in dependency on the car and the need for continuous expensive upgrades to roads and bridges for generations. I also think that the JFDI direction will not actually deliver much more housing. Because as I have pointed out before, the housebuilding industry deliver about 100-150 k houses a year and nothing more and all the signs are that they would continue to do this under any new policy.
There would be some SME/self building going on but the industry is small and it is not going to be at any significant scale. It won't seriously come on stream until capacity in the construction industry is massively increased. And on these projects, someone else still has to build and fund the roads, the streetlights, the drains etc.
Prices may fall because of oversupply but they would quickly hit a level where new housebuilding becomes uneconomic in many areas because of build cost inflation. So my best guess is that you would quickly end up with lots of empty plots and a recession.
If you look through the post war history of housebuilding it is very clear that the only time the government delivers 300,000 houses a year is when it builds half of them itself.
Sorry but you've got your own assumptions then have worked backwards from there.
Firstly there's no need for it all to be dependent on the car, in fact the opposite is possible too. If existing residential zones become denser and build up then that can lead to public transport becoming more efficient, not less. Not that I have any objection to the motor vehicle, but I think my proposal if implemented would see places like London seeing building up happening and I wouldn't expect those to be all homes relying upon cars.
Secondly all the evidence from around the planet is that without planning being an insurmountable obstacle is that SME/self-building should happen at a very significant scale. In almost every country with my proposed system, SME/self-builds happen at orders of magnitude more than here.
As far as funding the roads etc is concerned that needs to happen either way, planning or no planning. That's what the tax system is for. We pay our taxes, we need roads and transportation. Politicians need to do their job. If you want to put a tax on new houses that goes to a pot to pay towards new roads, then I have no philosophical objection to that, but we pay our taxes either way.
As far as prices are concerned, too much of the price of new homes currently is planning itself. If that ceases to be the case, then prices can fall without hurting development. If land becomes cheaper, but taxed more [two prongs to this] then land-banking would never happen and people are encouraged to get on with it rather than to dawdle.
Finally its very clear in the history of housebuilding around the planet, that when competition is allowed to flourish and demand is high then people can and do get on with it. The city of Tokyo alone [population 14 million] has consistently delivered more new homes than the entirety of England combined. As a former cheese loving Prime Minister might have said: That. Is. A. Disgrace.
Saying that our current system isn't working, so therefore reform is pointless, rather misses the point don't you think?
Ok. So you are now going to insist that the houses are built more densely to avoid the problem of 'suburban sprawl'. How is public transport going to work efficiently - Do the authorities put in the transit routes before the zoning or afterwards? At what point would the authorities consider something like walkways, cycle paths etc? At the point when the land is zoned, or afterwards? Regarding your comments about much of the cost of new housing being 'planning', this is true to a point, but what about other factors such as 'desirability of location'? Would you agree that the cost of land for housing (and reflected in sale prices) is also influenced by this? For instance, in that article I linked to above, the houses in the suburbs of Sydney were not cheap - the defective planning had not reduced the desirability of the location.
I would agree that the system isn't working that well and needs to be reformed, but that is an altogether different idea from 'getting rid of planning'.
FWIW your ideas are very similar to what the government (via policy exchange) actually proposed in January 2020.
Unfortunately this work basically went nowhere. The only legacy of it is a set of perplexing reforms to the use classes order, making it difficult for Council's to control changes of use.
No, I'm not going to "insist" that houses are built more densely. What part of it is it that you're struggling to understand, I don't think anyone should insist upon anything, myself included.
Let the owner of the land decide.
Where land is valuable in its own right, rather than because of planning, eg in cities then building up will probably happen not because you or I want it, but because that's the most effective use of land so people will choose to do it.
Transit routes, along with schooling and other public services should evolve over time, you might have an initial idea but it shouldn't ever be ossified. People change and adapt what they use. An area that is bought out by young people may end up becoming embraced by old people - sometimes the same ex-young people who never moved.
We need to evolve over time, not plan something based on the needs of decades ago.
Yes the 2020 reforms were a good idea, didn't go as far as I'd like but a big step in the right direction, its a shame they were dropped.
In the end I think you probably want a different system of planning, not the abolition of planning.
My criticism however is that you are presenting a superficially easy answer ("scrap planning") to a complicated question.
Zoning rather than our current Byzantine planning laws. If land is zoned residential, then let people build whatever they want on it subject to residential regulations, without input from local politicians or NIMBY neighbours.
That doesn't mean a skyscraper of apartments will be built in the middle of national parks though, since skyscrapers won't meet regulations and national parks won't be zoned residential.
Ok zoning, subject to regulations and design codes. Not a bad idea and works in many countries. I struggle to really see how it is that different to outline planning permission or permission in principle. All the same issues would come up that come up at the point when the land was zoned as would be the case in an outline planning application, IE the roads, congestion, drainage, flooding, ecological, social infrastructure, impact on landscape. The delays that people associate with Council bureaucracy are usually actually rooted in a deeper and more pathological problems with the decision making processes of the British state, the legacy of shoddy attempts at privatisation and the aversion to spend public money on the part of government. None of that gets swept away with a new planning system.
The only way you could immediately zone land for 3 million houses is to ignore the real planning consequences of doing so which would then become apparent extremely quickly.
The best way to think about the issue is to understand that fixes will be resisted, and diverted.
So we have more planing permissions granted.
Which stack up in piles. This makes the NIMBYs go away, a bit. The developers like it because they have a guaranteed flow of future income they can amortise. They have *adapted* to more planning permission being granted.
So we need to adapt. The issue is monopoly (local) or oligopoly by big house builders. So deal with that by limiting the percentage of an areas planning permission that can be held by a single developer.
Yes, they will try and get round that. Then we will need to adapt again. Such has been market regulation, since Adam Smith.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
If I were Ed Davey I would resign saying that he rebuilt the party after the coalition, but someone without the taint of it should be in charge, and they should coronate Daisy Cooper as their leader. I know she is a relatively new MP and her majority is also quite new - but she's a good public speaker, she is a relatively young woman, she didn't serve in the coalition and has been willing to say it was a mistake (even though she points out some of the positive things the LDs managed) and she is charismatic. The papers would hate her (she was involved in one of the campaigns to tighten media regulations post Levinson) but she'd go back to the days when the LDs could attack Labour on the left on some issues.
The 2009 Lib Dems were just a much (politically) stronger outfit. Uncle Vince, David Laws, Steve Webb, Chris Huhne could all give as good as they got on tv.
It turned out the most competent of the lot was the one with zero public profile, Danny Alexander. And Norman Lamb.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Supreme Court unfreezes Louisiana redistricting case that could boost power of Black voters
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted its hold on a Louisiana case that could force the state to redraw congressional districts to boost Black voting power.
The order follows the court’s rejection earlier in June of a congressional redistricting map in Alabama and unfreezes the Louisiana case, which had been on hold pending the decision in Alabama.
In both states, Black voters are a majority in just one congressional district. Lower courts had ruled that the maps raised concerns that Black voting power had been diluted, in violation of the landmark federal Voting Rights Act.
About a third of Louisiana’s residents are Black. More than one in four Alabamians are Black.
The justices put the Louisiana case on hold and allowed the state’s challenged map to be used in last year’s elections after they agreed to hear the Alabama case.
The case had separately been appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The justices said that appeal now could go forward in advance of next year’s congressional elections.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
That's very embiggening to know
Embiggen is a great word. I use it probably at least once a week. "Can you just embiggen the screen a bit?" How did we go for so long without a word for 'make it bigger'?
Enlarge does the job.
Could you engorge the font a little, I can't quite make it out on the screen share.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
That's very embiggening to know
Embiggen is a great word. I use it probably at least once a week. "Can you just embiggen the screen a bit?" How did we go for so long without a word for 'make it bigger'?
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
The Sunday Rawnsley, brought to you on a Monday, but then it takes a long time to drive to Arsland:
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
…some key questions for Labour have been under-scrutinised. Is it realistic to think that the UK can generate all its electricity from clean sources by the end of this decade? Sir Keir maintains that is still his mission, but a lot of expert opinion is sceptical. The polite say it sounds “highly ambitious”. The ruder say there’s not “a hope in hell” of achieving the target. Labour claims it can kickstart growth to turn the UK into the fastest-expanding economy in the G7. Does that still add up when investment in a critical component is going to start later than originally promised? A hard pledge has softened into a vaguer-sounding goal. The wary are suspicious that it will next dissolve into nothing better than a wispy aspiration. That would be bad for the country and for the planet.
It should not be beyond Sir Keir and his team to make the green prosperity plan attractive. If the Labour party cannot sell lower bills, more jobs, a healthier planet, energy self-sufficiency and screwing Vladimir Putin to the electorate it might as well get out of the business of politics altogether.
The Labour leader and his colleagues ought to be mindful of the dangers of giving the impression that they make grandiose-sounding pledges to change the world only then to retreat when they encounter challenge and resistance. That’s not the way for an opposition to generate confidence. As a method of running a government, it would be terrible.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
That's very embiggening to know
Embiggen is a great word. I use it probably at least once a week. "Can you just embiggen the screen a bit?" How did we go for so long without a word for 'make it bigger'?
Enlarge does the job.
Could you engorge the font a little, I can't quite make it out on the screen share.
Motorway service station right now. Absolutely in my element.
Go on, which one?
Watford Gap. Top tier stuff.
Nice one. You probably know this, but - due to its location in the centre of England - Watford Gap services, then operated by and known as Blue Boar, was a significant location in late 60s rock music and a focus for bands to meet at after their gigs. Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones... there was a misapprehension among followers of the scene less au fait with British transport geography that the Blue Boar was some sort of highly fashionable night spot. This was, of course, the days before value engineering and economies of scale turned most service stations into functional facsimilies of one another.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
I can see them still go lower, as interest rates haven't peaked yet and of course it takes time for everybody to feel the effects of the rises i.e. people on 2-3 year fixed when they renew. And inflation isn't going to come back down to normal levels for a long time to come.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
I did indeed, as in I have not changed my Semmit this sennight
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
That's very embiggening to know
Embiggen is a great word. I use it probably at least once a week. "Can you just embiggen the screen a bit?" How did we go for so long without a word for 'make it bigger'?
We already had words that meant make it it bigger, enlarge,expand,scale up etc
The Sunday Rawnsley, brought to you on a Monday, but then it takes a long time to drive to Arsland:
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
…some key questions for Labour have been under-scrutinised. Is it realistic to think that the UK can generate all its electricity from clean sources by the end of this decade? Sir Keir maintains that is still his mission, but a lot of expert opinion is sceptical. The polite say it sounds “highly ambitious”. The ruder say there’s not “a hope in hell” of achieving the target. Labour claims it can kickstart growth to turn the UK into the fastest-expanding economy in the G7. Does that still add up when investment in a critical component is going to start later than originally promised? A hard pledge has softened into a vaguer-sounding goal. The wary are suspicious that it will next dissolve into nothing better than a wispy aspiration. That would be bad for the country and for the planet.
It should not be beyond Sir Keir and his team to make the green prosperity plan attractive. If the Labour party cannot sell lower bills, more jobs, a healthier planet, energy self-sufficiency and screwing Vladimir Putin to the electorate it might as well get out of the business of politics altogether.
The Labour leader and his colleagues ought to be mindful of the dangers of giving the impression that they make grandiose-sounding pledges to change the world only then to retreat when they encounter challenge and resistance. That’s not the way for an opposition to generate confidence. As a method of running a government, it would be terrible.
Your friend did NOT even make it to the semi-finals!
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
Motorway service station right now. Absolutely in my element.
Go on, which one?
Watford Gap. Top tier stuff.
Nice one. You probably know this, but - due to its location in the centre of England - Watford Gap services, then operated by and known as Blue Boar, was a significant location in late 60s rock music and a focus for bands to meet at after their gigs. Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones... there was a misapprehension among followers of the scene less au fait with British transport geography that the Blue Boar was some sort of highly fashionable night spot. This was, of course, the days before value engineering and economies of scale turned most service stations into functional facsimilies of one another.
Just how did it get named the Watford gap ?
I remember the first time coming across it. Have I really driven that far ? (Driving from Coventry...)
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
Funnily enough, I sort of agree with you. Having put her in, they should have given her at least six months, probably a year, to turn things around and, to coin a phrase, 'surprise on the upside'. She shouldn't have appointed Kwarteng, though - would have had more chance without him.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
"It's the economy, stupid"
The problem I think Labour will have is they won't stay popular if SKS keeps his "fiscal rules" and just does austerity again. Coming out against a teacher pay rise, for example, when teachers are a group who used to be relatively evenly split Tory v Lab back in 09 to very Labour now is maddening - the Tories give their base lots of economic security and Labour actively tells its base to piss off.
Depending on the size of the Labour majority, I wonder if we'll finally see the party disintegration that should have happened a while ago - if SKS kicks out all the actual left leaning MPs / they leave Lab due to some godawful policy Starmer will produce and then they form a new party / join the Greens to form an actual progressive left party; Reform UK eat into Cons enough that Cons and Ref UK are both somewhat serious contenders for the right, and Labour and LDs claim the centre with (at the moment at least) SKS's Labour claiming the centre right and the LDs claiming the centre left. I only think this would happen in the event of a Tory wipe out and a Lab super majority - SKS will feel safe kicking out the left and still being able to govern / the left will feel safe leaving the Lab party without the fear of letting the Tories in power, and if Reform will get taken seriously by the media because the media is always more than happy to prop up any right wing nutjob party, even without serious representation in parliament.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
It really was quite bizarre set of events. Somebody who has spent years plotting to get the top job, when they got there hadn't planned beyond back of a napkin level stuff....some might say Wagner coup level planning.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
I did indeed, as in I have not changed my Semmit this sennight
That hebdomadal hairshirt you wear accounts for much
Emelian Pugachev, a Cossack who led a huge rebellion against Catherine the Great in the 1770.
Pugachev was captured and publicly beheaded and quartered in Moscow. His legend gave rise to the noun “pugachevshchina” to denote the Russian proclivity for senseless, doomed rebellion.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
The pressure came almost entirely from the Sunakites in her own party and the media, who refused to accept the result of the leadership election.
As we now see, they pushed her out, in favour of someone equally out of their depth. At least Liz Truss had ideas and plans, even if you disagree with them. Sunak has nothing.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
I did indeed, as in I have not changed my Semmit this sennight
That hebdomadal hairshirt you wear accounts for much
I find pointing out they mangle language like donald trump shuts them up
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
Funnily enough, I sort of agree with you. Having put her in, they should have given her at least six months, probably a year, to turn things around and, to coin a phrase, 'surprise on the upside'. She shouldn't have appointed Kwarteng, though - would have had more chance without him.
I still can't work out why having got there, she didn't really do that herself i.e. state her philosophy / vision, but reality is x, thus here are some changes, then in 12 months we will make some more. Instead it was like Wile E. Coyote running off a cliff.
Motorway service station right now. Absolutely in my element.
Go on, which one?
Watford Gap. Top tier stuff.
Nice one. You probably know this, but - due to its location in the centre of England - Watford Gap services, then operated by and known as Blue Boar, was a significant location in late 60s rock music and a focus for bands to meet at after their gigs. Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones... there was a misapprehension among followers of the scene less au fait with British transport geography that the Blue Boar was some sort of highly fashionable night spot. This was, of course, the days before value engineering and economies of scale turned most service stations into functional facsimilies of one another.
Just how did it get named the Watford gap ?
I remember the first time coming across it. Have I really driven that far ? (Driving from Coventry...)
Old pass through the [edit - wrong geology, apols.] some range in Northants, no? = gap between 2 hills etc. Roman roabdbuilders, railway, canal ...
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Fact of the matter is that the challenge facing Sunak was gargantuan and it is beyond his ability.
People want this government out. I think there’s things Sunak could possibly have done differently that might have helped (a wild one - I think going to the country in March-May time wouldn’t have been a terrible idea) but I think the fundamentals are such that it’s just time for the Tories to leave office now. The longer they continue, the more inevitable it gets.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Sunak should have shown some balls and voted for the Boris ban.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
Not necessarily. Had the Conservatives stuck with Truss, their polling plunge would presumably have bottomed out by now, but God alone knows where that bottom would have been.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
Gruntled is used by PG Wodehouse. 1938. Code of the Woosters.
'He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.'
'Agonist' is, of course, frequently used in molecular biology.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
It really was quite bizarre set of events. Somebody who has spent years plotting to get the top job, when they got there hadn't planned beyond back of a napkin level stuff....some might say Wagner coup level planning.
Or Gordon Brown, who could at least do cool things with a glass eye.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
Nah, Ed Davey is running things well with good prospects of further gains at the byelections and doubling the LD representation at the GE.
Mary Ilyushina @maryilyushina · 7m Prigozhin is back with an 11-min audio message. Says the reason he marches is because Wagner was forced to disband on July 1s because of Shoigu order to sign contracts. Wagner commanders refused to sign. Thread:
On the subject of linguistic monstrosities, the one I can't stand is "yourself" when people mean "you". It really grates for reasons I can't really explain.
And "myself" in the same usage.
"How's yourself", meanwhile makes me want to kill people.
Perfectly valid Scots/N Eng - but on the lines of "your self" as in "your good self".
As in g'oan yer self there, big man. Yeah it isn't that usage that bugs me. On this topic, one excellent Scottish linguistic innovation is the use of the second person plural, yous or yous yins, which can sometimes remove ambiguity.
Yous is a Geordie word. I use it regularly.
There used to be four words for 'you' in English: you, ye, thou and thee. I think you/ye was formal/plural and thou/thee familiar and singular. (Pleasingly, the CoE referred to God in the familiar rather than formal tone). The ou/e endings are equivalent to the continuing difference between I/me, him/he, her/she and whom/who, although the latter two are now used so interchangeably that even dyed in the wool pedants sometimes need to think a bit about it.
Korean has entirely different verb forms for different levels of formality. I believe there used to be one used exclusively for addressing royalty, which is sadly defunct (though perhaps to be encountered in historical dramas).
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy.
For someone who was once famous for her brain, she does seem to have gone totally off the rails in recent years. She’s now Liz Hurley, but half a decade older.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
A variety of factors did for Truss. Lack of a convincing mandate from MPs, not particularly well known (or liked) among the public before taking office, and unfortunately just not equipped with the political skills to push a radical policy agenda and take people with her. She was just not suited for high office, and it is a tremendous shame that the Tory Party and the membership lost their collective minds and enabled her rise. A middle ranking cabinet minister with some interesting background policy ideas? I could go with that. Not a PM.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
If so, that makes her even more unsuitable for the job. You wouldn't knowingly bring that sort of misery upon yourself, but if she was oblivious to what the consequences of her actions would be she should never have been entrusted with that sort of responsibility.
Motorway service station right now. Absolutely in my element.
Go on, which one?
Watford Gap. Top tier stuff.
Nice one. You probably know this, but - due to its location in the centre of England - Watford Gap services, then operated by and known as Blue Boar, was a significant location in late 60s rock music and a focus for bands to meet at after their gigs. Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones... there was a misapprehension among followers of the scene less au fait with British transport geography that the Blue Boar was some sort of highly fashionable night spot. This was, of course, the days before value engineering and economies of scale turned most service stations into functional facsimilies of one another.
Just how did it get named the Watford gap ?
I remember the first time coming across it. Have I really driven that far ? (Driving from Coventry...)
It was named to fulfil the same function as Wales and swimming pools. As a useful demarcation, in this instance, of what, beyond which, was "north".
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
Not necessarily. Had the Conservatives stuck with Truss, their polling plunge would presumably have bottomed out by now, but God alone knows where that bottom would have been.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
It really was quite bizarre set of events. Somebody who has spent years plotting to get the top job, when they got there hadn't planned beyond back of a napkin level stuff....some might say Wagner coup level planning.
Or Gordon Brown, who could at least do cool things with a glass eye.
The problem Gordon Brown had was he was so used to taking 6 months to plan everything out and micro-managing every decision under his authority, that all of a sudden the remit was like exponentially bigger ( ;-) ) and the decision needed to be made then and there, so it all snowballed.
Btw: networking bods*, Tailscale really is amazing isn't it?
* Bods is a word whose meaning has evolved. Sorry.
The remarkable thing is that it's not even that complex it just adds an incredibly easy to use front end on to Wireguard.
My one annoyance is that I can't connect it directly to a cloudflare front end and so need to add a small internet facing proxy server in the middle...
It's one of two new tech things that have significantly improved my life in the last six months, with the other being Proxmox.
I use Tailscale to access my home Internet from afar. Basically, my phone and laptop are always connected to our home automation stuff, and there's no need to mess with port forwarding or any of that stuff.
OpenVPN was never _that_ hard...
I've used OpenVPN many times. And it's not that hard. But it's still nowhere near as easy as Tailscale.
It’s simply a VPN bridge that links two outgoing connections, or it’s more than that?
Tailscale works in two ways.
The first is the simplest. You install the Tailscale software to any computers you want to be on the same subnet (Linux, Android, Windows, etc.) You login via Google. And - tada - you now have half dozen machines also having an IP on subnet, irrespective of where they are, with no need to forward ports, or anything.
The second is slightly more complex. You set up a small container (probably running on Proxmox) and make that an exit node for your entire local network. (Time to setup, about a minute.) You can then, from any of your other Tailscale machines, access that entire subnet.
Look: setting up VPNs is not that complex. But Tailscale makes it so incredibly simple. It also means that I can make cloud hosted servers like PB more secure. Historically, I've had port 22 open, so I can SSH in. (Root SSH login not allowed, obviously.) But now I can only allow SSH over the "local" network, so that anyone hunting for open ports will only find HTTPS.
Mary Ilyushina @maryilyushina · 7m Prigozhin is back with an 11-min audio message. Says the reason he marches is because Wagner was forced to disband on July 1s because of Shoigu order to sign contracts. Wagner commanders refused to sign. Thread:
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy.
For someone who was once famous for her brain, she does seem to have gone totally off the rails in recent years. She’s now Liz Hurley, but half a decade older.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
Why, so you could dump her for a new leader closer to the election ? Not sure that would have improved anything at all.
Btw: networking bods*, Tailscale really is amazing isn't it?
* Bods is a word whose meaning has evolved. Sorry.
The remarkable thing is that it's not even that complex it just adds an incredibly easy to use front end on to Wireguard.
My one annoyance is that I can't connect it directly to a cloudflare front end and so need to add a small internet facing proxy server in the middle...
It's one of two new tech things that have significantly improved my life in the last six months, with the other being Proxmox.
I use Tailscale to access my home Internet from afar. Basically, my phone and laptop are always connected to our home automation stuff, and there's no need to mess with port forwarding or any of that stuff.
OpenVPN was never _that_ hard...
I've used OpenVPN many times. And it's not that hard. But it's still nowhere near as easy as Tailscale.
It’s simply a VPN bridge that links two outgoing connections, or it’s more than that?
Tailscale works in two ways.
The first is the simplest. You install the Tailscale software to any computers you want to be on the same subnet (Linux, Android, Windows, etc.) You login via Google. And - tada - you now have half dozen machines also having an IP on subnet, irrespective of where they are, with no need to forward ports, or anything.
The second is slightly more complex. You set up a small container (probably running on Proxmox) and make that an exit node for your entire local network. (Time to setup, about a minute.) You can then, from any of your other Tailscale machines, access that entire subnet.
Look: setting up VPNs is not that complex. But Tailscale makes it so incredibly simple. It also means that I can make cloud hosted servers like PB more secure. Historically, I've had port 22 open, so I can SSH in. (Root SSH login not allowed, obviously.) But now I can only allow SSH over the "local" network, so that anyone hunting for open ports will only find HTTPS.
You lost me as a serious solution with “login via Google”.
That said, I’m off the day job for the next fortnight thanks to the Eid holiday, so maybe I’ll take a look at the second option. I’m still presuming it’s a service that links outgoing VPN connections, and that you need an account that could be terminated tomorrow if your bank declines the payment.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
She's found a gap in the rentagob market on the left side. She's just using the same tricks but with a different target. It's a grift.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
"It's the economy, stupid"
The problem I think Labour will have is they won't stay popular if SKS keeps his "fiscal rules" and just does austerity again. Coming out against a teacher pay rise, for example, when teachers are a group who used to be relatively evenly split Tory v Lab back in 09 to very Labour now is maddening - the Tories give their base lots of economic security and Labour actively tells its base to piss off.
Depending on the size of the Labour majority, I wonder if we'll finally see the party disintegration that should have happened a while ago - if SKS kicks out all the actual left leaning MPs / they leave Lab due to some godawful policy Starmer will produce and then they form a new party / join the Greens to form an actual progressive left party; Reform UK eat into Cons enough that Cons and Ref UK are both somewhat serious contenders for the right, and Labour and LDs claim the centre with (at the moment at least) SKS's Labour claiming the centre right and the LDs claiming the centre left. I only think this would happen in the event of a Tory wipe out and a Lab super majority - SKS will feel safe kicking out the left and still being able to govern / the left will feel safe leaving the Lab party without the fear of letting the Tories in power, and if Reform will get taken seriously by the media because the media is always more than happy to prop up any right wing nutjob party, even without serious representation in parliament.
Hope you're not calling me stupid!
I think you exaggerate the extent to which Starmer wants to purge the left. He's doing what he thinks he needs to do to win the GE and is, I'd agree, being rather ruthless about it. But he knows full well that if people like me, good old lefties, abandon the party for the Greens or whatever then Labour won't be winning any future elections.
As I've said before, I think there'll be enough radicalism and redistribution once Starmer wins power to satisfy most of the left, though of course the extreme left would never be satisfied.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
She's found a gap in the rentagob market on the left side. She's just using the same tricks but with a different target. It's a grift.
Isn't there already plenty occupying that space? Lineker, Neville, basically every other celebrity on twitter....
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
She's found a gap in the rentagob market on the left side. She's just using the same tricks but with a different target. It's a grift.
Isn't there already plenty occupying that space? Lineker, Neville, basically every other celebrity on twitter....
The difference being that Vorderman can get herself on TV, in an environment where her optinions carry weight thanks to her reputation.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
She's found a gap in the rentagob market on the left side. She's just using the same tricks but with a different target. It's a grift.
Isn't there already plenty occupying that space? Lineker, Neville, basically every other celebrity on twitter....
The difference being that Vorderman can get herself on TV, in an environment where her optinions carry weight thanks to her reputation.
The few times I heard her recently, that reputation didn't last long as she sounded unhinged. Everything is some secret conspiracy / sleaze that mainstream media won't dare talk about.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
It really was quite bizarre set of events. Somebody who has spent years plotting to get the top job, when they got there hadn't planned beyond back of a napkin level stuff....some might say Wagner coup level planning.
I think she spent those years imbibing a lot of hokum economic philosophy - the sort of stuff that sounds terribly convincing when zealots are propounding it to each other and dissent isn't a thing.
The Sunday Rawnsley, brought to you on a Monday, but then it takes a long time to drive to Arsland:
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
…some key questions for Labour have been under-scrutinised. Is it realistic to think that the UK can generate all its electricity from clean sources by the end of this decade? Sir Keir maintains that is still his mission, but a lot of expert opinion is sceptical. The polite say it sounds “highly ambitious”. The ruder say there’s not “a hope in hell” of achieving the target. Labour claims it can kickstart growth to turn the UK into the fastest-expanding economy in the G7. Does that still add up when investment in a critical component is going to start later than originally promised? A hard pledge has softened into a vaguer-sounding goal. The wary are suspicious that it will next dissolve into nothing better than a wispy aspiration. That would be bad for the country and for the planet.
It should not be beyond Sir Keir and his team to make the green prosperity plan attractive. If the Labour party cannot sell lower bills, more jobs, a healthier planet, energy self-sufficiency and screwing Vladimir Putin to the electorate it might as well get out of the business of politics altogether.
The Labour leader and his colleagues ought to be mindful of the dangers of giving the impression that they make grandiose-sounding pledges to change the world only then to retreat when they encounter challenge and resistance. That’s not the way for an opposition to generate confidence. As a method of running a government, it would be terrible.
Not sure that AR is right. Like everyone else, Sir K doesn't actually have a workable scheme to save the planet. Saving the planet requires unplannable luck, that same luck that has held for 4 billion years. Saving the human race is not in his, or anyone's, gift.
More modestly he needs to ensure he doesn't lose an election. This is not in the bag.
Sir K and Labour are in the perfect place to hit the political sweet spot: to win by under promising, and govern by slightly over- delivering.
The degree of hopelessness and helplessness is palpable. See all the media every day. You don't need to promise sunlit uplands and free owls when it would be a remarkable achievement to keep Spar and Greggs open in Accrington and Grimsby.
Btw: networking bods*, Tailscale really is amazing isn't it?
* Bods is a word whose meaning has evolved. Sorry.
The remarkable thing is that it's not even that complex it just adds an incredibly easy to use front end on to Wireguard.
My one annoyance is that I can't connect it directly to a cloudflare front end and so need to add a small internet facing proxy server in the middle...
It's one of two new tech things that have significantly improved my life in the last six months, with the other being Proxmox.
I use Tailscale to access my home Internet from afar. Basically, my phone and laptop are always connected to our home automation stuff, and there's no need to mess with port forwarding or any of that stuff.
OpenVPN was never _that_ hard...
I've used OpenVPN many times. And it's not that hard. But it's still nowhere near as easy as Tailscale.
It’s simply a VPN bridge that links two outgoing connections, or it’s more than that?
Tailscale works in two ways.
The first is the simplest. You install the Tailscale software to any computers you want to be on the same subnet (Linux, Android, Windows, etc.) You login via Google. And - tada - you now have half dozen machines also having an IP on subnet, irrespective of where they are, with no need to forward ports, or anything.
The second is slightly more complex. You set up a small container (probably running on Proxmox) and make that an exit node for your entire local network. (Time to setup, about a minute.) You can then, from any of your other Tailscale machines, access that entire subnet.
Look: setting up VPNs is not that complex. But Tailscale makes it so incredibly simple. It also means that I can make cloud hosted servers like PB more secure. Historically, I've had port 22 open, so I can SSH in. (Root SSH login not allowed, obviously.) But now I can only allow SSH over the "local" network, so that anyone hunting for open ports will only find HTTPS.
You lost me as a serious solution with “login via Google”.
That said, I’m off the day job for the next fortnight thanks to the Eid holiday, so maybe I’ll take a look at the second option. I’m still presuming it’s a service that links outgoing VPN connections, and that you need an account that could be terminated tomorrow if your bank declines the payment.
I think there is an open source self hosted version but tailscale have a usable free level that definitely covers most non-commercial use cases...
Btw: networking bods*, Tailscale really is amazing isn't it?
* Bods is a word whose meaning has evolved. Sorry.
The remarkable thing is that it's not even that complex it just adds an incredibly easy to use front end on to Wireguard.
My one annoyance is that I can't connect it directly to a cloudflare front end and so need to add a small internet facing proxy server in the middle...
It's one of two new tech things that have significantly improved my life in the last six months, with the other being Proxmox.
I use Tailscale to access my home Internet from afar. Basically, my phone and laptop are always connected to our home automation stuff, and there's no need to mess with port forwarding or any of that stuff.
OpenVPN was never _that_ hard...
I've used OpenVPN many times. And it's not that hard. But it's still nowhere near as easy as Tailscale.
It’s simply a VPN bridge that links two outgoing connections, or it’s more than that?
Tailscale works in two ways.
The first is the simplest. You install the Tailscale software to any computers you want to be on the same subnet (Linux, Android, Windows, etc.) You login via Google. And - tada - you now have half dozen machines also having an IP on subnet, irrespective of where they are, with no need to forward ports, or anything.
The second is slightly more complex. You set up a small container (probably running on Proxmox) and make that an exit node for your entire local network. (Time to setup, about a minute.) You can then, from any of your other Tailscale machines, access that entire subnet.
Look: setting up VPNs is not that complex. But Tailscale makes it so incredibly simple. It also means that I can make cloud hosted servers like PB more secure. Historically, I've had port 22 open, so I can SSH in. (Root SSH login not allowed, obviously.) But now I can only allow SSH over the "local" network, so that anyone hunting for open ports will only find HTTPS.
You lost me as a serious solution with “login via Google”.
That said, I’m off the day job for the next fortnight thanks to the Eid holiday, so maybe I’ll take a look at the second option. I’m still presuming it’s a service that links outgoing VPN connections, and that you need an account that could be terminated tomorrow if your bank declines the payment.
Tailscale supports a ton of authentication options. Google is the easiest if you just want to try it out, but there really are no limits.
It’s a fantastically well thought out solution that builds on top of existing open source code. You could implement the whole thing yourself on top of wireguard if you really wanted to, but tailscale just works & is ready to go.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
Not necessarily. Had the Conservatives stuck with Truss, their polling plunge would presumably have bottomed out by now, but God alone knows where that bottom would have been.
Good afternoon
Sunak and Hunt are following the only course open to government at present, and will take the hit as they are the only ones saying how it is despite how unpopular it is, though labour have been responsible in rejecting the lib dem £300 per month mortgage cash payment, and yesterday Lisa Nandy stepped away from a blanket endorsement of the pay review bodies
This is hard, and we can refer to 13 years of conservative misrule, brexit, covid and the war in Ukraine but recalling these issues does not show the way forward, which I would venture to suggest that if the government does not clamp down, not only on wage increases, but yes the triple lock, benefits rises and increases in the national living wage a point may arise that the IMF walk into London as per the 1976 labour government financial crisis
I make no apologies for supporting Sunak and Hunt and, hopefully, in 18 months they may have made things a little easier for Starmer and labour, but at their and the conservative party's political cost and as a consequence of the Johnson and Truss preceding chaos
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
"It's the economy, stupid"
The problem I think Labour will have is they won't stay popular if SKS keeps his "fiscal rules" and just does austerity again. Coming out against a teacher pay rise, for example, when teachers are a group who used to be relatively evenly split Tory v Lab back in 09 to very Labour now is maddening - the Tories give their base lots of economic security and Labour actively tells its base to piss off.
Depending on the size of the Labour majority, I wonder if we'll finally see the party disintegration that should have happened a while ago - if SKS kicks out all the actual left leaning MPs / they leave Lab due to some godawful policy Starmer will produce and then they form a new party / join the Greens to form an actual progressive left party; Reform UK eat into Cons enough that Cons and Ref UK are both somewhat serious contenders for the right, and Labour and LDs claim the centre with (at the moment at least) SKS's Labour claiming the centre right and the LDs claiming the centre left. I only think this would happen in the event of a Tory wipe out and a Lab super majority - SKS will feel safe kicking out the left and still being able to govern / the left will feel safe leaving the Lab party without the fear of letting the Tories in power, and if Reform will get taken seriously by the media because the media is always more than happy to prop up any right wing nutjob party, even without serious representation in parliament.
Hope you're not calling me stupid!
I think you exaggerate the extent to which Starmer wants to purge the left. He's doing what he thinks he needs to do to win the GE and is, I'd agree, being rather ruthless about it. But he knows full well that if people like me, good old lefties, abandon the party for the Greens or whatever then Labour won't be winning any future elections.
As I've said before, I think there'll be enough radicalism and redistribution once Starmer wins power to satisfy most of the left, though of course the extreme left would never be satisfied.
I don't know if you follow (at)tomorrowsmps on twitter, but he follows lots of local selection processes and has a good archive of just how far SKS is going in terms of kicking out anyone considered on the left of the party. Like, whose GE vote was dependent on deselecting this current popular northern mayor versus the damage done with local party members / activists?
It is clear that even if SKS doesn't want to clean house, those around him do. They want to go further than Blair did and consign the left of the party to history. I can't see any prominent left wing MPs making their way into the cabinet once a government is formed.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
That's one quality that Theresa May certainly didn't lack. In different circumstances, her "bloody difficult woman" persona could have made her a great PM. I'm convinced she would have been better than Cameron over the 2010-2016 period.
Btw: networking bods*, Tailscale really is amazing isn't it?
* Bods is a word whose meaning has evolved. Sorry.
The remarkable thing is that it's not even that complex it just adds an incredibly easy to use front end on to Wireguard.
My one annoyance is that I can't connect it directly to a cloudflare front end and so need to add a small internet facing proxy server in the middle...
It's one of two new tech things that have significantly improved my life in the last six months, with the other being Proxmox.
I use Tailscale to access my home Internet from afar. Basically, my phone and laptop are always connected to our home automation stuff, and there's no need to mess with port forwarding or any of that stuff.
OpenVPN was never _that_ hard...
I've used OpenVPN many times. And it's not that hard. But it's still nowhere near as easy as Tailscale.
It’s simply a VPN bridge that links two outgoing connections, or it’s more than that?
Tailscale works in two ways.
The first is the simplest. You install the Tailscale software to any computers you want to be on the same subnet (Linux, Android, Windows, etc.) You login via Google. And - tada - you now have half dozen machines also having an IP on subnet, irrespective of where they are, with no need to forward ports, or anything.
The second is slightly more complex. You set up a small container (probably running on Proxmox) and make that an exit node for your entire local network. (Time to setup, about a minute.) You can then, from any of your other Tailscale machines, access that entire subnet.
Look: setting up VPNs is not that complex. But Tailscale makes it so incredibly simple. It also means that I can make cloud hosted servers like PB more secure. Historically, I've had port 22 open, so I can SSH in. (Root SSH login not allowed, obviously.) But now I can only allow SSH over the "local" network, so that anyone hunting for open ports will only find HTTPS.
You lost me as a serious solution with “login via Google”.
That said, I’m off the day job for the next fortnight thanks to the Eid holiday, so maybe I’ll take a look at the second option. I’m still presuming it’s a service that links outgoing VPN connections, and that you need an account that could be terminated tomorrow if your bank declines the payment.
Tailscale supports a ton of authentication options. Google is the easiest if you just want to try it out, but there really are no limits.
It’s a fantastically well thought out solution that builds on top of existing open source code. You could implement the whole thing yourself on top of wireguard if you really wanted to, but tailscale just works & is ready to go.
Try it, you might like it.
Okay, sounds fun! That’s next week’s project lined up.
I do wonder if history might be a little kinder on Truss than contemporary public/media/Tory opinion.
An epic demonstration, perhaps, that politics is hard and has all sorts of non-obvious constraints when it comes to policy options.
If they had even got some proper costings and some sort of vaguely believable plan then maybe. But the fact it was here are all my policies, they are really quite radical...how much will it all cost and who will you pay for it....errrhhhhh.....let me get back to you on that one.
What stage of capitalism is it when even the IMF is willing to say "hey, maybe profit seeking is the problem here" and national governments are still banging on the drum about the threat of inflationary wage spirals?
We will see inflation increase as long as companies think they can extract profits without having to pay workers more. They could even follow the new path of most corporate landlords - where in the past landlords prioritised having a tenant over rent prices and so if they had empty rooms for too long they would negotiate down, the new system is to accept the loss in the short term to get the longer term profit from higher rents anyway. I worry we could see this with food - before waste loss might have been considered unacceptable, but now if they increase prices they could make up any wastage loss by those who can afford to pay the higher price still doing so.
Who has bread riots in the UK on their 2023 bingo card?
Anybody remember when the Japanese bought a Hollywood studio (Sony? Columbia?) in the 80/90's, only to find all they had was a name and a piece of paper and all the talent had buggered off? It might be like that.
[I might be wrong here. The above is plausible and fits the facts, but that's not the same as "true" and other interpretations may be the case. Apols if stupid]
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
"It's the economy, stupid"
The problem I think Labour will have is they won't stay popular if SKS keeps his "fiscal rules" and just does austerity again. Coming out against a teacher pay rise, for example, when teachers are a group who used to be relatively evenly split Tory v Lab back in 09 to very Labour now is maddening - the Tories give their base lots of economic security and Labour actively tells its base to piss off.
Depending on the size of the Labour majority, I wonder if we'll finally see the party disintegration that should have happened a while ago - if SKS kicks out all the actual left leaning MPs / they leave Lab due to some godawful policy Starmer will produce and then they form a new party / join the Greens to form an actual progressive left party; Reform UK eat into Cons enough that Cons and Ref UK are both somewhat serious contenders for the right, and Labour and LDs claim the centre with (at the moment at least) SKS's Labour claiming the centre right and the LDs claiming the centre left. I only think this would happen in the event of a Tory wipe out and a Lab super majority - SKS will feel safe kicking out the left and still being able to govern / the left will feel safe leaving the Lab party without the fear of letting the Tories in power, and if Reform will get taken seriously by the media because the media is always more than happy to prop up any right wing nutjob party, even without serious representation in parliament.
Hope you're not calling me stupid!
I think you exaggerate the extent to which Starmer wants to purge the left. He's doing what he thinks he needs to do to win the GE and is, I'd agree, being rather ruthless about it. But he knows full well that if people like me, good old lefties, abandon the party for the Greens or whatever then Labour won't be winning any future elections.
As I've said before, I think there'll be enough radicalism and redistribution once Starmer wins power to satisfy most of the left, though of course the extreme left would never be satisfied.
I don't know if you follow (at)tomorrowsmps on twitter, but he follows lots of local selection processes and has a good archive of just how far SKS is going in terms of kicking out anyone considered on the left of the party. Like, whose GE vote was dependent on deselecting this current popular northern mayor versus the damage done with local party members / activists?
It is clear that even if SKS doesn't want to clean house, those around him do. They want to go further than Blair did and consign the left of the party to history. I can't see any prominent left wing MPs making their way into the cabinet once a government is formed.
I think it was a mistake dumping Driscoll, but I understand why he did it. As for the selection process generally, it's good that due diligence is thorough and they're being very careful not to select anybody with any dodgy anti-semitism or whatever in their history. My MP is Lloyd Russell-Moyle, and there's been no move to unseat him at all. I'm more optimistic than you, but we'll see.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Eugh threepeat is not something I have heard before. Thanks for putting that monstrosity in my mind.
You need to listen to more US sports commentary for similar gems like 'winningest'.
'Medal' as a verb is a bit irritating.
That's old hat. People don't medal any more. They podium.
That's gross, but marginally preferable. At least it doesn't sound like an existing verb like medal does.
I don't see the problem with people verbing nouns. Everyone understands what is meant and it's succinct.
Within my mouth you have enjailed my tongue, Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips
I do wonder if history might be a little kinder on Truss than contemporary public/media/Tory opinion.
An epic demonstration, perhaps, that politics is hard and has all sorts of non-obvious constraints when it comes to policy options.
No, I don't think so. She was trying to do Reaganomics without having any state assets left to sell off to balance the books. We would have been embuggered, bigly.
The Sunday Rawnsley, brought to you on a Monday, but then it takes a long time to drive to Arsland:
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
…some key questions for Labour have been under-scrutinised. Is it realistic to think that the UK can generate all its electricity from clean sources by the end of this decade? Sir Keir maintains that is still his mission, but a lot of expert opinion is sceptical. The polite say it sounds “highly ambitious”. The ruder say there’s not “a hope in hell” of achieving the target. Labour claims it can kickstart growth to turn the UK into the fastest-expanding economy in the G7. Does that still add up when investment in a critical component is going to start later than originally promised? A hard pledge has softened into a vaguer-sounding goal. The wary are suspicious that it will next dissolve into nothing better than a wispy aspiration. That would be bad for the country and for the planet.
It should not be beyond Sir Keir and his team to make the green prosperity plan attractive. If the Labour party cannot sell lower bills, more jobs, a healthier planet, energy self-sufficiency and screwing Vladimir Putin to the electorate it might as well get out of the business of politics altogether.
The Labour leader and his colleagues ought to be mindful of the dangers of giving the impression that they make grandiose-sounding pledges to change the world only then to retreat when they encounter challenge and resistance. That’s not the way for an opposition to generate confidence. As a method of running a government, it would be terrible.
Not sure that AR is right. Like everyone else, Sir K doesn't actually have a workable scheme to save the planet. Saving the planet requires unplannable luck, that same luck that has held for 4 billion years. Saving the human race is not in his, or anyone's, gift.
More modestly he needs to ensure he doesn't lose an election. This is not in the bag.
Sir K and Labour are in the perfect place to hit the political sweet spot: to win by under promising, and govern by slightly over- delivering.
The degree of hopelessness and helplessness is palpable. See all the media every day. You don't need to promise sunlit uplands and free owls when it would be a remarkable achievement to keep Spar and Greggs open in Accrington and Grimsby.
I think you're onto something with the plan of under promising and over delivering. The problem Starmer is facing is that things are so shit he's having to promise less and less. IMO he'll have to pivot at some point and begin saying 'We want to do this but the Government has fucked it so bad that we can't deliver it.'
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
That's one quality that Theresa May certainly didn't lack. In different circumstances, her "bloody difficult woman" persona could have made her a great PM. I'm convinced she would have been better than Cameron over the 2010-2016 period.
While we're at it, I've also been a bit puzzled by the disappearance of 'thrice'. It's a perfectly useful word, but no one would ever now think of using it in a serious context. Why did it die off and when?
I blame Lionel Ritchie.
I rather like 'thrice'. I'm not averse to using it, though I might demur from using it in a document I'm writing for work. But I hate the Americanism 'threepeat'.
That's not because it wouldn't be useful to have a word meaning 'do somthing three times'. It just feels linguistically wrong. It would only work if the word for repeat was 'twopeat'.
Don't hear fortnight so much these days either
It was only a few years ago I found out fortnight was in any way endangered, and that Americans find our use of it quaint. Did you know that as well as fortnight (a contraction of 'fourteen night', of course) there was once a term 'sennight' as a perfectly cromulent synonym for 'week'?
I did indeed, as in I have not changed my Semmit this sennight
That hebdomadal hairshirt you wear accounts for much
What about words that have gone missing? Some on here get very disgruntled, but never gruntled? If we get too far down that route, we may wish for our opponent to be disemboweled. But what about emboweled, which means the same thing?
Whilst politics in the UK might appear to be going sternforemost, if we look out to larboard you might see some fuzzled cockalorums lunting merrily away.
I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?
"Whelmed" was a word. It meant "overwhelmed".
I use whelmed all the time. But I use it to mean 'I reacted emotionally in a way commensurate with my expectations being exactly met, but not exceeded.'
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Which is why they should have stuck with Truss in the first place.
She resigned.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
That's one quality that Theresa May certainly didn't lack. In different circumstances, her "bloody difficult woman" persona could have made her a great PM. I'm convinced she would have been better than Cameron over the 2010-2016 period.
But who would May have gone into coalition with?
Why not the Lib Dems? Remember that she was the original Tory moderniser before anyone had heard of David Cameron.
@DeltapollUK 🚨🚨New Voting Intention🚨🚨 Labour lead is twenty-three percentage points in the latest results from Deltapoll. Con 24% (-3) Lab 47% (+1) Lib Dem 12% (+2) Other 16% (-) Fieldwork: 23rd - 26th June 2023 Sample: 1,089 GB adults (Changes from 16th - 19th June 2023)
Sunak fans please explain.
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
"It's the economy, stupid"
The problem I think Labour will have is they won't stay popular if SKS keeps his "fiscal rules" and just does austerity again. Coming out against a teacher pay rise, for example, when teachers are a group who used to be relatively evenly split Tory v Lab back in 09 to very Labour now is maddening - the Tories give their base lots of economic security and Labour actively tells its base to piss off.
Depending on the size of the Labour majority, I wonder if we'll finally see the party disintegration that should have happened a while ago - if SKS kicks out all the actual left leaning MPs / they leave Lab due to some godawful policy Starmer will produce and then they form a new party / join the Greens to form an actual progressive left party; Reform UK eat into Cons enough that Cons and Ref UK are both somewhat serious contenders for the right, and Labour and LDs claim the centre with (at the moment at least) SKS's Labour claiming the centre right and the LDs claiming the centre left. I only think this would happen in the event of a Tory wipe out and a Lab super majority - SKS will feel safe kicking out the left and still being able to govern / the left will feel safe leaving the Lab party without the fear of letting the Tories in power, and if Reform will get taken seriously by the media because the media is always more than happy to prop up any right wing nutjob party, even without serious representation in parliament.
Hope you're not calling me stupid!
I think you exaggerate the extent to which Starmer wants to purge the left. He's doing what he thinks he needs to do to win the GE and is, I'd agree, being rather ruthless about it. But he knows full well that if people like me, good old lefties, abandon the party for the Greens or whatever then Labour won't be winning any future elections.
As I've said before, I think there'll be enough radicalism and redistribution once Starmer wins power to satisfy most of the left, though of course the extreme left would never be satisfied.
I don't know if you follow (at)tomorrowsmps on twitter, but he follows lots of local selection processes and has a good archive of just how far SKS is going in terms of kicking out anyone considered on the left of the party. Like, whose GE vote was dependent on deselecting this current popular northern mayor versus the damage done with local party members / activists?
It is clear that even if SKS doesn't want to clean house, those around him do. They want to go further than Blair did and consign the left of the party to history. I can't see any prominent left wing MPs making their way into the cabinet once a government is formed.
I think it was a mistake dumping Driscoll, but I understand why he did it. As for the selection process generally, it's good that due diligence is thorough and they're being very careful not to select anybody with any dodgy anti-semitism or whatever in their history. My MP is Lloyd Russell-Moyle, and there's been no move to unseat him at all. I'm more optimistic than you, but we'll see.
It is clearly factional, has nothing to do with anti-semitism or racism in general, and I don't see why current behaviour shouldn't be a predictor for future behaviour.
@JohnRentoul Cooper found 75% said it was “time for a change” in 2009, but only 37% said time for a change to the Tories Now, 79% say it is “time for a change”; and 37% say time for a change to Labour
Those numbers suggest that if the Lib Dems could find a more credible leader, they could repeat the Cleggasm polling bounce when it comes to the election.
Sadly, that would require a different set of MPs.
They could make Carol Vorderman the leader from outside parliament?
Is Carol Vorderman a lib dem she always came across as sensible
Have you not heard her recently. She has gone all a bit left wing version of Laurence Fox. Everything is a giant conspiracy. Another of the midlife crisis mob along with Fox, Lineker, Vine, Morgan, etc.
She's found a gap in the rentagob market on the left side. She's just using the same tricks but with a different target. It's a grift.
Isn't there already plenty occupying that space? Lineker, Neville, basically every other celebrity on twitter....
The difference being that Vorderman can get herself on TV, in an environment where her optinions carry weight thanks to her reputation.
The few times I heard her recently, that reputation didn't last long as she sounded unhinged. Everything is some secret conspiracy / sleaze that mainstream media won't dare talk about.
Exactly an overrated windbag from living off appearing on a crappy gameshow and multiple enhancements
There is no path to the White House for Republicans with Mr. Trump. He would need every single Republican and independent vote, and there are untold numbers of Republicans and independents who will never vote for him, if for no other perfectly legitimate reason than that he has corrupted America’s democracy and is now attempting to corrupt the country’s rule of law.
Mary Ilyushina @maryilyushina · 7m Prigozhin is back with an 11-min audio message. Says the reason he marches is because Wagner was forced to disband on July 1s because of Shoigu order to sign contracts. Wagner commanders refused to sign. Thread:
Motorway service station right now. Absolutely in my element.
Go on, which one?
Watford Gap. Top tier stuff.
Nice one. You probably know this, but - due to its location in the centre of England - Watford Gap services, then operated by and known as Blue Boar, was a significant location in late 60s rock music and a focus for bands to meet at after their gigs. Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones... there was a misapprehension among followers of the scene less au fait with British transport geography that the Blue Boar was some sort of highly fashionable night spot. This was, of course, the days before value engineering and economies of scale turned most service stations into functional facsimilies of one another.
Just how did it get named the Watford gap ?
I remember the first time coming across it. Have I really driven that far ? (Driving from Coventry...)
The Watford Gap is a gap in a range of low hills in Northamptonshire, next to the village of Watford. A less famous Watford that its much larger namesake in Hertfordshire, but a perfectly cromulent Watford nonetheless.
When people refer to 'north of the Watford Gap' it makes a lot more sense if you know that the Watford gap is here, not in Hertfordshire.
Comments
The reality is that I don't think that people in England would like the 'computer says no' approach to development that would be achieved through fixed design codes and development orders. They would probably find it massively restrictive.
Talking is a whole lot easier than doing. When the crunch comes, when a Labour cabinet faces the horribly tough choices that are going to confront them in power, will their fine words turn out to be little more than hot air?
…some key questions for Labour have been under-scrutinised. Is it realistic to think that the UK can generate all its electricity from clean sources by the end of this decade? Sir Keir maintains that is still his mission, but a lot of expert opinion is sceptical. The polite say it sounds “highly ambitious”. The ruder say there’s not “a hope in hell” of achieving the target. Labour claims it can kickstart growth to turn the UK into the fastest-expanding economy in the G7. Does that still add up when investment in a critical component is going to start later than originally promised? A hard pledge has softened into a vaguer-sounding goal. The wary are suspicious that it will next dissolve into nothing better than a wispy aspiration. That would be bad for the country and for the planet.
It should not be beyond Sir Keir and his team to make the green prosperity plan attractive. If the Labour party cannot sell lower bills, more jobs, a healthier planet, energy self-sufficiency and screwing Vladimir Putin to the electorate it might as well get out of the business of politics altogether.
The Labour leader and his colleagues ought to be mindful of the dangers of giving the impression that they make grandiose-sounding pledges to change the world only then to retreat when they encounter challenge and resistance. That’s not the way for an opposition to generate confidence. As a method of running a government, it would be terrible.
So we have more planing permissions granted.
Which stack up in piles. This makes the NIMBYs go away, a bit. The developers like it because they have a guaranteed flow of future income they can amortise. They have *adapted* to more planning permission being granted.
So we need to adapt. The issue is monopoly (local) or oligopoly by big house builders. So deal with that by limiting the percentage of an areas planning permission that can be held by a single developer.
Yes, they will try and get round that. Then we will need to adapt again. Such has been market regulation, since Adam Smith.
It turned out the most competent of the lot was the one with zero public profile, Danny Alexander. And Norman Lamb.
AP (via Seattle Times) - Supreme Court unfreezes Louisiana redistricting case that could boost power of Black voters
The Supreme Court on Monday lifted its hold on a Louisiana case that could force the state to redraw congressional districts to boost Black voting power.
The order follows the court’s rejection earlier in June of a congressional redistricting map in Alabama and unfreezes the Louisiana case, which had been on hold pending the decision in Alabama.
In both states, Black voters are a majority in just one congressional district. Lower courts had ruled that the maps raised concerns that Black voting power had been diluted, in violation of the landmark federal Voting Rights Act.
About a third of Louisiana’s residents are Black. More than one in four Alabamians are Black.
The justices put the Louisiana case on hold and allowed the state’s challenged map to be used in last year’s elections after they agreed to hear the Alabama case.
The case had separately been appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. The justices said that appeal now could go forward in advance of next year’s congressional elections.
This despite the fact their leader has vanished and they are being integrated into the Russian Army, apparently.
Answers on a postcard….
Recent polls suggest the Tories are heading towards Truss territory now.
Well, you're here now..
You probably know this, but - due to its location in the centre of England - Watford Gap services, then operated by and known as Blue Boar, was a significant location in late 60s rock music and a focus for bands to meet at after their gigs. Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones... there was a misapprehension among followers of the scene less au fait with British transport geography that the Blue Boar was some sort of highly fashionable night spot.
This was, of course, the days before value engineering and economies of scale turned most service stations into functional facsimilies of one another.
https://www.today.com/video/world-s-ugliest-dog-contest-winner-shines-bright-in-studio-1a-185086533806
Addendum - Hasten to add, your canine companion is a matinee idol, IMHO.
I think, whatever your views of her policies, that she found being at the top enormously stressful. The top job aged het five years in about five weeks.
A stronger (probably older and with grown up children) character would have dared the Conservative Parliamentary Party to put forward the signatures for a VoNC.
And I suspect that they would have shied from it.
But it didn't come to that. Ms Truss resigned, because the pressure was unbearable for her. I doubt she was sleeping. And I'm sure she wasn't enjoying it.
I remember the first time coming across it. Have I really driven that far ? (Driving from Coventry...)
The problem I think Labour will have is they won't stay popular if SKS keeps his "fiscal rules" and just does austerity again. Coming out against a teacher pay rise, for example, when teachers are a group who used to be relatively evenly split Tory v Lab back in 09 to very Labour now is maddening - the Tories give their base lots of economic security and Labour actively tells its base to piss off.
Depending on the size of the Labour majority, I wonder if we'll finally see the party disintegration that should have happened a while ago - if SKS kicks out all the actual left leaning MPs / they leave Lab due to some godawful policy Starmer will produce and then they form a new party / join the Greens to form an actual progressive left party; Reform UK eat into Cons enough that Cons and Ref UK are both somewhat serious contenders for the right, and Labour and LDs claim the centre with (at the moment at least) SKS's Labour claiming the centre right and the LDs claiming the centre left. I only think this would happen in the event of a Tory wipe out and a Lab super majority - SKS will feel safe kicking out the left and still being able to govern / the left will feel safe leaving the Lab party without the fear of letting the Tories in power, and if Reform will get taken seriously by the media because the media is always more than happy to prop up any right wing nutjob party, even without serious representation in parliament.
Pugachev was captured and publicly beheaded and quartered in Moscow. His legend gave rise to the noun “pugachevshchina” to denote the Russian proclivity for senseless, doomed rebellion.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/26/opinion/international-world/putin-russia-uprising.html
As we now see, they pushed her out, in favour of someone equally out of their depth. At least Liz Truss had ideas and plans, even if you disagree with them. Sunak has nothing.
People want this government out. I think there’s things Sunak could possibly have done differently that might have helped (a wild one - I think going to the country in March-May time wouldn’t have been a terrible idea) but I think the fundamentals are such that it’s just time for the Tories to leave office now. The longer they continue, the more inevitable it gets.
OR does Wagner Group (still) uphold higher standards of ethic AND efficiency than SMT?
@maryilyushina
·
7m
Prigozhin is back with an 11-min audio message. Says the reason he marches is because Wagner was forced to disband on July 1s because of Shoigu order to sign contracts. Wagner commanders refused to sign. Thread:
https://twitter.com/maryilyushina/status/1673343223257866241
I believe there used to be one used exclusively for addressing royalty, which is sadly defunct (though perhaps to be encountered in historical dramas).
https://twitter.com/rommari/status/1673345225400410113
Truss didn't even appear to have any plan at all.
The first is the simplest. You install the Tailscale software to any computers you want to be on the same subnet (Linux, Android, Windows, etc.) You login via Google. And - tada - you now have half dozen machines also having an IP on subnet, irrespective of where they are, with no need to forward ports, or anything.
The second is slightly more complex. You set up a small container (probably running on Proxmox) and make that an exit node for your entire local network. (Time to setup, about a minute.) You can then, from any of your other Tailscale machines, access that entire subnet.
Look: setting up VPNs is not that complex. But Tailscale makes it so incredibly simple. It also means that I can make cloud hosted servers like PB more secure. Historically, I've had port 22 open, so I can SSH in. (Root SSH login not allowed, obviously.) But now I can only allow SSH over the "local" network, so that anyone hunting for open ports will only find HTTPS.
Not over by a long way, which explains why we’ve heard nothing from Putin.
Not sure that would have improved anything at all.
‘It’s just stupid’: DeSantis stumbles in New Hampshire
It once looked like Ron DeSantis might be poised for a breakthrough in New Hampshire. Not anymore.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/26/ron-desantis-new-hampshire-00103519
That said, I’m off the day job for the next fortnight thanks to the Eid holiday, so maybe I’ll take a look at the second option. I’m still presuming it’s a service that links outgoing VPN connections, and that you need an account that could be terminated tomorrow if your bank declines the payment.
I think you exaggerate the extent to which Starmer wants to purge the left. He's doing what he thinks he needs to do to win the GE and is, I'd agree, being rather ruthless about it. But he knows full well that if people like me, good old lefties, abandon the party for the Greens or whatever then Labour won't be winning any future elections.
As I've said before, I think there'll be enough radicalism and redistribution once Starmer wins power to satisfy most of the left, though of course the extreme left would never be satisfied.
More modestly he needs to ensure he doesn't lose an election. This is not in the bag.
Sir K and Labour are in the perfect place to hit the political sweet spot: to win by under promising, and govern by slightly over- delivering.
The degree of hopelessness and helplessness is palpable. See all the media every day. You don't need to promise sunlit uplands and free owls when it would be a remarkable achievement to keep Spar and Greggs open in Accrington and Grimsby.
It’s a fantastically well thought out solution that builds on top of existing open source code. You could implement the whole thing yourself on top of wireguard if you really wanted to, but tailscale just works & is ready to go.
Try it, you might like it.
Sunak and Hunt are following the only course open to government at present, and will take the hit as they are the only ones saying how it is despite how unpopular it is, though labour have been responsible in rejecting the lib dem £300 per month mortgage cash payment, and yesterday Lisa Nandy stepped away from a blanket endorsement of the pay review bodies
This is hard, and we can refer to 13 years of conservative misrule, brexit, covid and the war in Ukraine but recalling these issues does not show the way forward, which I would venture to suggest that if the government does not clamp down, not only on wage increases, but yes the triple lock, benefits rises and increases in the national living wage a point may arise that the IMF walk into London as per the 1976 labour government financial crisis
I make no apologies for supporting Sunak and Hunt and, hopefully, in 18 months they may have made things a little easier for Starmer and labour, but at their and the conservative party's political cost and as a consequence of the Johnson and Truss preceding chaos
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/04/blocking-jamie-driscoll-as-labours-mayoral-candidate-is-error-says-unite
It is clear that even if SKS doesn't want to clean house, those around him do. They want to go further than Blair did and consign the left of the party to history. I can't see any prominent left wing MPs making their way into the cabinet once a government is formed.
An epic demonstration, perhaps, that politics is hard and has all sorts of non-obvious constraints when it comes to policy options.
Bet he never thought the Republican Party would be backing Russia in a European war, but how times change.
https://twitter.com/lslothuus/status/1673340395583950851?s=20
We will see inflation increase as long as companies think they can extract profits without having to pay workers more. They could even follow the new path of most corporate landlords - where in the past landlords prioritised having a tenant over rent prices and so if they had empty rooms for too long they would negotiate down, the new system is to accept the loss in the short term to get the longer term profit from higher rents anyway. I worry we could see this with food - before waste loss might have been considered unacceptable, but now if they increase prices they could make up any wastage loss by those who can afford to pay the higher price still doing so.
Who has bread riots in the UK on their 2023 bingo card?
Wagner are *huge*. They have a defacto empire in Africa (exaggeration possibly, but it's that order of magnitude) and actually thought of setting up a sovereign state there. Their boss has just levered $12bn out of Russia and hasn't laid down one gun. The disaffected are being recruited into Russian armies, but you can't make a man with a gun work for you.
Anybody remember when the Japanese bought a Hollywood studio (Sony? Columbia?) in the 80/90's, only to find all they had was a name and a piece of paper and all the talent had buggered off? It might be like that.
[I might be wrong here. The above is plausible and fits the facts, but that's not the same as "true" and other interpretations may be the case. Apols if stupid]
Doubly portcullised with my teeth and lips
From "Richard II"
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/labour-selection-process-keir-starmer-maurice-mcleod-lauren-townsend/?fbclid=IwAR1Ig3sUU1XbFi7WCHFH5ctOBHeTlQ4o6kKTo2whYlP-ndT1Yuxavp48XOM
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/25/opinion/trump-republican-party.html
When people refer to 'north of the Watford Gap' it makes a lot more sense if you know that the Watford gap is here, not in Hertfordshire.