“I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes”
The words that will haunt Rachel Reeves in the coming months. If we think next week is going to be a bitter pill for her to swallow, the October budget is looking like it could be even worse.
Why oh why did she come out with that?
Because she’s not very good at this politics lark?
On topic, I think Ed Miliband is underrated by the commentariat.
I would suggest he is clearly overrated by Labour List members and most almost certainly by himself. I am sure all opposition parties would love to see him return; with them he is only outscored by Mr Thicky Corbyn as the favoured leader of the Labour Party.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
Given their recent performance in organising invasions, it's more likely to be Ukrainian. My personal bet is that it's the French due to all their long-standing grievances.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Decent footballers, mind.
If Leon is ready to apologise for his absurdities, the typos are the least of it.
“I’m not coming back for more borrowing or more taxes”
The words that will haunt Rachel Reeves in the coming months. If we think next week is going to be a bitter pill for her to swallow, the October budget is looking like it could be even worse.
Why oh why did she come out with that?
Because she’s not very good at this politics lark?
Maybe she should have stuck to customer complaints, though it looked very likely she would have been fired from that.
Given their recent performance in organising invasions, it's more likely to be Ukrainian. My personal bet is that it's the French due to all their long-standing grievances.
WTF? Is that an attempt at irony, or have you been drinking? It is Friday afternoon I guess
I see an Associate at Skadden has sent a firm-wide email resigning if the firm capitulates to Trump in the same way Paul Weiss has done.
Good for that person for sticking to their principles I guess, but those kinds of protest actions are exceedingly unlikely to turn the strategy tanker of big corporate organisations by themselves.
So the constitutional amendments to the debt brake passed in the Bundesrat. Bavaria voted in favour after CSU leader Söder apparently threatened to sack the FW and go into coalition instead. It turned out Bavaria's votes weren't needed as the Left in MeckPomm and Bremen were persuaded to vote in favour.
The last court cases from the FDP and AfD trying to stop the legislation were also thrown out today, so German rearmament looks like it's happening. Though it still depends on a government forming.
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen told us in an interview that US Vice President JD Vance was right when it comes to migration and limiting the mass arrival of foreigners.
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen told us in an interview that US Vice President JD Vance was right when it comes to migration and limiting the mass arrival of foreigners.
Has Sturgeon having been cleared of facing charges helped do you think?
Doubt it , she was a busted flush some time ago, more she was the SNP problem in the past and now she has gone , even if her henchman is running teh show, things can only get better.
Disability politics: what party does PB think has the greatest prevalence of people on some form of working-age incapacity benefit? Once upon a time the answer was obvious - but now?
- Age profile suggests Conservatives, with voter base dominated by 50-64 year olds - Education level suggests Reform - Social grade suggests Reform - Housing tenure suggests Reform (lots of council house tenants) - Employment status suggests Reform (Labour close second) - Household income suggests Reform (Conservative second)
I just wonder if we are witnessing a rather startling shift in Labour party values. Are they abandoning these kinds of people? This could be quite a dangerous path for the country.
The problem is since COVID, sorry I meant since the last GE, a significant number of new claimants have absolutely taken the piss. Whether this Government throw the baby out with the bathwater remains to be seen, but a couple earning £75,000 and taking £400 a month each because they have ADHD is a piss take. The benefits system is supposed to be a safety net rather than a fund for the entitled.
I'd agree with that, but they are not talking about means-testing PIP. Just changing the amount and the kind of conditions which make you eligible.
This pair should be nowhere near £400 pip each per month even if they were earning just ten bob a week.
I am not entirely unsympathetic to your point @Mexicanpete but you seem to be raising two issues here: should they get PIP for their conditions and should they get it if they are high earners.
This is nothing to do with "a significant number of new claimants have absolutely taken the piss" - the rules are the rules, any government can change them (and this government is tightening the criteria) but unless and until they do the assessors, and more significantly the tribunals, will apply the rules as written.
As I have freely mentioned on here, I have been a paraplegic since a road traffic accident in 1979. Since then I have always claimed whatever disability payments I qualified for. Given in later life I became a high-earner, I did sometimes consider whether I should refuse the payment but there is absolutely no doubt (to me at least) that life is more expensive with a disability in a myriad of ways, some obvious, some more subtle. So, rightly or wrongly, I rationalise it as a kind of tax allowance acknowledge those extra costs. Swings and roundabouts though - we don't have kids, so have since 18 used the education service we contribute too.
I do think PIP (and Attendance Allowance for those over pension age) should be taxed however, but which government wants to have the media screaming "disability tax!" at them?
All income from working or benefits should be taxed, including rent allowance, council tax payments , etc.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
In David Beth’s thesis about impending civil war in the UK he notes the vulnerability of critical infrastructure
And that, if you really wanted to sow chaos in the UK, - from whatever angle - that’s what you’d aim for. He might mention substations explicitly
Its not civil war. It is possibly a targeted attack by a foreign power. Nothing civil about it. Playing into the meme of "civil war" does the Russian subversives work for them, so stop being a fool and amplifying this rubbish. This is very similar to the attacks in France at the time of the Olympic games. Whether we choose to admit Russian involvement is an open question, because it would be a casus belli under most international law. On the other hand, we are not constrained if we catch the culprits- this is one of those "wanted dead or alive" cases.
I’ll comment whatever way I like, but thanks
Vexatious flaggers should in my opinion be given a temporary ban to cool them off - this is a petulant and childish waste of moderator's time.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
Being slightly older than you, I also got the coffee with a shot of brandy and whipped cream topping. The very height of 70s sophistication.
“Honest to god, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Harvard political scientist Steven Levitsky told Amanda Taub of the New York Times.
Along with his colleague Daniel Ziblatt, Levitsky wrote How Democracies Die. “We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,” Levitsky said. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.”
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
In related news, another insurance company has declined to insure Cybertrucks, so it looks like Trusk will launch a Tesla specific insurance company
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
Why not look at people in the round? I admit I like to travel, although to date it has mostly been short haul. And I eat a lot of meat. However I drive very little (my 15 year old Megane has done about 72000 miles), often travel by train and rarely use the tumble dryer, in fact Octopus has recently given me some money back and allowed me to reduce my monthly payments to £64.
I am not sure what proportion of carbon outputs are due to aviation but I bet it is very little compared with other sources, which will be easier to reduce. Access to cheap aviation gives many people a lot of benefits. So I am not sure it should be a priority
Apparently (my dad is telling me this), Richard Tice has claimed that Heathrow has ditched diesel back up generators in the name of net zero. A quick Google finds this from 2022:
Stand-by generators currently operate using diesel as they need an independent power source to maintain resilient operations. They are used predominantly as back-up power for airfield ground lighting. We are investigating renewable-based alternatives that can still meet the stringent performance criteria for such a safety critical airport asset.
That suggests that any back up generators wouldn't be for the whole airport, so perhaps Heathrow is vulnerable to a single point of failure.
That said, Heathrow having a net zero plan is quite funny.
I went to see Kyoto (the play) the other day. About the negotiating of the Kyoto Agreement. Some great performances and the play illustrates the delay and obfuscating tactics of those opposed to any limit on, or reduction of carbon emissions. There is a great passage about the hypocrisy of the carbon trading scam.
During the interval, there were two young people, a boy and a girl, sitting next to me and they were chattering about this and that. In particular, the boy was telling the girl about his impressive travel plans. He was going to go on a tour of the US and South America, fly here, then there, then come back via somewhere else, and this compared to his equally impressive travels this year (Iceland, then Amsterdam).
I turned to them and asked them, as representative of "youngsters" (we all laughed - they were young lawyers), what they thought about the play's subject matter and they both voiced enthusiastic approval.
I then said I couldn't help but overhear them talking about flying all over the world, to which the male responded "well obviously I'm a vegan on account of the planet, and..." and then blathered on, quite embarrassed.
I assured them that they didn't need to explain themselves to me and we settled down to watch the second half of the play.
But that is the reality of life and net zero and whatnot. People don't want to reduce their own activities while encouraging others to cut back theirs.
He said he was vegan for that reason, so he was willing to reduce some of his own activities.
Why not look at people in the round? I admit I like to travel, although to date it has mostly been short haul. And I eat a lot of meat. However I drive very little (my 15 year old Megane has done about 72000 miles), often travel by train and rarely use the tumble dryer, in fact Octopus has recently given me some money back and allowed me to reduce my monthly payments to £64.
I am not sure what proportion of carbon outputs are due to aviation but I bet it is very little compared with other sources, which will be easier to reduce. Access to cheap aviation gives many people a lot of benefits. So I am not sure it should be a priority
Multiple factors - demographics, an aging population driving less, young people having more options especially in cities and not learning to drive, train travel increasing, more tram systems.
I think we do about 4k per year. Short trips ferrying kids to activities, a weekly trip to Sainsburys and a few times a year long drives up north or to Cornwall on holiday or seeing family. No commuting or school run.
Actually I checked and it is 67000. Assumed I would be low due to only having a 4 mile commute and rarely doing long trips in the car, I had a 500 mile round trip to North Wales last weekend and it has been over a year since I did anything comparable (Cornwall at New Year, I would normally get the train but at that time of year prices were high and there were too many engineering works. Pity as the weather was shit and the brakes went wrong so I had two unpleasant drives)
So if most people drive so little, why are people so obsessed with their cars? All these people spending a fuckton on new SUVs, I would have thought to make the expenditure worthwhile you must have to virtually live in the car. Or have we just become lazy and everyone walks half a mile to the newsagents?
People like a bit of luxury John. I do hardly any miles but have indeed spent a considerable amount on an SUV and it is very pleasant when I do go somewhere.
Has Sturgeon having been cleared of facing charges helped do you think?
Doubt it , she was a busted flush some time ago, more she was the SNP problem in the past and now she has gone , even if her henchman is running teh show, things can only get better.
Disability politics: what party does PB think has the greatest prevalence of people on some form of working-age incapacity benefit? Once upon a time the answer was obvious - but now?
- Age profile suggests Conservatives, with voter base dominated by 50-64 year olds - Education level suggests Reform - Social grade suggests Reform - Housing tenure suggests Reform (lots of council house tenants) - Employment status suggests Reform (Labour close second) - Household income suggests Reform (Conservative second)
I just wonder if we are witnessing a rather startling shift in Labour party values. Are they abandoning these kinds of people? This could be quite a dangerous path for the country.
The problem is since COVID, sorry I meant since the last GE, a significant number of new claimants have absolutely taken the piss. Whether this Government throw the baby out with the bathwater remains to be seen, but a couple earning £75,000 and taking £400 a month each because they have ADHD is a piss take. The benefits system is supposed to be a safety net rather than a fund for the entitled.
I'd agree with that, but they are not talking about means-testing PIP. Just changing the amount and the kind of conditions which make you eligible.
This pair should be nowhere near £400 pip each per month even if they were earning just ten bob a week.
I am not entirely unsympathetic to your point @Mexicanpete but you seem to be raising two issues here: should they get PIP for their conditions and should they get it if they are high earners.
This is nothing to do with "a significant number of new claimants have absolutely taken the piss" - the rules are the rules, any government can change them (and this government is tightening the criteria) but unless and until they do the assessors, and more significantly the tribunals, will apply the rules as written.
As I have freely mentioned on here, I have been a paraplegic since a road traffic accident in 1979. Since then I have always claimed whatever disability payments I qualified for. Given in later life I became a high-earner, I did sometimes consider whether I should refuse the payment but there is absolutely no doubt (to me at least) that life is more expensive with a disability in a myriad of ways, some obvious, some more subtle. So, rightly or wrongly, I rationalise it as a kind of tax allowance acknowledge those extra costs. Swings and roundabouts though - we don't have kids, so have since 18 used the education service we contribute too.
I do think PIP (and Attendance Allowance for those over pension age) should be taxed however, but which government wants to have the media screaming "disability tax!" at them?
All income from working or benefits should be taxed, including rent allowance, council tax payments , etc.
Yep, I agree with that. Also pensions savings* and investments* of course. All taxed at the same set of rates - none of that 'NI only applying to earned income' nonsense.
(*I'd allow interest to be offset against inflation, so CPI = 3.0%, interest = 3.5%, tax only applies to 0.5% interest.)
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
In related news, another insurance company has declined to insure Cybertrucks, so it looks like Trusk will launch a Tesla specific insurance company
In related news, the valuation of Twitter has rebounded:
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say: ‘It must have been the Russian!’—but he’s a mile away. You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs; Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen told us in an interview that US Vice President JD Vance was right when it comes to migration and limiting the mass arrival of foreigners.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
He later updated that line in a further interview on LBC, saying: “There’s no suggestion that there is foul play.” Asked whether it was a “catastrophic accident”, Miliband said: “The conversation I’ve had is with the National Grid, the chief executive of the National Grid and certainly, that’s what he said to me.” More to add shortly no doubt…
UPDATE: London Fire Brigade take a different tack to Miliband – a senior fire officer wouldn’t comment on the cause of the fire in a press conference which began around 11:00 a.m. Meanwhile The Times reports counter-terror police are part of the investigation.
Yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far with temperatures reaching 21.3 degrees at nearby Northolt. Not that hot in itself but significantly warmer than the previous day. Whether that could be relevant I don't know.
Isnt Heathrow usually the highest temperature recorded in a day?
Yes, quite often in the middle of summer. Not so much the rest of the year.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
I liked the mints you got with the coffee. SO sophisticated
So the constitutional amendments to the debt brake passed in the Bundesrat. Bavaria voted in favour after CSU leader Söder apparently threatened to sack the FW and go into coalition instead. It turned out Bavaria's votes weren't needed as the Left in MeckPomm and Bremen were persuaded to vote in favour.
The last court cases from the FDP and AfD trying to stop the legislation were also thrown out today, so German rearmament looks like it's happening. Though it still depends on a government forming.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
In related news, another insurance company has declined to insure Cybertrucks, so it looks like Trusk will launch a Tesla specific insurance company
In related news, the valuation of Twitter has rebounded:
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
In related news, another insurance company has declined to insure Cybertrucks, so it looks like Trusk will launch a Tesla specific insurance company
In related news, the valuation of Twitter has rebounded:
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
In David Beth’s thesis about impending civil war in the UK he notes the vulnerability of critical infrastructure
And that, if you really wanted to sow chaos in the UK, - from whatever angle - that’s what you’d aim for. He might mention substations explicitly
It's worse than that. We have to consider the possibility that a roaming band of woke Ewoks is responsible.
The same furry insurgents who took down the Galactic Empire with wooden spears and log traps could easily their attention to the UK's transport and energy infrastructure, targeting what they call the capitalist-industrial power grid.
We all know Ewoks have been radicalized by woke ideology after exposure to Earth media. Reports suggest they’ve been protesting deforestation, over-reliance on fossil fuels, and “speciesist” portrayals of primitive cultures in sci-fi films. One alleged manifesto, scrawled in an unknown dialect, shows crude pictographs of X-wing pilots bowing before an Ewok elder.
Completely made up eyewitness accounts are even more disturbing. One maintenance worker reported hearing strange chittering sounds moments before the fire broke out. Another swore they saw a tiny figure in a hood waving a protest sign made from repurposed stormtrooper armor.
This expert warns that if left unchecked, woke militant Ewoks may escalate their attacks—perhaps targeting 5G towers next, or worse, blocking Tube stations with log barricades until Heathrow agrees to run on 100% Ewok-approved renewable energy.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
I’m not complaining. People can post however and whatever they like - and it was actually rather eloquent about the Berni Inn experience
However the ten likes was notable
Not much else to like in 70s dining. Hence the unanimity.
Berni Inns? Don't get me started. While we in Estonia relish the delicate flavors of fresh local ingredients, the British were churning out bloated portions of blandness in their chain of soulless diners. It's as if Britain was so locked in its island mentality that it couldn't be bothered to embrace the culinary artistry flourishing all around Europe.
Here in Tallinn, we take food seriously—fresh, local, and inventive. We’ve got the Baltic flavors, the creativity, and the respect for quality ingredients that Berni Inns could only dream of.
To put it simply: the British food scene needed a wake-up call, and Berni Inns were a long, embarrassing nap. Thank goodness the rest of Europe never had to endure such tastelessness.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
I’m not complaining. People can post however and whatever they like - and it was actually rather eloquent about the Berni Inn experience
However the ten likes was notable
Well who knows. Reading the Berni Inn bit though there could have been AI involved. For example what's 'The crowning glory of Britain' doing in there). Irregular spacing too.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
It'll be interesting to see whether planners at Heathrow Airport had even considered whether having the airport powered by one substation was a good idea or not. And if they had discussed it, why they thought it was appropriate. At the very least, you'd have expected each terminal to have had its own power source.
It's interesting how much armchair experts are jumping to conclusions about Heathrow's electricity supply based on nothing.
Today's outage is not nothing. What you sneer at is ordinary people asking obvious questions, the first of which is why no-one asked the obvious question.
I’m not sneering at “ordinary people”. I’m suggesting commentators on PB, who are demonstrably not “ordinary people”, should slow down before rushing to blame the Russians, net zero or poor planning.
Definitely poor planning at some level. One fire, airport down. That's interview without coffee time.
Depends.
What's the relative cost to the owners of the airport of maintaining a sufficient backup system compared with having your airport fall over for a couple of days? (Personally don't have a clue, what with being a suburban science master.) But right up to the nanosecond that this happened, keeping spending on a backup system that hasn't been used in years/ever is what would have got you the meeting without coffee.
Which is the pervasive mindset that has got us to here.
Turnover is around £10m per day for the airport itself. The revenue cost of one day's outage for the airlines that fly there is going to be many times that. Not to mention their customers. (Power is just now reported back on for the airport, FWIW).
I'd guess the extra investment for battery systems large enough to provide a few hours backup power would pay for itself quite easily, as it's only a few million pounds. And you could probably recoup some of that investment from power arbitrage.
BBC reporting that they do have UPS, but "not enough capacity" to run the whole airport.
I see that some Refuk types are banging on about 'net zero' playing a role here, but what does it matter what fuel the generators use as long they successfully came online within the agreed time? And, er, as far as I can see, they did - video from inside the airport shows plenty of emergency lighting, ATC was operational, there weren't even any breaks in METAR reports.
The issue with the main power supply seems to be one of redundancy - it's hardly unusual for multiply redundant systems to be colocated, with separation rules in place to mitigate against shared risks. We're told that the heat from one set of equipment affected another set, so it seems in this case that the separation was insufficient.
I once saw something similar when involved with a datacentre project which was originally intended to be built close to a major airport - it turned out that our design rules for power redundancy were considerably more strict than the airport's, so we would have had to pay for a new substation making that location uneconomic.
It wouldn't surprise me if something similar was going on here; you could easily imagine a scenario in which this was a known risk, with grid redundancy improvements being stalled behind other projects for decades. I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't have been an issue if the third runway project had gone ahead as planned, for example.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
I’m not complaining. People can post however and whatever they like - and it was actually rather eloquent about the Berni Inn experience
However the ten likes was notable
Not much else to like in 70s dining. Hence the unanimity.
Berni Inns? Don't get me started. While we in Estonia relish the delicate flavors of fresh local ingredients, the British were churning out bloated portions of blandness in their chain of soulless diners. It's as if Britain was so locked in its island mentality that it couldn't be bothered to embrace the culinary artistry flourishing all around Europe.
Here in Tallinn, we take food seriously—fresh, local, and inventive. We’ve got the Baltic flavors, the creativity, and the respect for quality ingredients that Berni Inns could only dream of.
To put it simply: the British food scene needed a wake-up call, and Berni Inns were a long, embarrassing nap. Thank goodness the rest of Europe never had to endure such tastelessness.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
In related news, another insurance company has declined to insure Cybertrucks, so it looks like Trusk will launch a Tesla specific insurance company
In related news, the valuation of Twitter has rebounded:
I would note that isn't a price based on publicly traded shares: that's what one investor thinks it's worth and has marked it to that on its books.
It’s also based on Elon shifting $$ around between his AI company & X - he raised a few $billion for xAI from external investors & turned round and paid that to X in return for access to X’s text corpus. But who is the current paying user of xAI services? As far as anyone can tell the main paying customer for xAI’s Grok is X itself!
The whole thing looks like a shell game from the outside.
But hey, X is still around & that’s more than a lot of outside observers expected a year ago.
In David Beth’s thesis about impending civil war in the UK he notes the vulnerability of critical infrastructure
And that, if you really wanted to sow chaos in the UK, - from whatever angle - that’s what you’d aim for. He might mention substations explicitly
You really are a twat of the first order
How many orders are there?
I think Leon has been awarded all: 3rd Order is where a poster says something twatish but simultaneously amusing. This was awarded when Leon was still funny. 2nd Order is where the poster is twatish and probably boring but ultimately harmless, such as trying to impress over some boring trip somewhere that no-one cares about.
1st Order is where someone (in this case Leon) says something that is designed to be controversial but is also twatish and downright irresponsible. Such a post is also awarded the Stupid Irresponsible Cnut award
In David Beth’s thesis about impending civil war in the UK he notes the vulnerability of critical infrastructure
And that, if you really wanted to sow chaos in the UK, - from whatever angle - that’s what you’d aim for. He might mention substations explicitly
It's worse than that. We have to consider the possibility that a roaming band of woke Ewoks is responsible.
The same furry insurgents who took down the Galactic Empire with wooden spears and log traps could easily their attention to the UK's transport and energy infrastructure, targeting what they call the capitalist-industrial power grid.
We all know Ewoks have been radicalized by woke ideology after exposure to Earth media. Reports suggest they’ve been protesting deforestation, over-reliance on fossil fuels, and “speciesist” portrayals of primitive cultures in sci-fi films. One alleged manifesto, scrawled in an unknown dialect, shows crude pictographs of X-wing pilots bowing before an Ewok elder.
Completely made up eyewitness accounts are even more disturbing. One maintenance worker reported hearing strange chittering sounds moments before the fire broke out. Another swore they saw a tiny figure in a hood waving a protest sign made from repurposed stormtrooper armor.
This expert warns that if left unchecked, woke militant Ewoks may escalate their attacks—perhaps targeting 5G towers next, or worse, blocking Tube stations with log barricades until Heathrow agrees to run on 100% Ewok-approved renewable energy.
It's must be a bit of a pain having to compliment Trump all the time, when it's obvious he has the brains of a flea. "Yessum, Massa, dem damn Yankees, dey done burned all de cotton."
Bleugh. Listening to The Gulag Archipelago on Spotify (read it old school decades ago) and the foreword went on for ages, read by someone with an annoyingly creaky little voice. Also the content was far more repetitive and banally ideological than I remember old Aleksandr being. Took a break to check if it was someone I should be listing to and it was Jordan feckin Peterson! Quite taken the shine off the experience
It's must be a bit of a pain having to compliment Trump all the time, when it's obvious he has the brains of a flea. "Yessum, Massa, dem damn Yankees, dey done burned all de cotton."
William can cope though. He's made of stern stuff.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
I don't buy the xAI is just a way to funnel money to X. They have spent north of $5bn on GPUs for their 200k GPU cluster, and already on the way to scaling it to 1 million GPUs, there is where the raised money has gone to date.
I don't buy the xAI is just a way to funnel money to X. They have spent north of $5bn on GPUs for their 200k GPU cluster, and already on the way to scaling it to 1 million GPUs, there is where the raised money has gone.
I'm a bit baffled about AI spend. It's either going to be a waste of money, or you'll be easily able to catch up. (Proper AI)
I don't buy the xAI is just a way to funnel money to X. They have spent north of $5bn on GPUs for their 200k GPU cluster, and already on the way to scaling it to 1 million GPUs, there is where the raised money has gone.
I'm a bit baffled about AI spend. It's either going to be a waste of money, or you'll be easily able to catch up. (Proper AI)
You aren't the only one to point out this out. Also, you are bashing these GPUs really hard, so their failure rate is quite high (and each one costs $30k a pop) so just to stand still you have to constantly line Jensen's pockets replacing them. Also you need to keep retraining them.
I have seen some videos of people doing back of a fag packet calcs and the cost per month to make it profitable business is far far higher than currently pitched. We are starting to see the "real cost" filtering through with the likes of ChatGPT $200 a month tier, from my recollection that is about bare minimum to cover the costs.
The hope is that these models become much more efficient to train and do inference with, but as OpenAI has found out the moat doesn't seem to be that wide or deep.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
I’m not complaining. People can post however and whatever they like - and it was actually rather eloquent about the Berni Inn experience
However the ten likes was notable
Not much else to like in 70s dining. Hence the unanimity.
Christ
Iq fail or what
I'm not a writer, as you have oft pointed out. The whole prawn cocktail, steak, and gateau at a Berni Inn riff is such a boringly commonplace trope that there's a whole Wikipedia article about it -
It's been done to death. So, no, it isn't at all original, and a lot of it comes from a possibly misremembered passage in Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer.
The Ewok thing, however, is pure plagiarism (sorry Sean C if you're reading this) adapted from an email from colleague at a big City firm recently targeted Extinction Rebellion by who is, unlikely me, genuinely funny. And massively into Star Wars.
I don't buy the xAI is just a way to funnel money to X. They have spent north of $5bn on GPUs for their 200k GPU cluster, and already on the way to scaling it to 1 million GPUs, there is where the raised money has gone.
I'm a bit baffled about AI spend. It's either going to be a waste of money, or you'll be easily able to catch up. (Proper AI)
You aren't the only one to point out this out. Also, you are bashing these GPUs really hard, so their failure rate is quite high (and each one costs $30k a pop) so just to stand still you have to constantly line Jensen's pockets replacing them.
I shall write to your mother immediately and tell her you're ruining my moment in the playground
I didn't imagine I was first, but, for what it's worth, I thought of it independently.
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
What’s the use case for a robot that “walks and catches things”?
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
What’s the use case for a robot that “walks and catches things”?
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
And yet again, Musky Baby ramps Tesla share prices with announcements that probably will not happen any time soon.
In related news, another insurance company has declined to insure Cybertrucks, so it looks like Trusk will launch a Tesla specific insurance company
In related news, the valuation of Twitter has rebounded:
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
I’m not complaining. People can post however and whatever they like - and it was actually rather eloquent about the Berni Inn experience
However the ten likes was notable
Not much else to like in 70s dining. Hence the unanimity.
Christ
Iq fail or what
I'm not a writer, as you have oft pointed out. The whole prawn cocktail, steak, and gateau at a Berni Inn riff is such a boringly commonplace trope that there's a whole Wikipedia article about it -
It's been done to death. So, no, it isn't at all original, and a lot of it comes from a possibly misremembered passage in Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer.
The Ewok thing, however, is pure plagiarism (sorry Sean C if you're reading this) adapted from an email from colleague at a big City firm recently targeted Extinction Rebellion by who is, unlikely me, genuinely funny. And massively into Star Wars.
IMO Weiss caved for the same reason Columbia University - it was surrender on the "DEI" point or Trump would destroy the whole institution by forcing $400m of research funding to be pulled. That's more than the entire sustainable income from their huge $14.8 billion endowment; that's not quite a precise comparison, but it's illustrative.
He's a narcissistic psychopath and the indications are that he *would* do it.
It's as if all UK Govt funding to Oxbridge was going to be turned off.
The Anne Applebaum interview with the Bulwark I posted a few weeks ago discussed this. The question to ask is not "Why did these surrender", but "Why did these resist?". The serious resistors who can pay a real cost will be 2 or 3 in a thousand.
For an individual, it would be you will only get a job as a Janitor not a Professor, and your children will be denied Higher Education, and your family will be denied decent medical care, and your state pension will be cancelled.
It's the consequences for others if they choose to be a martyr, in addition to very few setups are actually outside the reach of the Government.
That's why I have been pointing out that if the Judiciary gets taken down, there are very few platforms that are completely independent from the Government and self-supporting. The USA will be into a situation where Desmond Tutus and Trevor Huddlestons become important, as they are very difficult to touch.
Vaclav Havel was put in prison for resisting. Authors get their books banned from schools and libraries, then just banned. TV stations are turned off; Trump has already appointed one of his mushrooms head of the FCC, who aiui license TV stations and control the radio spectrum. And so on.
Who knows - will we have a Samizdat media in the USA?
1) they would have done it if they could have 2) they did nothing to prevent it 3) they've done far far worse to Ukraine.
So they're still guilty and deserve us sending another round of weapons shipments to their enemies.
That's a reasoned and proportionate response.
There's been a plague of Russian hybrid actions across Europe.
I think - and I'm being a bit impressionistic here - that the KGB or whatever it is now has never really recovered in the UK from when Edward Heath cleared them out in 1971 by Operation FOOT. I heard an interview with a former Secret Service type about it recently, I can't recall where. I expect there may be something in the Mitrokhin Archive about it from the KGB side - @Malmesbury ?
IMO Weiss caved for the same reason Columbia University - it was surrender on the "DEI" point or Trump would destroy the whole institution by forcing $400m of research funding to be pulled. That's more than the entire sustainable income from their huge $14.8 billion endowment; that's not quite a precise comparison, but it's illustrative.
He's a narcissistic psychopath and the indications are that he *would* do it.
It's as if all UK Govt funding to Oxbridge was going to be turned off.
The Anne Applebaum interview with the Bulwark I posted a few weeks ago discussed this. The question to ask is not "Why did these surrender", but "Why did these resist?". The serious resistors who can pay a real cost will be 2 or 3 in a thousand.
For an individual, it would be you will only get a job as a Janitor not a Professor, and your children will be denied Higher Education, and your family will be denied decent medical care, and your state pension will be cancelled.
It's the consequences for others if they choose to be a martyr, in addition to very few setups are actually outside the reach of the Government.
That's why I have been pointing out that if the Judiciary gets taken down, there are very few platforms that are completely independent from the Government and self-supporting. The USA will be into a situation where Desmond Tutus and Trevor Huddlestons become important, as they are very difficult to touch.
Vaclav Havel was put in prison for resisting. Authors get their books banned from schools and libraries, then just banned. TV stations are turned off; Trump has already appointed one of his mushrooms head of the FCC, who aiui license TV stations and control the radio spectrum. And so on.
Who knows - will we have a Samizdat media in the USA?
I assumed that everyone here would know Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, but it is a long time ago - he was working in SA before Nelson Mandela joined the ANC. So I'll give a thumbnail sketch.
Huddleston was a Mirfield (Anglo-Catholic social action tradition, so schools, nurseries, education, community facilities etc. ) missionary who went to work in South Africa in the 1930s, and ended up in the middle of a township called Sophiatown as Apartheid came in in the 1940s. He had a platform and buildings, and a community round him, and used them to fight the system. The Govt demolished Sophiatown, and rebuilt it as a white area.
He wrote a book called "Naught for your Comfort" in 1956, which title was drawn from Chesterton's poem The Ballad of the White Horse. where the Virgin Mary advises King Alfred, facing invading Danes:
I tell you naught for your comfort, Yea, naught for your desire, Save that the sky grows darker yet And the sea rises higher.
He was in all sorts of places later, including as Bishop of Stepney.
Apologies for absurd typos in recent comments. Think my phone has gone mad from the heat and the steaks
Anyway about those steaks. Last night I had a bad done. A bad, dry, overcooked, under seasoned steak
AND STEAK IS ALL THEY DO
It’s their one dish. They have 3m people and 10m cows. They go on and on about their fucking beef, especially the steaks. Yes ok everything else is hideous - the food is even worse than Brazil or Argentina or Peru - but surely the steaks will be ace, given it’s their solitary gastro product of note and they eat it every fucking day.
NO. THEY CAN’T EVEN DO THEM
Makes sense to me. If its all they eat why would they produce top quality?
Bread is a staple but the average loaf wont blow your socks off as the best thing since, well, sliced bread.
I remember when Britain was at its culinary nadir - mid 70s? - and we started to fuck up…. Fish and chips. Frozen fish, frozen chips
That’s where Uruguay is now
Do they have Berni Inns though? There was something truly special about dining in a 1970s Berni Inn, an experience was both sophisticated and comforting. The plush red carpets. The dark wood panelling. The charm of upscale old-school gentlemen’s club.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
The most notable thing about this comment is not the fact it got 10 ten likes, but the fact it got 10 likes and it was clearly not written by you or by anyone
Comments
Link for those interested.
A prawn cocktail starter. A juicy sirloin steak. Most importantly, a show-stopping Black Forest gateaux. The crowning glory of Britain. Rich chocolate sponge, whipped cream, tart cherries, and a generous splash of kirsch. The contrast of sweet and sour, light and rich. The gateau wasn’t just a dessert—it was a statement, a symbol of sophistication that felt exotic yet familiar.
For those lucky enough to have experienced a Berni Inn meal in its prime (and I was only 5 in 1979) the memory of that Black Forest gateau—will always bring a smile. It was more than just a dessert; it was an experience, a slice of culinary history, it was BRITAIN. Its loss was the most terrible legacy of Thatcher.
Has this site finally hit it's nadir or can you prise an opinion out of Leon?
Surely not….
The last court cases from the FDP and AfD trying to stop the legislation were also thrown out today, so German rearmament looks like it's happening. Though it still depends on a government forming.
https://x.com/politicoeurope/status/1902708037678194952
Danish PM Mette Frederiksen told us in an interview that US Vice President JD Vance was right when it comes to migration and limiting the mass arrival of foreigners.
JD Vance is now officially the most disliked new Vice President in American history, according to data.
@dennycarter.bsky.social
Vance is less popular than Dick Cheney in the early 2000s. Tough to do!
https://bsky.app/profile/dennycarter.bsky.social/post/3lkvgw3ik7s2c
$TSLA - MUSK: TESLA TO BUILD 5,000 OPTIMUS ROBOTS IN 2025, TELLS STAFF NOT TO SELL SHARES Tesla plans to build 5,000 Optimus humanoid robots in 2025, using its self-driving tech for tasks like walking and catching objects, Elon Musk told employees. Production could reach 50,000
EDIT: Nobody who has ever seen the movie Runaway will buy a domestic robot from a neo-fascist
The very height of 70s sophistication.
Along with his colleague Daniel Ziblatt, Levitsky wrote How Democracies Die. “We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse,” Levitsky said. “These first two months have been much more aggressively authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of democratic backsliding.”
Letter from an American email
(*I'd allow interest to be offset against inflation, so CPI = 3.0%, interest = 3.5%, tax only applies to 0.5% interest.)
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/19/value-elon-musk-x-rebounds-purchase-price
‘It must have been the Russian!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.
Stronger together. Faster together. Dominant together.
https://x.com/LockheedMartin/status/1903039033908830249
The em dash is distinctive
His van has broken down at home and he’s trying to repair it to go on shift
However the ten likes was notable
TRUMP AWARDS BOEING NEXT-GENERATION FIGHTER JET CONTRACT WORTH BILLIONS -SOURCE
https://x.com/FirstSquawk/status/1903100513396330782
Still, at least it's not Sukhoi.
Hence the unanimity.
Em dashes
“Armor”
Here in Tallinn, we take food seriously—fresh, local, and inventive. We’ve got the Baltic flavors, the creativity, and the respect for quality ingredients that Berni Inns could only dream of.
To put it simply: the British food scene needed a wake-up call, and Berni Inns were a long, embarrassing nap. Thank goodness the rest of Europe never had to endure such tastelessness.
I'm sure DS can clarify.
The Plough in Shirley and the Three Lamps, Swansea were my "locals" back in the day. Presumably it was the Imperial on Widemarsh Street for you.
Iq fail or what
The issue with the main power supply seems to be one of redundancy - it's hardly unusual for multiply redundant systems to be colocated, with separation rules in place to mitigate against shared risks. We're told that the heat from one set of equipment affected another set, so it seems in this case that the separation was insufficient.
I once saw something similar when involved with a datacentre project which was originally intended to be built close to a major airport - it turned out that our design rules for power redundancy were considerably more strict than the airport's, so we would have had to pay for a new substation making that location uneconomic.
It wouldn't surprise me if something similar was going on here; you could easily imagine a scenario in which this was a known risk, with grid redundancy improvements being stalled behind other projects for decades. I'd be willing to bet that it wouldn't have been an issue if the third runway project had gone ahead as planned, for example.
Nicely done
The whole thing looks like a shell game from the outside.
But hey, X is still around & that’s more than a lot of outside observers expected a year ago.
1st Order is where someone (in this case Leon) says something that is designed to be controversial but is also twatish and downright irresponsible. Such a post is also awarded the Stupid Irresponsible Cnut award
Listening to The Gulag Archipelago on Spotify (read it old school decades ago) and the foreword went on for ages, read by someone with an annoyingly creaky little voice. Also the content was far more repetitive and banally ideological than I remember old Aleksandr being. Took a break to check if it was someone I should be listing to and it was Jordan feckin Peterson! Quite taken the shine off the experience
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14523081/Sky-News-Guardian-confuse-Britains-elite-SAS-regiment-Scandinavian-Airlines-coverage-Heathrow-shutdown-chaos.html
I have seen some videos of people doing back of a fag packet calcs and the cost per month to make it profitable business is far far higher than currently pitched. We are starting to see the "real cost" filtering through with the likes of ChatGPT $200 a month tier, from my recollection that is about bare minimum to cover the costs.
The hope is that these models become much more efficient to train and do inference with, but as OpenAI has found out the moat doesn't seem to be that wide or deep.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prawn_cocktail,_steak_and_Black_Forest_gateau
It's been done to death. So, no, it isn't at all original, and a lot of it comes from a possibly misremembered passage in Titmuss Regained by John Mortimer.
The Ewok thing, however, is pure plagiarism (sorry Sean C if you're reading this) adapted from an email from colleague at a big City firm recently targeted Extinction Rebellion by who is, unlikely me, genuinely funny. And massively into Star Wars.
I didn't imagine I was first, but, for what it's worth, I thought of it independently.
England fielder?
NEW THREAD
What could possibly go wrong?
Wasn’t it SpaceX buying a stake in X or something?
So not an arms length trade
He's a narcissistic psychopath and the indications are that he *would* do it.
It's as if all UK Govt funding to Oxbridge was going to be turned off.
The Anne Applebaum interview with the Bulwark I posted a few weeks ago discussed this. The question to ask is not "Why did these surrender", but "Why did these resist?". The serious resistors who can pay a real cost will be 2 or 3 in a thousand.
For an individual, it would be you will only get a job as a Janitor not a Professor, and your children will be denied Higher Education, and your family will be denied decent medical care, and your state pension will be cancelled.
It's the consequences for others if they choose to be a martyr, in addition to very few setups are actually outside the reach of the Government.
That's why I have been pointing out that if the Judiciary gets taken down, there are very few platforms that are completely independent from the Government and self-supporting. The USA will be into a situation where Desmond Tutus and Trevor Huddlestons become important, as they are very difficult to touch.
Vaclav Havel was put in prison for resisting. Authors get their books banned from schools and libraries, then just banned. TV stations are turned off; Trump has already appointed one of his mushrooms head of the FCC, who aiui license TV stations and control the radio spectrum. And so on.
Who knows - will we have a Samizdat media in the USA?
I think - and I'm being a bit impressionistic here - that the KGB or whatever it is now has never really recovered in the UK from when Edward Heath cleared them out in 1971 by Operation FOOT. I heard an interview with a former Secret Service type about it recently, I can't recall where. I expect there may be something in the Mitrokhin Archive about it from the KGB side - @Malmesbury ?
Huddleston was a Mirfield (Anglo-Catholic social action tradition, so schools, nurseries, education, community facilities etc. ) missionary who went to work in South Africa in the 1930s, and ended up in the middle of a township called Sophiatown as Apartheid came in in the 1940s. He had a platform and buildings, and a community round him, and used them to fight the system. The Govt demolished Sophiatown, and rebuilt it as a white area.
He wrote a book called "Naught for your Comfort" in 1956, which title was drawn from Chesterton's poem The Ballad of the White Horse. where the Virgin Mary advises King Alfred, facing invading Danes:
I tell you naught for your comfort,
Yea, naught for your desire,
Save that the sky grows darker yet
And the sea rises higher.
He was in all sorts of places later, including as Bishop of Stepney.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Huddleston
The Premier Inn is still open.