Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
I misunderstood "row with" on reading that. I mean, I'd want earplugs too.
Mind you, when she's steering, she often makes... determined calls to the crew.
Not aways the best, but tradition is the steersperson is in charge. Up until you all die. All hail Admiral Markham!
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
That quote today about whores and responsibility and carefully omitting the context of a sentence sure applies here.
I wonder what the now departed Foxy would have made of these stickers today. The sort of thing I would have expected at a soccer game in the seventies or early eighties not today.
I wonder what the now departed Foxy would have made of these stickers today. The sort of thing I would have expected at a soccer game in the seventies or early eighties not today.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
I think 2028 is more likely.
I think hell want to retire in 4 years time on his own terms.
Darren Jones, Jonathan Reynolds would be my picks but clamour for a female may be overwhelming.. Phillipson, Ellie Reeves possibles but a real dark horse who has returned as an MP and quickly back in to Cabinet is Heidi Alexander...
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
I misunderstood "row with" on reading that. I mean, I'd want earplugs too.
Mind you, when she's steering, she often makes... determined calls to the crew.
Not aways the best, but tradition is the steersperson is in charge. Up until you all die. All hail Admiral Markham!
"If we really want Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street, we need to push our local MPs to initiate a vote of No Confidence."
"Yes"
Radicalised and anti-democratic, God help us all.
That’s not anti-democratic. It’s the way our system works. MPs chose the PM
It would be anti-democratic if it was directly after the election (red Ken / GLA for example) but Starmer has had long enough for labour MPs to legitimately change their mind if they wanted
SPOILER ALERT
They won’t
He called for the King to dissolve Parliament.
That was anti-democratic, but what you quoted wasn’t. It is in fact how the system of parliamentary democracy works.
I’m not sure that dissolving parliament and having new elections is antidemocratic either.
That clearly is, there are no justifiable reasons for the King to do so at the moment.
The King in the past has supported such undemocratic behaviour, it is why Musk made the appeal.
The King will not save us, just like the Queen did not save us during the prorogation crisis.
Whitlam was Labour, Starmer is Labour. Uncle Dickie was Chas the Fornicator's favourite uncle when Peter Wright plotted to overthrow Labour's Wilson. You can't deny it would be fascinating.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
I know, as most of Starmer's team say it is a bananas idea.
But I really hope @Foxy will return. One of the best posters here and always polite and good to talk to about a variety of things. We are poorer without him.
Some people can't handle any sort of discussion of the racist paedophile rape gangs that doesn't somehow blame the far right
You may not have seen TSE's post, but he's asked us not to discuss that topic today.
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
Hmm, maybe a generation thing? Will be interesting to see what happens.
I would suspect it is the technology moving faster than the bureaucracy.
Even a few years ago, a hyper responsive miniaturised microphone/earpiece setup, with customisable frequency response and battery life of days, was advanced tech.
Now you can buy that stuff on Amazon.
I'll bet money, that if I dig around, there is a whole sub-culture of hearing impaired people (probably on Reddit) modding headphones, writing code, swapping ideas on the best ones etc.
"The street finds its own uses for things" was a brilliant line from Gibson. So true.
Oh, sure. One worry is that (as with eyesight) increasing deafness can be not so much an illness but a symptom of something deeper. The other is that so much tech isn't really designed for older and fumblier fingers (ask me why I can't use tiny mobiles and generally hate them, but then I have massive digits).
Oh sure.
But we are getting into a world where, more and more, everyday tech has other applications.
I wear a sports watch, like many people. The data from that is moderately close to the numbers you get from being fully wired up in a hospital. Not as good or as detailed - yet. But the fitness industry puts billions in every year.
Not hard to imagine putting a hearing test into sophisticated headphones and, in effect, mass testing people.
Already, doctors are fine with people using blood pressure measuring systems (thanks @Foxy) from home. I take the blood pressure for my mother-in-law - for phone consults about medication with the GP.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
I know, as most of Starmer's team say it is a bananas idea.
Let's keep our fingers crossed Starmer ploughs on with it regardless.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
The only circumstancesI can see an early election is if Starmer has a health event, stands down and his replacement wants their own mandate,
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
I know, as most of Starmer's team say it is a bananas idea.
Remember Starmer, like May before him, isn't very good at politics. He could call a Theresa May 2017 near catastrophe.
But I really hope @Foxy will return. One of the best posters here and always polite and good to talk to about a variety of things. We are poorer without him.
Sadly he left as I had a question for him in his sphere. As he has apparently left maybe I should put my question here and hope the pb collective has an answer between them.
I have my friend and her daughter visiting from the states next year. Along with them will come the daughters friend of 15.
My question is as neither my friend nor I are the girls parent, if she needs medical treatment for instance breaks a wrist, appendicitis....what do we need to do up front to act in loco parentis for medical consent?
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
Hmm, maybe a generation thing? Will be interesting to see what happens.
I would suspect it is the technology moving faster than the bureaucracy.
Even a few years ago, a hyper responsive miniaturised microphone/earpiece setup, with customisable frequency response and battery life of days, was advanced tech.
Now you can buy that stuff on Amazon.
I'll bet money, that if I dig around, there is a whole sub-culture of hearing impaired people (probably on Reddit) modding headphones, writing code, swapping ideas on the best ones etc.
"The street finds its own uses for things" was a brilliant line from Gibson. So true.
Oh, sure. One worry is that (as with eyesight) increasing deafness can be not so much an illness but a symptom of something deeper. The other is that so much tech isn't really designed for older and fumblier fingers (ask me why I can't use tiny mobiles and generally hate them, but then I have massive digits).
Oh sure.
But we are getting into a world where, more and more, everyday tech has other applications.
I wear a sports watch, like many people. The data from that is moderately close to the numbers you get from being fully wired up in a hospital. Not as good or as detailed - yet. But the fitness industry puts billions in every year.
Not hard to imagine putting a hearing test into sophisticated headphones and, in effect, mass testing people.
Already, doctors are fine with people using blood pressure measuring systems (thanks @Foxy) from home. I take the blood pressure for my mother-in-law - for phone consults about medication with the GP.
Me and Mrs C too for BP - also the oximeter which we also have to thank Foxy for. The BP is interesting because you want to get it resting, not when people are stressed out at the doctor's after rushing there. And at different times of the 24 hour cycle.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
The only circumstancesI can see an early election isif Starmer has a health event, stands down and his replacement wants their own mandate,
Low (but not zero) likelihood.
I think the ghost of Mrs May and to a lesser extent the ghost of Mr Brown will ensure that a snap election doesn't happen.
I mean I hope it does, so I could reference this seminal article which doesn't get linked on PB that often.
'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
I know, as most of Starmer's team say it is a bananas idea.
Remember Starmer, like May before him, isn't very good at politics. He could call a Theresa May 2017 near catastrophe.
She at least had massive polling leads (and forthcoming struggles with a small majority) to encourage the idea. Heck, the locals held shortly after calling it didn't make it obvious it was a bad idea either.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
I know, as most of Starmer's team say it is a bananas idea.
@TheScreamingEagles why have all profiles not been set to public now? It seems manifestly unfair that Leon’s has been set to public yet others allowed to stay private.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
The only circumstancesI can see an early election isif Starmer has a health event, stands down and his replacement wants their own mandate,
Low (but not zero) likelihood.
I think the ghost of Mrs May and to a lesser extent the ghost of Mr Brown will ensure that a snap election doesn't happen.
I mean I hope it does, so I could reference this seminal article which doesn't get linked on PB that often.
'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
I misunderstood "row with" on reading that. I mean, I'd want earplugs too.
Mind you, when she's steering, she often makes... determined calls to the crew.
Not aways the best, but tradition is the steersperson is in charge. Up until you all die. All hail Admiral Markham!
And Cradock and Arbuthnot!
Cradock made a cold, calculated decision based on what he knew. The engineer of the Canopus lied about the state of her engines - so she was thought to be useless. So rather than let the German squadron sail through unopposed and escape, he buried his medals on the Falklands and wrote a letter explaining his actions. Then put to sea.
Arbuthnot is more interesting than some give credit for. He was obsessed with new technology - motorcycle racing etc. His obsession with not losing torpedos was actually about the fact that the early torps had to be tuned and run regularly to be accurate. Losing a torpedo meant losing all the data that had been logged on the biases in that weapon.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes he’s a good example. Seemed perfectly normal (for a PB lefty), willing to banter, could be rude but was happy to take it in return, but then over a period of a few weeks - even days - suddenly became quite strange and intensely personal - to me, you and others
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
I believe he shared a particular family trauma some time ago, while you wee around. And you, carelessly I suspect, kept pushing that button.
No, I did not. I remember the trauma, involving parenting, and I expressed deep sympathy at the time, and never went near it afterwards. Go and check, if you like, apparently my comments are now public, unlike anyone else on this forum, thanks to @TSE
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
I misunderstood "row with" on reading that. I mean, I'd want earplugs too.
Mind you, when she's steering, she often makes... determined calls to the crew.
Not aways the best, but tradition is the steersperson is in charge. Up until you all die. All hail Admiral Markham!
And Cradock and Arbuthnot!
Cradock made a cold, calculated decision based on what he knew. The engineer of the Canopus lied about the state of her engines - so she was thought to be useless. So rather than let the German squadron sail through unopposed and escape, he buried his medals on the Falklands and wrote a letter explaining his actions. Then put to sea.
Arbuthnot is more interesting than some give credit for. He was obsessed with new technology - motorcycle racing etc. His obsession with not losing torpedos was actually about the fact that the early torps had to be tuned and run regularly to be accurate. Losing a torpedo meant losing all the data that had been logged on the biases in that weapon.
I suppose that the treatment Troubridge got for obeying his orders and not attacking the Goeben in the Otranto Straits was another reason for Cradock.
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
They won’t stay in my ears (not that I need them as hearing aids) so I buy ones that clip to the ear.
Question to the forum? Am I alone? Do I have freak ears? Is there a solution?
Go down to the tattoo place and get a hole drilled, with a complementary hole in the airbud and a plastic rivet thingy?
Seriously, that's another possible reason not to use then as hearing aids if the bloody things don't stay in. Anotdher is that they can't amplify sound very much if their fit is loose/crap because of the feedback you get if there is the merest gap.
But I really hope @Foxy will return. One of the best posters here and always polite and good to talk to about a variety of things. We are poorer without him.
Sadly he left as I had a question for him in his sphere. As he has apparently left maybe I should put my question here and hope the pb collective has an answer between them.
I have my friend and her daughter visiting from the states next year. Along with them will come the daughters friend of 15.
My question is as neither my friend nor I are the girls parent, if she needs medical treatment for instance breaks a wrist, appendicitis....what do we need to do up front to act in loco parentis for medical consent?
In an emergency they would act as required but speak to her. If less urgent they would be likely to want the parents involved. They could act on her wishes, as she is clearly old enough to understand any issues, but I would expect them to want to involve the parents remotely if at all possible.
(Have touched on this professionally but I am not a doctor etc etc).
I wonder what the now departed Foxy would have made of these stickers today. The sort of thing I would have expected at a soccer game in the seventies or early eighties not today.
He's taking a break from PB because some people went OTT on the child abuse story.
I suspect PB will have to go down the phone hacking precedent, particularly with the Online Safety Bill kicking in shortly.
I made OGH a promise that the moderation team would do our best to ensure he doesn't get into expensive trouble and I intend to honour that promise.
We all need to remember that, with OGH’s retirement, there is a lot more responsibility on TSE’s and RCS’s shoulders. Let’s not make it any harder for them.
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
They won’t stay in my ears (not that I need them as hearing aids) so I buy ones that clip to the ear.
Question to the forum? Am I alone? Do I have freak ears? Is there a solution?
Go down to the tattoo place and get a hole drilled, with a complementary hole in the airbud and a plastic rivet thingy?
Seriously, that's another possible reason not to use then as hearing aids if the bloody things don't stay in. Anotdher is that they can't amplify sound very much if their fit is loose/crap because of the feedback you get if there is the merest gap.
A positive side to Glue-Ear?
Whodathunkit ?!
Grommet - that's it. Thanks for reminding me what it was I meant to recommend.
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
Given that there's a premium on Apple products, if they are such handy dandy hearing aids, wouldn't it be cheaper to use generic 'airpods' (which must be on the market)??
I am pretty sure that 'pro-business' in the context of Government reforms used to be shorthand for 'pro-British-business'. Good of Rachel to offer Apple a helping hand though, I'm sure they really need it.
IANAE but airpods would need to be quite complex to deal with what a lot of hearing aids have to do, given that tyhe degree of deafness is highly frequency-dependent. So you *don't* want perfect reproduction, but rather the ability to adjust for U- or L- or ski slope type audiograms.
The other issue is the need for reliability and a reasonable life 16 hours a day.
Maybe they are OK for certain forms of mild deafness?
Apple did a lot of work on making AirPods certifiable for hearing aid usage.
Here you are. I looked into it for my Dad but you couldn’t get them subsidised.
£11 per month with Paypal Credit. But better if they could be on the NHS - saves money on free NHS hearing aid batteries for a start.
Almost as bad as printer cartridge ink for price per volume.
Makes you wonder why anyone even bothers with the illegal drug trade when they could simply invest in that racket instead.
No wonder I am so overjoyed with my ink tank printer. 18K x A4 equivalent in 3 years so I'm quids in and increasingly so the more I use it. I suppose it's the financial erquivalent of growing your own cannabis in the back garden.
On the hearing aids - one of the people I row with uses some non-apple earphones. One that you can customise the behaviour via a phone app - frequency responses etc.
She says that they much more user friendly than "real" hearing aids.
I misunderstood "row with" on reading that. I mean, I'd want earplugs too.
Mind you, when she's steering, she often makes... determined calls to the crew.
Not aways the best, but tradition is the steersperson is in charge. Up until you all die. All hail Admiral Markham!
And Cradock and Arbuthnot!
Cradock made a cold, calculated decision based on what he knew. The engineer of the Canopus lied about the state of her engines - so she was thought to be useless. So rather than let the German squadron sail through unopposed and escape, he buried his medals on the Falklands and wrote a letter explaining his actions. Then put to sea.
Arbuthnot is more interesting than some give credit for. He was obsessed with new technology - motorcycle racing etc. His obsession with not losing torpedos was actually about the fact that the early torps had to be tuned and run regularly to be accurate. Losing a torpedo meant losing all the data that had been logged on the biases in that weapon.
I suppose that the treatment Troubridge got for obeying his orders and not attacking the Goeben in the Otranto Straits was another reason for Cradock.
He stated that it was, in his letter to a fellow Admiral which he left with the Governor of the Falkland Islands.
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
I don’t really see how that follows; if the Conservatives remove Badenoch in the summer of ’26 she’ll be replaced by the autumn - and the new leader will likely gain a new leader bounce at labour's expense.
It's a very dangerous statistical quirk for Badenoch that with Labour defending so few seats, that Tories could lose more seats than Labour and if Reform win more seats than Tories lose she would be politically in deep pooh.
Labour could lose 250 seats, the Tories lose 400 seats Reform win 450seats and all the pressure would be on Badenoch
Labour vote share would be artificially low anyway as it was in 2021 in these specific seats
I wonder what the now departed Foxy would have made of these stickers today. The sort of thing I would have expected at a soccer game in the seventies or early eighties not today.
Freedom of speech really has taken a hit under Starmer
One of the biggest pull factors for me to move to the US is the first amendment. Then I remember the second amendment and get put off again.
I would never consider the us, a country where calling the police to do a welfare check on someone can end up in that person being killed....no thanks. The police there are completely out of control as they can rely on the principle of qualified immunity....its a farce
I wonder what the now departed Foxy would have made of these stickers today. The sort of thing I would have expected at a soccer game in the seventies or early eighties not today.
But I really hope @Foxy will return. One of the best posters here and always polite and good to talk to about a variety of things. We are poorer without him.
Sadly he left as I had a question for him in his sphere. As he has apparently left maybe I should put my question here and hope the pb collective has an answer between them.
I have my friend and her daughter visiting from the states next year. Along with them will come the daughters friend of 15.
My question is as neither my friend nor I are the girls parent, if she needs medical treatment for instance breaks a wrist, appendicitis....what do we need to do up front to act in loco parentis for medical consent?
In an emergency they would act as required but speak to her. If less urgent they would be likely to want the parents involved. They could act on her wishes, as she is clearly old enough to understand any issues, but I would expect them to want to involve the parents remotely if at all possible.
(Have touched on this professionally but I am not a doctor etc etc).
When we took a friend's daughter on holiday with us and when one of our daughters went on holiday with another family - there were papers to sign for the in-loco-parentis stuff. I think it wasn't a legal requirement, so much as avoiding any potential problems.
But I really hope @Foxy will return. One of the best posters here and always polite and good to talk to about a variety of things. We are poorer without him.
Sadly he left as I had a question for him in his sphere. As he has apparently left maybe I should put my question here and hope the pb collective has an answer between them.
I have my friend and her daughter visiting from the states next year. Along with them will come the daughters friend of 15.
My question is as neither my friend nor I are the girls parent, if she needs medical treatment for instance breaks a wrist, appendicitis....what do we need to do up front to act in loco parentis for medical consent?
In an emergency they would act as required but speak to her. If less urgent they would be likely to want the parents involved. They could act on her wishes, as she is clearly old enough to understand any issues, but I would expect them to want to involve the parents remotely if at all possible.
(Have touched on this professionally but I am not a doctor etc etc).
I figured a phone call wouldn't be enough as how would they know the person on the other end is the mother of the child. Also assumed there might be some sort of form they could get notarized to allow my friend to act while over
Conversations are said to have taken place in No 10 about whether to call an early election in 2027
A source close: "The feeling is Keir [who is 62] doesn’t necessarily want ten years, but he does want two terms. I think 2027 is underpriced."
And the next part of that article.
In this scenario a strong Reform showing in May, and again at the May 2026 Welsh elections, which Welsh Tories expect Farage to win, could lead to Badenoch’s removal and give Labour a window in which to exploit Conservative chaos.
Some, perhaps most, in Starmer’s inner circle regard this talk as bananas, but the fact it has begun highlights just how significant the next 12 months could be for the future of all three parties.
The only circumstancesI can see an early election isif Starmer has a health event, stands down and his replacement wants their own mandate,
Low (but not zero) likelihood.
I think the ghost of Mrs May and to a lesser extent the ghost of Mr Brown will ensure that a snap election doesn't happen.
I mean I hope it does, so I could reference this seminal article which doesn't get linked on PB that often.
'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
"If we really want Keir Starmer out of 10 Downing Street, we need to push our local MPs to initiate a vote of No Confidence."
"Yes"
Radicalised and anti-democratic, God help us all.
That’s not anti-democratic. It’s the way our system works. MPs chose the PM
It would be anti-democratic if it was directly after the election (red Ken / GLA for example) but Starmer has had long enough for labour MPs to legitimately change their mind if they wanted
SPOILER ALERT
They won’t
He called for the King to dissolve Parliament.
That was anti-democratic, but what you quoted wasn’t. It is in fact how the system of parliamentary democracy works.
I’m not sure that dissolving parliament and having new elections is antidemocratic either.
That clearly is, there are no justifiable reasons for the King to do so at the moment.
The King in the past has supported such undemocratic behaviour, it is why Musk made the appeal.
The King will not save us, just like the Queen did not save us during the prorogation crisis.
Usonians (including cuckoos in the nest like Mr Musk) have a time confusion, which I suspect is because they (Usonians) were entirely invented post-Gutenburg.
I have seen the responsibility for Presidential Pardon Problems partly laid to King Ine of Wessex in 688–725, who is the first known to have come up with idea, rather than to the Founders who made such a dog's breakfast of implementation in or soon after 1776.
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes he’s a good example. Seemed perfectly normal (for a PB lefty), willing to banter, could be rude but was happy to take it in return, but then over a period of a few weeks - even days - suddenly became quite strange and intensely personal - to me, you and others
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
I believe he shared a particular family trauma some time ago, while you wee around. And you, carelessly I suspect, kept pushing that button.
No, I did not. I remember the trauma, involving parenting, and I expressed deep sympathy at the time, and never went near it afterwards. Go and check, if you like, apparently my comments are now public, unlike anyone else on this forum, thanks to @TSE
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes he’s a good example. Seemed perfectly normal (for a PB lefty), willing to banter, could be rude but was happy to take it in return, but then over a period of a few weeks - even days - suddenly became quite strange and intensely personal - to me, you and others
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
I believe he shared a particular family trauma some time ago, while you wee around. And you, carelessly I suspect, kept pushing that button.
No, I did not. I remember the trauma, involving parenting, and I expressed deep sympathy at the time, and never went near it afterwards. Go and check, if you like, apparently my comments are now public, unlike anyone else on this forum, thanks to @TSE
They aren’t.
They aren't now coz I just switched 'em. But I was explicitly told by @TSE that they had to be public, like everyone's, until @rcs1000 and he had decided a policy. I was waiting for THAT
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
They won’t stay in my ears (not that I need them as hearing aids) so I buy ones that clip to the ear.
Question to the forum? Am I alone? Do I have freak ears? Is there a solution?
Go down to the tattoo place and get a hole drilled, with a complementary hole in the airbud and a plastic rivet thingy?
Seriously, that's another possible reason not to use then as hearing aids if the bloody things don't stay in. Anotdher is that they can't amplify sound very much if their fit is loose/crap because of the feedback you get if there is the merest gap.
A positive side to Glue-Ear?
Whodathunkit ?!
Grommet - that's it. Thanks for reminding me what it was I meant to recommend.
Phonetically adjacent, there's a new Wallace and Gromit coming soon.
But I really hope @Foxy will return. One of the best posters here and always polite and good to talk to about a variety of things. We are poorer without him.
Some people can't handle any sort of discussion of the racist paedophile rape gangs that doesn't somehow blame the far right
You may not have seen TSE's post, but he's asked us not to discuss that topic today.
She was also responsible for dragging this country back to being a country where you could do business rather than being ruled by unelected union barons, and where even removal services were run by unionised nationalised loss making industries.
Sadly the current bunch of incompetent economically illiterate numpties would like to take us back there.
She did some good things which I acknowledge. She was a strong and principled leader which I admire.
But she also did a lot of very bad things that have caused the problems we now face. Surely that can be acknowledged.
Like her policy on council housing.
The problem is that we have no counter-factuals. If she had not done these things, what state would the country been in?
Take rail privatisation: it gave us the safest and busiest rail network ever. Passenger numbers doubled. It's hard to call that an absolute failure, and I also find it hard to believe that the railways would have attracted the same investment if they had remained nationalised.
Also, sometimes people can do things that appear positive in the short- and medium-term, only for the problems to appear in the long-term - and sometimes those problems are not necessarily due to the initial action, but subsequent inaction.
The subsidies the railways receive are higher than they ever were when they were nationalised. So my view is the improvements were from spending a lot more money, not because the private sector did a load of innovating.
To give a counterfactual, the NI trains were never privatised. They run fine. Same as London Underground.
Not massively higher. I'd have to check, but I *think*, once you take network enhancements out of the picture, that subsidy per passenger is down - at least pre-covid. (*)
"18. This work shows that the railway has been a victim of its own success. Increased demand for rail has led to new capital projects, increasing Network Rail's level of borrowing and the annual charges it must meet to pay for that borrowing. Increased passenger numbers have also fuelled demand for more, better quality rolling stock, which comes at a cost. Better facilities, and more reliable rail services, have generated more demand for rail travel. What in many ways is a virtuous circle has a vicious element - escalating cost."
(*) It can sometimes be hard to compare figures, as some charts and tables show things like HS2 and Crossrail included in the subsidy, whilst others do not.
But why is debt a bad thing when it's funding infrastructure improvements that result in productivity and economic boosts for the wider economy? A public service doesn't need to make money. .
Because it crowds out investment that would deliver much higher productivity and boosts for the wider economy.
The cost benefit ratio of many rail projects is extremely low (partial exceptions are London commuter rail and mass transit improvements). HS2 is now heavy negative.
The debt would be much better accumulated on corporate tax or payroll cuts, which generate the best productivity boost for each pound spent. Or, if we still want to spend it on infrastructure, road improvements around London do best I understand - some return £7 for each £ invested, compared to £2.50 for Crossrail 2 and about 60p for HS2.
The idea that we should spend money on roads over railways is absolutely laughable.
HS2 is heavy negative because we didn't get on build it. It got completely stuck by endless red tape and inquiries.
As usual, stop delaying, start building.
Eh? Roads don't get stuck in endless red tape and inquiries too?
She was also responsible for dragging this country back to being a country where you could do business rather than being ruled by unelected union barons, and where even removal services were run by unionised nationalised loss making industries.
Sadly the current bunch of incompetent economically illiterate numpties would like to take us back there.
She did some good things which I acknowledge. She was a strong and principled leader which I admire.
But she also did a lot of very bad things that have caused the problems we now face. Surely that can be acknowledged.
Like her policy on council housing.
The problem is that we have no counter-factuals. If she had not done these things, what state would the country been in?
Take rail privatisation: it gave us the safest and busiest rail network ever. Passenger numbers doubled. It's hard to call that an absolute failure, and I also find it hard to believe that the railways would have attracted the same investment if they had remained nationalised.
Also, sometimes people can do things that appear positive in the short- and medium-term, only for the problems to appear in the long-term - and sometimes those problems are not necessarily due to the initial action, but subsequent inaction.
The subsidies the railways receive are higher than they ever were when they were nationalised. So my view is the improvements were from spending a lot more money, not because the private sector did a load of innovating.
To give a counterfactual, the NI trains were never privatised. They run fine. Same as London Underground.
Not massively higher. I'd have to check, but I *think*, once you take network enhancements out of the picture, that subsidy per passenger is down - at least pre-covid. (*)
"18. This work shows that the railway has been a victim of its own success. Increased demand for rail has led to new capital projects, increasing Network Rail's level of borrowing and the annual charges it must meet to pay for that borrowing. Increased passenger numbers have also fuelled demand for more, better quality rolling stock, which comes at a cost. Better facilities, and more reliable rail services, have generated more demand for rail travel. What in many ways is a virtuous circle has a vicious element - escalating cost."
(*) It can sometimes be hard to compare figures, as some charts and tables show things like HS2 and Crossrail included in the subsidy, whilst others do not.
But why is debt a bad thing when it's funding infrastructure improvements that result in productivity and economic boosts for the wider economy? A public service doesn't need to make money. .
Because it crowds out investment that would deliver much higher productivity and boosts for the wider economy.
The cost benefit ratio of many rail projects is extremely low (partial exceptions are London commuter rail and mass transit improvements). HS2 is now heavy negative.
The debt would be much better accumulated on corporate or payroll tax cuts, which generate the best productivity boost for each pound spent. Or, if we still want to spend it on infrastructure, road improvements around London do best I understand - some return £7 for each £ invested, compared to £2.50 for Crossrail 2 and about 60p for HS2.
Any regional investment looks terrible on a spreadsheet when it takes account of the opportunity cost of not investing in London/SE. So we keep on piling money into the capital, and the gap widens.
Spreadsheet models exist for a reason. I have spent most of my career developing them and I'm well aware of their strengths and weaknesses. If you want to argue that, as applied by the government, they don't capture some economic or financial benefits of investing in the north for some reason, fine. I don't see any myself, but I'm happy to be convinced. But until that happens, it's pretty obvious where the best opportunities for transport infrastructure investment are in this country, which was sort of the original post I responded to.
Our real failure is not failing to invest (waste money on) the unproductive north, it's not allowing the south-east to flourish, but strangling it with ridiculous green belts so that people from hopeless, drug and alcohol infested welfare ghettos in the north can't afford to move south where they would be much more productive, lumbering it with ridiculously high taxes to fund those ghettos and wasting money on garbage like HS2 instead of road and mass transit projects where they are most productive.
Cooking tip. Buy Marks and Spencer ready made "Tamarind Dahl"
Enhance with 1 chopped clove garlic, two small chopped bird's eye chilies, cracked salt and black pepper, a dash of good fish sauce, and a seasoning of Yawataya Isogoro Shichimi Togarashi. Mix it all in, microwave
OMFFFFFFG
Takes about 2 minutes to add the extras, the result is a dahl that matches any I have had anywhere on earth
Struggling to understand how this will do anything but AirPods are very capable hearing aids.
They won’t stay in my ears (not that I need them as hearing aids) so I buy ones that clip to the ear.
Question to the forum? Am I alone? Do I have freak ears? Is there a solution?
Go down to the tattoo place and get a hole drilled, with a complementary hole in the airbud and a plastic rivet thingy?
Seriously, that's another possible reason not to use then as hearing aids if the bloody things don't stay in. Anotdher is that they can't amplify sound very much if their fit is loose/crap because of the feedback you get if there is the merest gap.
A positive side to Glue-Ear?
Whodathunkit ?!
Grommet - that's it. Thanks for reminding me what it was I meant to recommend.
Phonetically adjacent, there's a new Wallace and Gromit coming soon.
BTW, @Taz, I think you entered earlier today without using the word 'competition' - might be worth re-entering to make sure it gets picked up (and apologies if I've got this wrong and am interfering unnecessarily).
I saw @Taz's entry, but yeah, putting the word 'competition' in the post makes life easier, thanks.
Cooking tip. Buy Marks and Spencer ready made "Tamarind Dahl"
Enhance with 1 chopped clove garlic, two small chopped bird's eye chilies, cracked salt and black pepper, a dash of good fish sauce, and a seasoning of Yawataya Isogoro Shichimi Togarashi. Mix it all in, microwave
OMFFFFFFG
Takes about 2 minutes to add the extras, the result is a dahl that matches any I have had anywhere on earth
Did you just randomly make this or were these only ingredients left in the flat after xmas?
The site is no nastier or nicer than it’s been since forever. It has a tendency to get quite brutal and angry when very sensitive subjects are being discussed
Two examples from either side: the Muslim rape gangs scandal gets a large chunk of the forum highly animated - for obvious reasons, 100,000s of victims, no justice served
In contrast Gaza gets a different section of PB seriously agitated - for obvious reasons, 10,000s of dead Gazans, still Israel pounds away
You can’t expect these charged emotional debates to leave PB calmly untouched
We can either have a lively debating forum and accept that at times things will get heated, or we can have a super-moderated old people’s tea-shop in Newent which will be so boring everyone will drift away, anyway
Quite. Indyref used to have some seriously mental threads.
Possibly the most incendiary time on PB was just before and maybe a year after Brexit, when a significant minority of Remainers on PB went literally mad (a couple still linger, bless). They couldn’t accept a democratic decision, they believed they were democrats, the cognitive dissonance left them one choice: lunacy
The worst example was Alistair Meeks. When I say worse I mean saddest, as he was one of the very best and smartest of commenters, judicious, wry, often witty
Then Brexit turned him into a smouldering pit of anger and sometimes he would spend a day issuing threats of actual violence. In the end he made the wise but saddening choice to leave
I still live in hope that now he’s calm again - or so it seems on other forums - he might return
ISTR he was somewhat baited by some of our more (ahem) vociferous posters.
It's a shame when people force other posters off this site. You would *never* do such a thing, would you?
Actually no I didn’t bait him. I do like to wind people up but I have a personal rule that if I think someone is in genuine mental distress - having a breakdown, unstable, suicidal, very depressed - then I leave them alone. I do this because 1. I’m not evil and 2. I’m prone to depressions myself and I know how horrible they are
The meltdown of the Meeks at its worst was painful to see - making threats of violence hourly - I left him to it and quietly hoped he’d improve, or leave. He made the correct decision to leave
I’ve since communicated with him personally and it’s been civil and pleasant. The Meeks of old
Have you considered that the abuse you routinely give out might actually lead someone into mental distress?
I simply don’t believe my invective is that powerful and even if it is then they have the option to simply not come to the site. It’s not like I’m visiting their homes and shouting in their tiny redbrick windows. For a start I hate the provinces
Didn’t DougSeal, a man not averse to dishing it out and I remember him being most rude to me when I commented on an equal pay ruling - what a prick, have a hissy fit at you over something you said which seemed a little innocuous.
One of those things that escalated quickly. Sometimes these do over a simple misunderstanding by one party.
He seemed to get really upset. Really upset.
Yes he’s a good example. Seemed perfectly normal (for a PB lefty), willing to banter, could be rude but was happy to take it in return, but then over a period of a few weeks - even days - suddenly became quite strange and intensely personal - to me, you and others
Then he left. My sad presumption (I hope I’m wrong) was that he suffered some nasty mental blow. Maybe a bereavement. Or an actual psychological episode
He came back a few times very briefly during which he nearly always called me “a Nazi” but by that time I’d realised something was wrong so I resolved to ignore him
I believe he shared a particular family trauma some time ago, while you wee around. And you, carelessly I suspect, kept pushing that button.
No, I did not. I remember the trauma, involving parenting, and I expressed deep sympathy at the time, and never went near it afterwards. Go and check, if you like, apparently my comments are now public, unlike anyone else on this forum, thanks to @TSE
They aren’t.
It doesn't matter if they are not. If you force the site to serve the mobile version, then enter a search term you know will 100% fail, you get sent to an otherwise inaccessible search form which will filter results by user regardless of their profile status.
Absolutely amazing advance in laser design, which will make them smaller, cheaper, more powerful, and more controllable. One thing this article doesn’t mention is directed energy weapons, but they will certainly be in planning.
THE TINY ULTRABRIGHT LASER THAT CAN MELT STEEL
https://spectrum.ieee.org/pcsel … Although it will be challenging, we eventually hope to make 3-cm lasers with output powers exceeding 10 kilowatts and beams shining up to 1,000 GW/cm2/sr—brighter than any laser that exists today. At such extreme brightness, PCSELs could replace the huge, electricity-hungry CO2 lasers used to generate plasma pulses for extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, making chip manufacturing much more efficient. They could similarly advance efforts to realize nuclear fusion, a process that involves firing trillions of watts of laser power at a pea-size fuel capsule. Exceptionally bright lasers also raise the possibility of light propulsion for spaceflight. Instead of taking thousands of years to reach faraway stars, a probe boosted by light could make the journey in only a few decades.…
Has Slalom blocked discussion of Nick Brown, his former Chief Whip, because I don't remember his disappearance being mentioned here?
As far as I can tell from his wiki page, he was disappeared from government for no given reason
Is this remotely normal?
He resigned from Labour over a disciplinary process.
He is no longer an MP.
"In September 2022, Brown was suspended from the Labour Party following allegations concerning an event 25 years previously, details of which were not made public. On 12 December 2023, he resigned from the Labour Party in protest at the unresolved disciplinary process. He also announced that he would not be contesting the next election." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Brown
Cooking tip. Buy Marks and Spencer ready made "Tamarind Dahl"
Enhance with 1 chopped clove garlic, two small chopped bird's eye chilies, cracked salt and black pepper, a dash of good fish sauce, and a seasoning of Yawataya Isogoro Shichimi Togarashi. Mix it all in, microwave
OMFFFFFFG
Takes about 2 minutes to add the extras, the result is a dahl that matches any I have had anywhere on earth
Did you just randomly make this or were these only ingredients left in the flat after xmas?
Absolutely not!
No, seriously, I have been honing this for a year or three. I love tarka dahl., but no way I'm making my own. Fuck that. The best way to do Asian cuisine, at home, is to buy an excellent base, already made, then add fresh stuff - mmmm
Indeed this is what the best Asian restaurants do, they don't make everything from scratch. They have a base from day to day
However I do confess the final flourish - Yawataya Isogoro Shichimi Togarashi - only occurred to me after my recent Japanese tour. Fuck knows what they put in it, but it is incredible. It adds heat, citrus, savoury, salt, umami, wow
Yeah like it or not he's leader of the third largest party in terms of vote share at the GE. Nige is also box office for the BBC and in an age of dwindling audience figures he gets eyeballs on screens.
Has Slalom blocked discussion of Nick Brown, his former Chief Whip, because I don't remember his disappearance being mentioned here?
As far as I can tell from his wiki page, he was disappeared from government for no given reason
Is this remotely normal?
He resigned from Labour over a disciplinary process.
He is no longer an MP.
A Slalom style silent systematic process
I would have thought you would have learned your lesson from a few weeks ago when you were desperate to discuss a story about Starmer that was utter bollocks, but no.
Beeb journos and editors will be the first to burst into tears when Farage populist nationalist government ends the licence fee on day one and make the BBC into a less well funded version of PBS.
Yeah like it or not he's leader of the third largest party in terms of vote share at the GE. Nige is also box office for the BBC and in an age of dwindling audience figures he gets eyeballs on screens.
And he really is a probable next PM, as things stand. The Tories are stalled. Labour are fucked. OTOH Reform could easily implode. Nigel is not a young man
But I've lost count of the people I've heard say "fuck it, I'm voting Reform, what else do we do, now?"
Assuming he does not fall deeply sick or die, and assuming he continues to show political skill, the bookies are right and Nige is in with a good shot of being Prime Minister, certainly as good as Kemi, who is likely to be replaced
Beeb journos and editors will be the first to burst into tears when Farage populist nationalist government ends the licence fee on day one and make the BBC into a less well funded version of PBS.
Meh. The BBC is doomed anyway. We might as well face it, even tho it saddens me as a Brit
Since we are doing recipes, here's the cranberry & apple chutney I've repurposed for my post-fruit vinegar Chuckleberry pulp today:
1kg cooking apples peeled and chopped into small chunks 500g eating apple peeled and chopped into large chunks 450g onion sliced 50g fresh root ginger finely chopped 1 tsp peppercorns 500g granulated sugar 250ml cider vinegar 500g cranberry Plus assorted spices to taste
We are heading into Weimar if things continue at this hysterical level.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 21m MAIL ON SUNDAY: Poll: Starmer will be out of No10 in a year #TomorrowsPapersToday
It is nonsense and there is a Deltapoll in there with a 7% Labour lead
Labour 30% Cons 23% Reform 22% Lib Dems 12%
Though Starmer is -42% Badenoch - 21%
Supplementary questions
Is UK heading in right direction 69%/18% no How worried are you for those no longer receiving the WFA 78%/15% worried Do you back IHT on farms 53%/25% no Should there be more or less immigrants coming into UK 62%/11% less Should Musk be allowed to donate £80 million to Reform 54%/30% no
I am confident that if Starmer or Reeves had thought the abolition of the WFA would be so unpopular they would not have done it
Beeb journos and editors will be the first to burst into tears when Farage populist nationalist government ends the licence fee on day one and make the BBC into a less well funded version of PBS.
Meh. The BBC is doomed anyway. We might as well face it, even tho it saddens me as a Brit
Probably true but symptomatic of the decline of the country. We have allowed our great institutions to shrivel or be sold off in the name of competition and the 'free market'.
Beeb journos and editors will be the first to burst into tears when Farage populist nationalist government ends the licence fee on day one and make the BBC into a less well funded version of PBS.
Meh. The BBC is doomed anyway. We might as well face it, even tho it saddens me as a Brit
Could mean the end of Strictly and the modern Dr Who though.
Has Slalom blocked discussion of Nick Brown, his former Chief Whip, because I don't remember his disappearance being mentioned here?
As far as I can tell from his wiki page, he was disappeared from government for no given reason
Is this remotely normal?
He resigned from Labour over a disciplinary process.
He is no longer an MP.
A Slalom style silent systematic process
I would have thought you would have learned your lesson from a few weeks ago when you were desperate to discuss a story about Starmer that was utter bollocks, but no.
We're not even allowed to know what Starmer's secrets are, which makes posting about anything rather treacherous
Beeb journos and editors will be the first to burst into tears when Farage populist nationalist government ends the licence fee on day one and make the BBC into a less well funded version of PBS.
Meh. The BBC is doomed anyway. We might as well face it, even tho it saddens me as a Brit
Could mean the end of Strictly and the modern Dr Who though.
That would be a travesty.
Damn, what a shame. The end of bargain hunt too. Drat.
Has Slalom blocked discussion of Nick Brown, his former Chief Whip, because I don't remember his disappearance being mentioned here?
As far as I can tell from his wiki page, he was disappeared from government for no given reason
Is this remotely normal?
He resigned from Labour over a disciplinary process.
He is no longer an MP.
A Slalom style silent systematic process
I would have thought you would have learned your lesson from a few weeks ago when you were desperate to discuss a story about Starmer that was utter bollocks, but no.
We're not even allowed to know what Starmer's secrets are, which makes posting about anything rather treacherous
We are heading into Weimar if things continue at this hysterical level.
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 21m MAIL ON SUNDAY: Poll: Starmer will be out of No10 in a year #TomorrowsPapersToday
It is nonsense and there is a Deltapoll in there with a 7% Labour lead
Labour 30% Cons 23% Reform 22% Lib Dems 12%
Though Starmer is -42% Badenoch - 21%
Supplementary questions
Is UK heading in right direction 69%/18% no How worried are you for those no longer receiving the WFA 78%/15% worried Do you back IHT on farms 53%/25% no Should there be more or less immigrants coming into UK 62%/11% less Should Musk be allowed to donate £80 million to Reform 54%/30% no
I am confident that if Starmer or Reeves had thought the abolition of tge WFA would be so unpopular they would have done it
Absolutely amazing advance in laser design, which will make them smaller, cheaper, more powerful, and more controllable. One thing this article doesn’t mention is directed energy weapons, but they will certainly be in planning.
THE TINY ULTRABRIGHT LASER THAT CAN MELT STEEL
https://spectrum.ieee.org/pcsel … Although it will be challenging, we eventually hope to make 3-cm lasers with output powers exceeding 10 kilowatts and beams shining up to 1,000 GW/cm2/sr—brighter than any laser that exists today. At such extreme brightness, PCSELs could replace the huge, electricity-hungry CO2 lasers used to generate plasma pulses for extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, making chip manufacturing much more efficient. They could similarly advance efforts to realize nuclear fusion, a process that involves firing trillions of watts of laser power at a pea-size fuel capsule. Exceptionally bright lasers also raise the possibility of light propulsion for spaceflight. Instead of taking thousands of years to reach faraway stars, a probe boosted by light could make the journey in only a few decades.…
And is of course likely to make the LIDAR used in self driving cars massively cheaper.
Comments
Not aways the best, but tradition is the steersperson is in charge. Up until you all die. All hail Admiral Markham!
I suspect PB will have to go down the phone hacking precedent, particularly with the Online Safety Bill kicking in shortly.
I made OGH a promise that the moderation team would do our best to ensure he doesn't get into expensive trouble and I intend to honour that promise.
I think hell want to retire in 4 years time on his own terms.
Darren Jones, Jonathan Reynolds would be my picks but clamour for a female may be overwhelming.. Phillipson, Ellie Reeves possibles but a real dark horse who has returned as an MP and quickly back in to Cabinet is Heidi Alexander...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rj6g07g2do
But who would be PM?
Some of us have been at work all day
But we are getting into a world where, more and more, everyday tech has other applications.
I wear a sports watch, like many people. The data from that is moderately close to the numbers you get from being fully wired up in a hospital. Not as good or as detailed - yet. But the fitness industry puts billions in every year.
Not hard to imagine putting a hearing test into sophisticated headphones and, in effect, mass testing people.
Already, doctors are fine with people using blood pressure measuring systems (thanks @Foxy) from home. I take the blood pressure for my mother-in-law - for phone consults about medication with the GP.
Low (but not zero) likelihood.
I have my friend and her daughter visiting from the states next year. Along with them will come the daughters friend of 15.
My question is as neither my friend nor I are the girls parent, if she needs medical treatment for instance breaks a wrist, appendicitis....what do we need to do up front to act in loco parentis for medical consent?
I mean I hope it does, so I could reference this seminal article which doesn't get linked on PB that often.
'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2007/09/labour-majority-increase
Arbuthnot is more interesting than some give credit for. He was obsessed with new technology - motorcycle racing etc. His obsession with not losing torpedos was actually about the fact that the early torps had to be tuned and run regularly to be accurate. Losing a torpedo meant losing all the data that had been logged on the biases in that weapon.
My UnDictatorship will prove entertaining....
Whodathunkit ?!
(Have touched on this professionally but I am not a doctor etc etc).
Our neighbour's cat is miaowing to come in, which only happens when it's about to snow.
Labour could lose 250 seats, the Tories lose 400 seats Reform win 450seats and all the pressure would be on Badenoch
Labour vote share would be artificially low anyway as it was in 2021 in these specific seats
Can’t really blame him, as there was some pretty baseless ad hom stuff.
He is also happy to dish it out, let it be noted
You just have to time it right in the electoral cycle.
I have seen the responsibility for Presidential Pardon Problems partly laid to King Ine of Wessex in 688–725, who is the first known to have come up with idea, rather than to the Founders who made such a dog's breakfast of implementation in or soon after 1776.
They really need Dr Who.
Drat.
It features "Feathers McGraw."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0ZGf2B01uU
No mercy for bagpipe skirlers !
Is this remotely normal?
Our real failure is not failing to invest (waste money on) the unproductive north, it's not allowing the south-east to flourish, but strangling it with ridiculous green belts so that people from hopeless, drug and alcohol infested welfare ghettos in the north can't afford to move south where they would be much more productive, lumbering it with ridiculously high taxes to fund those ghettos and wasting money on garbage like HS2 instead of road and mass transit projects where they are most productive.
Enhance with 1 chopped clove garlic, two small chopped bird's eye chilies, cracked salt and black pepper, a dash of good fish sauce, and a seasoning of Yawataya Isogoro Shichimi Togarashi. Mix it all in, microwave
OMFFFFFFG
Takes about 2 minutes to add the extras, the result is a dahl that matches any I have had anywhere on earth
No doubt the BBC will also have him lined up for QT for about a dozen appearances in the next six months.
He is no longer an MP.
I'm not even an IT wanker and I figured this out.
Neil Henderson
@hendopolis
·
21m
MAIL ON SUNDAY: Poll: Starmer will be out of No10 in a year #TomorrowsPapersToday
https://www.oddschecker.com/politics/british-politics/next-prime-minister-after-keir-starmer
So, yeah, suck it up. He will get attention
One thing this article doesn’t mention is directed energy weapons, but they will certainly be in planning.
THE TINY ULTRABRIGHT LASER THAT CAN MELT STEEL
https://spectrum.ieee.org/pcsel
… Although it will be challenging, we eventually hope to make 3-cm lasers with output powers exceeding 10 kilowatts and beams shining up to 1,000 GW/cm2/sr—brighter than any laser that exists today. At such extreme brightness, PCSELs could replace the huge, electricity-hungry CO2 lasers used to generate plasma pulses for extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, making chip manufacturing much more efficient. They could similarly advance efforts to realize nuclear fusion, a process that involves firing trillions of watts of laser power at a pea-size fuel capsule. Exceptionally bright lasers also raise the possibility of light propulsion for spaceflight. Instead of taking thousands of years to reach faraway stars, a probe boosted by light could make the journey in only a few decades.…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Brown
Watch for the biographies.
No, seriously, I have been honing this for a year or three. I love tarka dahl., but no way I'm making my own. Fuck that. The best way to do Asian cuisine, at home, is to buy an excellent base, already made, then add fresh stuff - mmmm
Indeed this is what the best Asian restaurants do, they don't make everything from scratch. They have a base from day to day
However I do confess the final flourish - Yawataya Isogoro Shichimi Togarashi - only occurred to me after my recent Japanese tour. Fuck knows what they put in it, but it is incredible. It adds heat, citrus, savoury, salt, umami, wow
https://japanesetaste.co.uk/products/yawataya-isogoro-shichimi-togarashi-seasoning-can-14g?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA1eO7BhATEiwAm0Ee-Blr-wAF5wJwszZ0TzMErHEijIKUNkVV-OIsFuxuodj-b3vVFNOb7xoCLVgQAvD_BwE
Only a fiver a can, albeit tiny. Worth it
But I've lost count of the people I've heard say "fuck it, I'm voting Reform, what else do we do, now?"
Assuming he does not fall deeply sick or die, and assuming he continues to show political skill, the bookies are right and Nige is in with a good shot of being Prime Minister, certainly as good as Kemi, who is likely to be replaced
1kg cooking apples peeled and chopped into small chunks
500g eating apple peeled and chopped into large chunks
450g onion sliced
50g fresh root ginger finely chopped
1 tsp peppercorns
500g granulated sugar
250ml cider vinegar
500g cranberry
Plus assorted spices to taste
(Make as per chutney)
(Tarka Dahl has no merit without the otter, btw.)
https://amp.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/12/nick-brown-resigns-labour-complete-farce-disciplinary-process
Labour uses show trials
Labour 30%
Cons 23%
Reform 22%
Lib Dems 12%
Though Starmer is -42% Badenoch - 21%
Supplementary questions
Is UK heading in right direction 69%/18% no
How worried are you for those no longer receiving the WFA 78%/15% worried
Do you back IHT on farms 53%/25% no
Should there be more or less immigrants coming into UK 62%/11% less
Should Musk be allowed to donate £80 million to Reform 54%/30% no
I am confident that if Starmer or Reeves had thought the abolition of the WFA would be so unpopular they would not have done it
That would be a travesty.
Italy has had 69 government since WWII (https://www.governo.it/it/i-governi-dal-1943-ad-oggi/i-governi-nelle-legislature/192)
We are barely getting started....
Its utter bollocks multiplied by utter bollocks.
Utter bollocks squared.
All I can say, is sorry Elon.