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Is inflation the key metric for winning the general election? – politicalbetting.com

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Comments

  • TazTaz Posts: 17,142

    Leon said:

    Am now on the Tashkent Tube (famous for its elaborate stations - the cosmonaut one is genuinely impressive)

    Kids here wear tee shirts emblazoned with “Russia” and the Russian flag. So Russia is cool in Uzbekistan

    Borat would be appalled! :lol:
    Why, he’s a Kazakh, or a racial stereotype of one.
  • TazTaz Posts: 17,142

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    They just took us to see the “world’s oldest Koran” which is kept here in Tashkent having been brought here circuitously by various tyrants, Tamerlaines and tsars

    However I grew suspicious. Is this really the oldest Koran in the world? I checked. It isn’t. The real location of the oldest piece of any known Koran is actually a mild mind boggler

    Without googling does any PBer know? It’s a good pub quiz question

    In the museum that the Green family built? DC?
    No. Even weirder
    I've googled it too. Definitely unexpected.
    They should certainly do a swap. Saudis get the oldest Quran, to exhibit at Mecca.

    Birminghm City get a couple of decent strikers...
    We already have. But thanks.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 30,428
    Taz said:

    Andy_JS said:

    How did British Sky News become more left-wing than the BBC? One of life's great mysteries.

    Comcast bought them from Rupe.
    It is quite odd and disconcerting to me. The Times had always been soft right for as long as I'd known it. Youtube agorithm flicked on Times Radio the other day and the interviewer (about Reeves' budget) kept making these odd pseudo-left comments about 'welfare cuts' being the issue of the day. Turned out it was a horrifically aged Hugo Rifkind.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 54,215
    Well, this could be fun if true. Especially as his wife equates being gay with bestiality and incest...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6wA5E_zEaE&list=TLPQMjkwMzIwMjWulUlf0RXsTA&index=3
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,581
    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That’s what I struggle to understand. I get that you think that government spends too much money. But why close something like that? What is the downside of keeping it going?
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,382
    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Am now on the Tashkent Tube (famous for its elaborate stations - the cosmonaut one is genuinely impressive)

    Kids here wear tee shirts emblazoned with “Russia” and the Russian flag. So Russia is cool in Uzbekistan

    Borat would be appalled! :lol:
    Why, he’s a Kazakh, or a racial stereotype of one.
    True, but if you actually watch the Borat sketches/movie, he routinely lampoons Uzbekistan.

    Here is Borat's version of the Kazakh nation anthem:


    Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan, you very nice place
    From plains of Tarashek to northern fence of Jewtown
    Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan
    They very nosey people, with bone in their brain

  • TazTaz Posts: 17,142

    Taz said:

    Andy_JS said:

    How did British Sky News become more left-wing than the BBC? One of life's great mysteries.

    Comcast bought them from Rupe.
    It is quite odd and disconcerting to me. The Times had always been soft right for as long as I'd known it. Youtube agorithm flicked on Times Radio the other day and the interviewer (about Reeves' budget) kept making these odd pseudo-left comments about 'welfare cuts' being the issue of the day. Turned out it was a horrifically aged Hugo Rifkind.
    Andrew Neil is always interesting on Times Radio. I’ve heard Hugo Rifkind a few times. He has little to offer.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,581

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 43,115
    ydoethur said:

    Can somebody please check on Ydoethur.

    ’An insult’: Amanda Spielman, Ofsted chief at time of Ruth Perry’s suicide, to be given a peerage

    The nomination by Conservatives of the former chief inspector of schools has been met with outrage by the headteacher’s family, and called ‘obscene’ by school leaders


    https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/mar/29/ofsted-chief-amanda-spielman-peerage-lords-ruth-perry

    That is actually disgusting.

    Whoever came up with that needs to be sectioned.
    Quarters or eighths?
  • TazTaz Posts: 17,142

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Exactly. That’s how it works. And if the existing shareholders lose out then so be it
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,051
    Taz said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    Sounds like about average..💩
    21% here. Scrounging Motherfuckers.

    The recent deal agreed with the regulator, who regulates on the side of the water industry not the consumers, was front loaded. So a big increase year 1 and small increases after that although as it compounds it works against the consumer.
    One incontrovertible argument against the kind of industry capture the unions have been pushing for with OFSTED is that it leads to disasters like this.

    I mean, I say many things about OFSTED but I would never accuse it of being a servant of the teaching profession.* Nor should it be. It doesn't need to be as aggressive as it is but everyone makes mistakes and sometimes you have to say it as it is.

    Neither OFWAT or OFGEM appear to be willing to, which is why our utilities are such a disaster.

    *If you asked me about the DfE that would be a different matter...
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 121,402
    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,382

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Eid, for lack of a better word, is good?
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,155
    edited March 29
    algarkirk said:

    Just listened to the Today podcast where Nick and Amol interview Dr James Orr, who is Vance's intellectual apologist in the UK. Extraordinary in two ways: Orr, who is bright and clever was clearly delusional about his friend and what is occurring as USA descends into a police state; and the interviewers, by asking several long questions at a time allowed him to evade all hard issues, which Orr did outstandingly well.

    Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.

    I've listened and I found the interview to be extraordinarily soft, and notable for the things left out.

    No hard questions about Barr's own positions - he is an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and something between a conservative evangelical and a fundamentalist (I have not heard enough to discern just where he stands). People with fairly fixed positions can often be very perceptive analysts of positions they do not hold - see some of the often Far Left analysis of the positions of democratic parties.

    And they did not even tackle him on eg Vance's Munich Speech being full of fabrications.

    It is interesting that Orr attempts to position David Frum as not being conservative, the 'NatCon view' being that Frum's more internationalist conservatism, which Orr positions as Neocon, is an historical dead end.

    Orr calls Vance "an old fashioned realist, that is to say an American Palmerston. He does not believe that there are eternal allies, only eternal interests. There is a ruthless pragmatism."

    He allots Vance's ideological formation to National Conservatism in the late 2010s, and Orr met him at that type of conference over 6 or 7 years. He frames it as Nat Con giving a framework for Trumpism.

    For more, here is Orr on "Family, Faith, Flag, Freedom" at NatCon 2023. To me he has something of both Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton about him.

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

    and here is a piece for background about how he was converted to Christianity by reading a Greek New Testament.

    https://justinbrierley.beehiiv.com/p/conversion-classicist-reading-greek-new-testament-led-james-orr-christ
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,051

    Well, this could be fun if true. Especially as his wife equates being gay with bestiality and incest...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6wA5E_zEaE&list=TLPQMjkwMzIwMjWulUlf0RXsTA&index=3

    I'd never heard that about Mrs Vance, but I see that isn't who you meant.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,155

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That’s what I struggle to understand. I get that you think that government spends too much money. But why close something like that? What is the downside of keeping it going?
    They don't choose. They are using rate of change as a weapon to exploit the strat-up delay of checks and balances.

    "Thank-you for saying we should not have closed it. Unfortunately it is gone already."

    It's like pruning your gooseberries and strawberries with Elon's chainsaw.
  • BarnesianBarnesian Posts: 9,002

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Yes - but I still want the water and sewerage to work!
  • Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Fishing said:

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That's the trouble with half-baked cuts to government services in the name of "efficiency".

    They have an uncanny ability to target the expenditure worth saving, while, being designed by management, things really worth cutting, like the managers themselves and their perks, generally escape unscathed.
    Those being asked to make the cuts have a vested interest in making the cuts as painful and publicity-seeking as possible. There is probably a better way to incentivise low-cost administration (bonuses offered as a percentage of cost efficiencies?).
    Except it is DOGE that is choosing what to cut.

    You need to work on your excuses.
    I wasn't saying anything about DOGE, I was responding to Fishing's point. You need to work on your reading and comprehension.
    It's CDC cuts where this sub-thread started. You need to work on your reading and comprehension.
    Happily, I have no idea what a 'sub-thread' is, but in a conversation, themes move on, and since neither Fishing's comment nor my response to his comment mentioned DOGE, the assumption that I was 'making excuses' for DOGE was a lazy and sloppy one.
    This is oceangoing copper bottomed bellendery.
  • TazTaz Posts: 17,142
    Scott_xP said:

    ...

    Reminds me of the old Blackadder line ‘a fate worse than a fate worse than death, that’s pretty bad’
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,530

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,051
    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
    That's slightly unfair.

    It wasn't the only job they had, and completely failed in.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,844
    Foxy said:

    Fishing said:

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That's the trouble with half-baked cuts to government services in the name of "efficiency".

    They have an uncanny ability to target the expenditure worth saving, while, being designed by management, things really worth cutting, like the managers themselves and their perks, generally escape unscathed.
    Malicious compliance by an unwilling bureaucracy.
    Wasn't if DOGE that pulled the plug on these grants, rather than an "unwilling bureaucracy"?
    "Malicious compliance" is the catch all spin for the MAGA crowd. From whom William is slowly becoming indistinguishable.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,382
    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Yes - but I still want the water and sewerage to work!
    Our supplier round here is Essex und Suffolk, but the sewerage is apparently Thames Water's job!
  • AugustusCarp2AugustusCarp2 Posts: 272

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    (With your name, do you have to declare an interest in this subject? Just to be clear, I am not calling for you to be nationalised - or even made bankrupt!)
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,388

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Yes - but I still want the water and sewerage to work!
    Our supplier round here is Essex und Suffolk, but the sewerage is apparently Thames Water's job!
    We're about 25 miles N of you, I think. Closer to Suffolk, but our supplier is Anglia Water.
    Odd.
  • MattWMattW Posts: 26,155

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    (With your name, do you have to declare an interest in this subject? Just to be clear, I am not calling for you to be nationalised - or even made bankrupt!)
    StillNoIdea could be done, but then we'd make accusations of leglessness.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 27,383
    MattW said:

    algarkirk said:

    Just listened to the Today podcast where Nick and Amol interview Dr James Orr, who is Vance's intellectual apologist in the UK. Extraordinary in two ways: Orr, who is bright and clever was clearly delusional about his friend and what is occurring as USA descends into a police state; and the interviewers, by asking several long questions at a time allowed him to evade all hard issues, which Orr did outstandingly well.

    Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.

    I've listened and I found the interview to be extraordinarily soft, and notable for the things left out.

    No hard questions about Barr's own positions - he is an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and something between a conservative evangelical and a fundamentalist (I have not heard enough to discern just where he stands). People with fairly fixed positions can often be very perceptive analysts of positions they do not hold - see some of the often Far Left analysis of the positions of democratic parties.

    And they did not even tackle him on eg Vance's Munich Speech being full of fabrications.

    It is interesting that Orr attempts to position David Frum as not being conservative, the 'NatCon view' being that Frum's more internationalist conservatism, which Orr positions as Neocon, is an historical dead end.

    Orr calls Vance "an old fashioned realist, that is to say an American Palmerston. He does not believe that there are eternal allies, only eternal interests. There is a ruthless pragmatism."

    He allots Vance's ideological formation to National Conservatism in the late 2010s, and Orr met him at that type of conference over 6 or 7 years. He frames it as Nat Con giving a framework for Trumpism.

    For more, here is Orr on "Family, Faith, Flag, Freedom" at NatCon 2023. To me he has something of both Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton about him.

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

    and here is a piece for background about how he was converted to Christianity by reading a Greek New Testament.

    https://justinbrierley.beehiiv.com/p/conversion-classicist-reading-greek-new-testament-led-james-orr-christ
    Interesting that both Vance and Orr's religious conversion stories reek of intellectual snobbery and seem to be boasts of successful attempts at cosplaying St Augustine (Hippo not Canterbury).
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,844
    edited March 29
    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
    The bill payer is the one in the hook for it.
    If we're going to rebuild these companies balance sheets at our expense, then we should own them.

    That doesn't apply to all of them, but it certainly applies to Thames.
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 2,086

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Here in Edinburgh we make do with 9.9% for our publicly owned utility.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,844
    AFAIKS, the sole reason he was pardoned is that he's given money to Trump.

    Who is Trevor Milton, the startup founder and donor pardoned by Trump
    https://thehill.com/business/5221471-who-is-trevor-milton-nikola-pardon/
  • AugustusCarp2AugustusCarp2 Posts: 272
    Nigelb said:

    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
    The bill payer is the one in the hook for it.
    If we're going to rebuild these companies balance sheets at our expense, then we should own them.

    That doesn't apply to all of them, but it certainly applies to Thames.
    Doesn't the Government still own a "Golden Share" in these companies? I remember back in the 1980s, when the water companies were being sold off, that the Golden Shares were all the reassurance the public needed to know that the companies were going to be reun responsibly.
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,473

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Just think how happy your mother will be, you good little muslim boy!
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,382

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Just think how happy your mother will be, you good little muslim boy!
    Tweed Mubarak!
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,535

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Do you not get to eat lots? That should sugar the pill. Eid Mubarak!
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,844

    Nigelb said:

    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
    The bill payer is the one in the hook for it.
    If we're going to rebuild these companies balance sheets at our expense, then we should own them.

    That doesn't apply to all of them, but it certainly applies to Thames.
    Doesn't the Government still own a "Golden Share" in these companies? I remember back in the 1980s, when the water companies were being sold off, that the Golden Shares were all the reassurance the public needed to know that the companies were going to be reun responsibly.
    Cancelled in 1995.
  • AugustusCarp2AugustusCarp2 Posts: 272
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
    The bill payer is the one in the hook for it.
    If we're going to rebuild these companies balance sheets at our expense, then we should own them.

    That doesn't apply to all of them, but it certainly applies to Thames.
    Doesn't the Government still own a "Golden Share" in these companies? I remember back in the 1980s, when the water companies were being sold off, that the Golden Shares were all the reassurance the public needed to know that the companies were going to be reun responsibly.
    Cancelled in 1995.
    Thanks! I should have guessed.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,995

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That’s what I struggle to understand. I get that you think that government spends too much money. But why close something like that? What is the downside of keeping it going?
    It's government spending.

    There's no cost benefit analysis, just a belief that government spending is wrong.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 65,022
    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.
  • kamskikamski Posts: 6,258

    Foxy said:

    Foxy said:

    Fishing said:

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That's the trouble with half-baked cuts to government services in the name of "efficiency".

    They have an uncanny ability to target the expenditure worth saving, while, being designed by management, things really worth cutting, like the managers themselves and their perks, generally escape unscathed.
    Those being asked to make the cuts have a vested interest in making the cuts as painful and publicity-seeking as possible. There is probably a better way to incentivise low-cost administration (bonuses offered as a percentage of cost efficiencies?).
    Except it is DOGE that is choosing what to cut.

    You need to work on your excuses.
    I wasn't saying anything about DOGE, I was responding to Fishing's point. You need to work on your reading and comprehension.
    It's CDC cuts where this sub-thread started. You need to work on your reading and comprehension.
    Happily, I have no idea what a 'sub-thread' is, but in a conversation, themes move on, and since neither Fishing's comment nor my response to his comment mentioned DOGE, the assumption that I was 'making excuses' for DOGE was a lazy and sloppy one.
    So what were you actually referring to? please give some specific examples

    Btw the context here was the cuts being made by DOGE. If you are changing to some completely different context it would help other people's comprehension if you gave a clue which context you are changing the conversation to.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 121,402

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Just think how happy your mother will be, you good little muslim boy!
    My problem is that I will have to go to a party tomorrow which means my mother's friends will try and marry me off, and boy do they use the guilt trips.

    As far as they know I am single which makes things awkward.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 5,517

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    We do it too:

    https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/5/10/uk-government-revokes-visa-of-palestinian-student
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,388
    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    Can recommend Canada.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 5,517
    edited March 29

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Just think how happy your mother will be, you good little muslim boy!
    My problem is that I will have to go to a party tomorrow which means my mother's friends will try and marry me off, and boy do they use the guilt trips.

    As far as they know I am single which makes things awkward.
    A friend of mine got married, then ten years later got divorced, all without her parents knowing.

    Admittedly she was out of the country, but still...
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 37,400
    ‘Lives Are In Danger’ After a Trump Admin Spreadsheet Leak, Sources Say

    Trump’s State Department was supposed to keep sensitive information about foreign grants private, despite Musk’s meddling. It all leaked

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-leak-danger-spreadsheet-state-department-usaid-1235306394/
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 75,844

    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    Phil said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    Fairly sure that there’s legislation the government can use to take over Thames Water as a going concern for exactly this reason.

    They don’t want to use it because then the government would be on the hook for the decades long backlog of investment that the water & sewerage system in this country needs - one that was allowed to build up by the regulator who completely failed in their one job.
    The bill payer is the one in the hook for it.
    If we're going to rebuild these companies balance sheets at our expense, then we should own them.

    That doesn't apply to all of them, but it certainly applies to Thames.
    Doesn't the Government still own a "Golden Share" in these companies? I remember back in the 1980s, when the water companies were being sold off, that the Golden Shares were all the reassurance the public needed to know that the companies were going to be reun responsibly.
    Cancelled in 1995.
    Thanks! I should have guessed.
    It wasn't just the Tories.
    Regulation got laxer still under Labour.

    They granted 25yr operating licenses when they renewed them - on the grounds it would make borrowing cheaper and planning easier - and outfits like Macquarie used that to raid them for every penny they could.

    And so now we are where we are.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,381

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Prayers in Newham's parks tomorrow for the faithful - segregated areas for men and women of course and the local eateries are trying to outdo each other in preparation for the Eid-al-Fitr tomorrow. Our local Bims burgers has been running from 5pm to 2am throughout Ramadan.
  • JohnLilburneJohnLilburne Posts: 6,535
    carnforth said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    We do it too:

    https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/5/10/uk-government-revokes-visa-of-palestinian-student
    Saying she is "full of joy" at Oct 7 is close to glorifying terrorism, which is a criminal offence.

    (Personally I think that it should not be a crime, and should be regarded as legitimate freedom of speech. Terrorism is in the eye of the beholder, and in any case is sometimes justified. For example, if a Ukrainian burned down the Russian Embassy in London and all within, I'd be fairly happy)
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 23,925

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Perhaps you could publish an interesting and well-researched article to occupy PBers as you go about your religious duties. Just sayin'

    :wink:
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 65,022

    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    I cancelled my trip to Vegas Grand Prix that was due this November.

    I cannot take the risk.
    Totally.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,581

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    (With your name, do you have to declare an interest in this subject? Just to be clear, I am not calling for you to be nationalised - or even made bankrupt!)
    I’m just a fan of peace and tranquillity

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 121,402
    viewcode said:

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Perhaps you could publish an interesting and well-researched article to occupy PBers as you go about your religious duties. Just sayin'

    :wink:
    That should be published tomorrow assuming the Ayrshire hotelier doesn't do something batshit crazy.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 50,744

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Just think how happy your mother will be, you good little muslim boy!
    My problem is that I will have to go to a party tomorrow which means my mother's friends will try and marry me off, and boy do they use the guilt trips.

    As far as they know I am single which makes things awkward.
    No harm in a little window shopping...
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,473

    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    I cancelled my trip to Vegas Grand Prix that was due this November.

    I cannot take the risk.
    Totally.
    Don’t think I would be buying shares in transatlantic airlines ATM.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,435
    Is the US really more dangerous to visit than during the Bush extraordinary rendition era?
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 34,388

    viewcode said:

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Perhaps you could publish an interesting and well-researched article to occupy PBers as you go about your religious duties. Just sayin'

    :wink:
    That should be published tomorrow assuming the Ayrshire hotelier doesn't do something else batshit crazy.
    Fixed it for you!
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,581
    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That’s what I struggle to understand. I get that you think that government spends too much money. But why close something like that? What is the downside of keeping it going?
    It's government spending.

    There's no cost benefit analysis, just a belief that government spending is wrong.
    But it’s data! At someone else’s expense! Sure Musk understands that!
  • viewcodeviewcode Posts: 23,925

    viewcode said:

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Perhaps you could publish an interesting and well-researched article to occupy PBers as you go about your religious duties. Just sayin'

    :wink:
    That should be published tomorrow assuming the Ayrshire hotelier doesn't do something batshit crazy.
    50/50 chance then... :)

    (thank you, btw. Most pleased.)
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,051
    edited March 29
    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Perhaps you could publish an interesting and well-researched article to occupy PBers as you go about your religious duties. Just sayin'

    :wink:
    That should be published tomorrow assuming the Ayrshire hotelier doesn't do something batshit crazy.
    50/50 chance then... :)

    (thank you, btw. Most pleased.)
    I'm glad to see you're optimistic about Trump's insanity.

    Me, I'd go for odds of 99-1.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,995

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Technically, it should be the administrators rather than the receivers, surely? Because you want the business to continue to run, largely unmolested, while the debts are restructured.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,581
    carnforth said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    We do it too:

    https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/5/10/uk-government-revokes-visa-of-palestinian-student
    Ah yes. Lovely.

    She claims that her comment “we were full of joy at what happened [on October 7]” was ‘misconstrued’

    I’m not sure how else it could have been construed?
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,256
    edited March 29
    Andy_JS said:

    How did British Sky News become more left-wing than the BBC? One of life's great mysteries.

    The BBC appointed Tory Tim Davie as DG. when BJ was PM. Since when they have lost their bottle and most of their moral compass as was to be expected
  • algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 13,815
    MattW said:

    algarkirk said:

    Just listened to the Today podcast where Nick and Amol interview Dr James Orr, who is Vance's intellectual apologist in the UK. Extraordinary in two ways: Orr, who is bright and clever was clearly delusional about his friend and what is occurring as USA descends into a police state; and the interviewers, by asking several long questions at a time allowed him to evade all hard issues, which Orr did outstandingly well.

    Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.

    I've listened and I found the interview to be extraordinarily soft, and notable for the things left out.

    No hard questions about Barr's own positions - he is an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and something between a conservative evangelical and a fundamentalist (I have not heard enough to discern just where he stands). People with fairly fixed positions can often be very perceptive analysts of positions they do not hold - see some of the often Far Left analysis of the positions of democratic parties.

    And they did not even tackle him on eg Vance's Munich Speech being full of fabrications.

    It is interesting that Orr attempts to position David Frum as not being conservative, the 'NatCon view' being that Frum's more internationalist conservatism, which Orr positions as Neocon, is an historical dead end.

    Orr calls Vance "an old fashioned realist, that is to say an American Palmerston. He does not believe that there are eternal allies, only eternal interests. There is a ruthless pragmatism."

    He allots Vance's ideological formation to National Conservatism in the late 2010s, and Orr met him at that type of conference over 6 or 7 years. He frames it as Nat Con giving a framework for Trumpism.

    For more, here is Orr on "Family, Faith, Flag, Freedom" at NatCon 2023. To me he has something of both Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton about him.

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

    and here is a piece for background about how he was converted to Christianity by reading a Greek New Testament.

    https://justinbrierley.beehiiv.com/p/conversion-classicist-reading-greek-new-testament-led-james-orr-christ
    Thanks. Agree. I found him a bit sinister and a bit trahison de clercish. Apparently Vance is some sort of mate of Orr's, so perhaps he could be allowed a bit of slack for his friend, but the issues here are serious. We heard about the Vance who has some hard convictions, all of which taken on their own are defensible if you are a student of Hobbes and a rather silly Roman Catholic convert, but nothing about the Vance who is complicit in the formation of a police state and VP to a gargantuan liar and narcissist.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 53,382
    ydoethur said:

    viewcode said:

    viewcode said:

    Tomorrow is Eid, so I cannot use work as excuse for not going to the mosque tomorrow.

    Thoughts and prayers for me please.

    Perhaps you could publish an interesting and well-researched article to occupy PBers as you go about your religious duties. Just sayin'

    :wink:
    That should be published tomorrow assuming the Ayrshire hotelier doesn't do something batshit crazy.
    50/50 chance then... :)

    (thank you, btw. Most pleased.)
    I'm glad to see you're optimistic about Trump's insanity.

    Me, I'd go for odds of 99-1.
    "Yet more FAKE NEWS from the RADICAL LEFT LUNATICS!!!"
  • StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 18,159

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That’s what I struggle to understand. I get that you think that government spends too much money. But why close something like that? What is the downside of keeping it going?
    It's government spending.

    There's no cost benefit analysis, just a belief that government spending is wrong.
    But it’s data! At someone else’s expense! Sure Musk understands that!
    Is it data Musk can monetise? If not, it's not useful data.

    But ultimately, it doesn't really matter. It's the same dynamic that caused the iconoclasts to decapitate all the statues in Ely cathedral.
  • Luckyguy1983Luckyguy1983 Posts: 30,428
    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Yes - but I still want the water and sewerage to work!
    It would. Someone would get the franchise with none of the debt of Thames Water.
  • GIN1138GIN1138 Posts: 22,759

    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    I cancelled my trip to Vegas Grand Prix that was due this November.

    I cannot take the risk.
    A good boy like you would have been totally out of place with all those strippers and all that gambling anyway...
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,435

    Is the US really more dangerous to visit than during the Bush extraordinary rendition era?

    Yes, you absolute melt.

    Your spinning for the evils of Trump makes you an absolute bellend.

    Sorry to be so brutal but that's the truth.
    Much of what gets attributed to "the evils of Trump" is just how the US has always been. Border enforcement has always been a minefield.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,051
    Even if Thames Water isn't fully nationalised - and to be blunt it should be - it is surely high time and long overdue that the government looked at the sort of debt for equity swap they did with RBS and HBOS.

    This is just ridiculous.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 54,907
    GIN1138 said:

    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    I cancelled my trip to Vegas Grand Prix that was due this November.

    I cannot take the risk.
    A good boy like you would have been totally out of place with all those strippers and all that gambling anyway...
    The loss of our holiday and @TSE's trip is insignificant but mony a mickle maks a muckle as they say just north of here.

    The US is destroying itself as a destination.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,381

    Barnesian said:

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Yes - but I still want the water and sewerage to work!
    It would. Someone would get the franchise with none of the debt of Thames Water.
    Some horrendous numbers from the water companies - Southern Water might be the worst with a 46.7% increase with the cost moving from £1.31 a day to £1.93 a day. Obviously, meters help but using less water might help more.

    The Broadband companies have gone for a 6.4% increase widely so with Council Tax going up well above inflation as well it really is going to be painful for UK households.

    What's the alternative? Should we compel private companies and local councils to not raise prices above CPI, RPI, RPIX or some other measure? Price controls?
  • FairlieredFairliered Posts: 5,473

    Is the US really more dangerous to visit than during the Bush extraordinary rendition era?

    Yes, you absolute melt.

    Your spinning for the evils of Trump makes you an absolute bellend.

    Sorry to be so brutal but that's the truth.
    We should send Leon to the US to test the waters.
  • SandyRentoolSandyRentool Posts: 22,610
    DavidL said:

    GIN1138 said:

    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    I cancelled my trip to Vegas Grand Prix that was due this November.

    I cannot take the risk.
    A good boy like you would have been totally out of place with all those strippers and all that gambling anyway...
    The loss of our holiday and @TSE's trip is insignificant but mony a mickle maks a muckle as they say just north of here.

    The US is destroying itself as a destination.
    I've told my boss that I'm not prepared to go.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,995

    rcs1000 said:

    MattW said:

    One thing on the CDC cut by the Trump regime.

    Trump is shutting down longitudinal health studies. The one I heard mentioned on a Bulwark podcast was a 30 year diabetes study.

    They get more value, and statistical power, as they roll on.

    Once it's gone, it's gone.

    That’s what I struggle to understand. I get that you think that government spends too much money. But why close something like that? What is the downside of keeping it going?
    It's government spending.

    There's no cost benefit analysis, just a belief that government spending is wrong.
    But it’s data! At someone else’s expense! Sure Musk understands that!
    Musk believes that this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to fundamentally trim the extent of the State, and that the more (and deeper) the cuts are, the harder it will be to reverse them. Any negative impact, due to closing down good programs, will (be believes) be swamped by the benefits of closing down bad ones. And any delay to judge good from bad imperils the whole opportunity.

    And while I don't agree, I understand that philosophy.

    However, this will inevitably be a political minefield. Moving Social Security off cobol will, I'm sure save hundreds of millions of dollars a year. But if it fucks up payments for 10% of recipients for a month or two, then the economic damage will be horrendous - and the political blowback enormous.

    Trump's tariff are equally dumb. Who is going to invest in -say- US clothing manufacturing, on the basis that tariffs will continue in perpetuity? All it does is penalize those people at the bottom of the income spectrum.
  • StillWatersStillWaters Posts: 9,581

    Is the US really more dangerous to visit than during the Bush extraordinary rendition era?

    Yes, you absolute melt.

    Your spinning for the evils of Trump makes you an absolute bellend.

    Sorry to be so brutal but that's the truth.
    Much of what gets attributed to "the evils of Trump" is just how the US has always been. Border enforcement has always been a minefield.
    How about masked men snatching a student off the street and the repeated defiance shown to court orders?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,995
    Sean_F said:

    MattW said:

    algarkirk said:

    Just listened to the Today podcast where Nick and Amol interview Dr James Orr, who is Vance's intellectual apologist in the UK. Extraordinary in two ways: Orr, who is bright and clever was clearly delusional about his friend and what is occurring as USA descends into a police state; and the interviewers, by asking several long questions at a time allowed him to evade all hard issues, which Orr did outstandingly well.

    Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.

    I've listened and I found the interview to be extraordinarily soft, and notable for the things left out.

    No hard questions about Barr's own positions - he is an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and something between a conservative evangelical and a fundamentalist (I have not heard enough to discern just where he stands). People with fairly fixed positions can often be very perceptive analysts of positions they do not hold - see some of the often Far Left analysis of the positions of democratic parties.

    And they did not even tackle him on eg Vance's Munich Speech being full of fabrications.

    It is interesting that Orr attempts to position David Frum as not being conservative, the 'NatCon view' being that Frum's more internationalist conservatism, which Orr positions as Neocon, is an historical dead end.

    Orr calls Vance "an old fashioned realist, that is to say an American Palmerston. He does not believe that there are eternal allies, only eternal interests. There is a ruthless pragmatism."

    He allots Vance's ideological formation to National Conservatism in the late 2010s, and Orr met him at that type of conference over 6 or 7 years. He frames it as Nat Con giving a framework for Trumpism.

    For more, here is Orr on "Family, Faith, Flag, Freedom" at NatCon 2023. To me he has something of both Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton about him.

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

    and here is a piece for background about how he was converted to Christianity by reading a Greek New Testament.

    https://justinbrierley.beehiiv.com/p/conversion-classicist-reading-greek-new-testament-led-james-orr-christ
    Vance and Orr don’t understand “realism” in foreign policy.

    They assume it’s all about screwing other nations over, for immediate advantage, whilst ignoring the long term advantages to being known as a good actor.
    Basic economics is not a strong point of the current administration.
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,530
    Hate to dredge up Letby again, but WTF?

    https://unherd.com/newsroom/were-the-blood-tests-in-lucy-letbys-conviction-flawed/

    Note that the wildly inaccurate measurements claimed by the lab for the quality control sample are very similar to the ones reported for Baby L.

    The jury were instructed that they could rely on their assessment of the use of insulin by Letby to poison baby L & F to inform their opinion of her guilt in all the other deaths or injuries. They were also instructed that they could rely on the lab’s assessment of the insulin / C-peptide in the blood samples by the judge in his summing up.

    If the insulin tests were as wildly inaccurate as claimed, then the entire prosecution falls apart I think? The cross-admissibility instruction makes the rest of the convictions unsafe.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 39,794

    Barnesian said:

    Just had my water bill.

    Huge increase.

    I reckon 17%.

    WTF?

    25% increase here.
    Mine has increased from £846 to £1,164 38%
    Thames Water
    I'm thinking of getting a meter.
    I'm thinking of renationalisation without compensation....
    Just let them go bust. That's how it's meant to operate.
    Quite right! The Government then buys the assets from the Receivers for £1.00 That's how it's supposed to work.
    Administration takes time and creates disruption. Worth paying a premium to avoid that

    No it isn't and this isn't a "premium" it's out and out price gouging by a monopoly supplier aided and abetted by the toothless regulator. Bankrupt the whole industry and nationalise it. Water should never have been privatised, customers have paid tens of billions in dividends to vulture capitalists and our rivers and beaches are more polluted than ever. No more dividends, no more leverage, no more private ownership of monopoly suppliers and bar the current and previous shareholders from purchasing UK infrastructure assets for a minimum period of 25 years.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 14,381
    GIN1138 said:

    DavidL said:

    Foreign students in US are this afternoon receiving emails revoking visa due to social media record.

    That’s it. We are not going.
    I cancelled my trip to Vegas Grand Prix that was due this November.

    I cannot take the risk.
    A good boy like you would have been totally out of place with all those strippers and all that gambling anyway...
    Actually, there's very little of that these days though you can find it if you look hard enough.

    I won't go back to America until the exchange rate improves - nothing to do with the politics, $1.28 is not good enough to live well in Vegas - first time we went, back in the mid-2000s, we got $2.05 and lived like kings. Vegas also seems to have absorbed more inflation than most and while we could eat at Denny's, I don't go to Vegas to eat at Denny's and if I have to win $150 to afford a decent dinner, that's a challenge.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 58,995
    Phil said:

    Hate to dredge up Letby again, but WTF?

    https://unherd.com/newsroom/were-the-blood-tests-in-lucy-letbys-conviction-flawed/

    Note that the wildly inaccurate measurements claimed by the lab for the quality control sample are very similar to the ones reported for Baby L.

    The jury were instructed that they could rely on their assessment of the use of insulin by Letby to poison baby L & F to inform their opinion of her guilt in all the other deaths or injuries. They were also instructed that they could rely on the lab’s assessment of the insulin / C-peptide in the blood samples by the judge in his summing up.

    If the insulin tests were as wildly inaccurate as claimed, then the entire prosecution falls apart I think? The cross-admissibility instruction makes the rest of the convictions unsafe.

    The problem with that article is that it is high on hyperbole, and light on data. "Multiple false readings" sounds terrible... But is it multiple false readings over tens of tests, or millions of tests? Without that information, it's hard to get a handle on whether it is likely that the insulin - c-peptide levels measured were likely the result of measurement error (and there were no murders), or not.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 20,256
    edited March 29

    Roger said:

    ydoethur said:

    Roger said:

    Scott_xP said:

    WTAF???

    @NOELreports

    🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”

    https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1905927108712386791

    Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
    You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
    Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
    Or at the next election and a two horse race between Farage and Jenrick, who would I vote for with a gun to my head? Well, probably Farage, as I don't believe British politics has seen anyone quite so evil ( Braverman excepted, which goes without saying) since Alan B'Stard.
    Jenrick. I would leave the UK and live in France full time and without hesitation if Farage ever became PM. Jenrick is just an opportunist who will be found out. I'd put Braverman in the Farage category but not quite Jenrick
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 54,907

    Is the US really more dangerous to visit than during the Bush extraordinary rendition era?

    Yes, you absolute melt.

    Your spinning for the evils of Trump makes you an absolute bellend.

    Sorry to be so brutal but that's the truth.
    Its not even close. Extraordinary rendition was a disgrace but was limited to people against whom there was at least some evidence of terrorism. This can catch anyone and the random element is the most troubling of all.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 54,435
    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    ydoethur said:

    Roger said:

    Scott_xP said:

    WTAF???

    @NOELreports

    🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”

    https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1905927108712386791

    Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
    You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
    Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
    Or at the next election and a two horse race between Farage and Jenrick, who would I vote for with a gun to my head? Well, probably Farage, as I don't believe British politics has seen anyone quite so evil ( Braverman excepted, which goes without saying) since Alan B'Stard.
    Jenrick. I would leave the UK and live in France full time and without hesitation if Farage ever became PM. Jenrick is just an opportunist who will be found out. I'd put Braverman in the Farage category but not quite Jenrick
    Would you leave France if Le Pen became President?
  • PhilPhil Posts: 2,530
    rcs1000 said:

    Phil said:

    Hate to dredge up Letby again, but WTF?

    https://unherd.com/newsroom/were-the-blood-tests-in-lucy-letbys-conviction-flawed/

    Note that the wildly inaccurate measurements claimed by the lab for the quality control sample are very similar to the ones reported for Baby L.

    The jury were instructed that they could rely on their assessment of the use of insulin by Letby to poison baby L & F to inform their opinion of her guilt in all the other deaths or injuries. They were also instructed that they could rely on the lab’s assessment of the insulin / C-peptide in the blood samples by the judge in his summing up.

    If the insulin tests were as wildly inaccurate as claimed, then the entire prosecution falls apart I think? The cross-admissibility instruction makes the rest of the convictions unsafe.

    The problem with that article is that it is high on hyperbole, and light on data. "Multiple false readings" sounds terrible... But is it multiple false readings over tens of tests, or millions of tests? Without that information, it's hard to get a handle on whether it is likely that the insulin - c-peptide levels measured were likely the result of measurement error (and there were no murders), or not.
    A fair criticism. But if you send a bunch of tests to a lab & one of them comes back out by a factor of eight then it’s utility as a forensic test is surely fatally compromised?

    At the very least, the jury should have been accurately informed of what level of confidence they should place in the insulin / C-peptide tests. Instead the judge told them they could have absolute confidence in the reported values.
  • ydoethurydoethur Posts: 73,051
    edited March 29
    MaxPB said:

    DavidL said:

    ydoethur said:

    Even if Thames Water isn't fully nationalised - and to be blunt it should be - it is surely high time and long overdue that the government looked at the sort of debt for equity swap they did with RBS and HBOS.

    This is just ridiculous.

    It absolutely is. WTF should the water customers of Thames have to pay for a wrong call on interest rates by people who have done very nicely indeed out of it to date? Its outrageous.
    Tens of billions have been sucked out of customers bank accounts and we get absolutely fuck all in return. The rivers are still polluted and the beaches still have raw sewage (a polite way of saying shit and piss) pumped into the sea on a daily basis even without rain causing overflows. Zero investment, tens of billions in leverage and tens of billions paid out in dividends.

    I'm a pretty right wing capitalist but the one area which makes me a raging lefty is the water industry. Bankrupt it all and bar any previous owner of any water company from owning UK infrastructure. They need to be turned into forced sellers of anything else they own too, literal fucking parasites sucking the blood out of the country.
    Especially, get the fecking National Grid out of Macquarie's hands right now, not sell them more of it.

    That is literally insane. Madder than making Musk anything other than the toilet attendant at JFK.

    Edit - on checking it's the gas grid, but even so - I do not want them near anything that explodes when it leaks.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 54,907
    rcs1000 said:

    Sean_F said:

    MattW said:

    algarkirk said:

    Just listened to the Today podcast where Nick and Amol interview Dr James Orr, who is Vance's intellectual apologist in the UK. Extraordinary in two ways: Orr, who is bright and clever was clearly delusional about his friend and what is occurring as USA descends into a police state; and the interviewers, by asking several long questions at a time allowed him to evade all hard issues, which Orr did outstandingly well.

    Nothing about Orr's analysis made sense of the Trumpian/Vance wish to absorb friendly sovereign territory - Canada and Greenland - into the USA, and Orr was allowed to evade the issue, and many others.

    I've listened and I found the interview to be extraordinarily soft, and notable for the things left out.

    No hard questions about Barr's own positions - he is an Associate Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at Cambridge University, and something between a conservative evangelical and a fundamentalist (I have not heard enough to discern just where he stands). People with fairly fixed positions can often be very perceptive analysts of positions they do not hold - see some of the often Far Left analysis of the positions of democratic parties.

    And they did not even tackle him on eg Vance's Munich Speech being full of fabrications.

    It is interesting that Orr attempts to position David Frum as not being conservative, the 'NatCon view' being that Frum's more internationalist conservatism, which Orr positions as Neocon, is an historical dead end.

    Orr calls Vance "an old fashioned realist, that is to say an American Palmerston. He does not believe that there are eternal allies, only eternal interests. There is a ruthless pragmatism."

    He allots Vance's ideological formation to National Conservatism in the late 2010s, and Orr met him at that type of conference over 6 or 7 years. He frames it as Nat Con giving a framework for Trumpism.

    For more, here is Orr on "Family, Faith, Flag, Freedom" at NatCon 2023. To me he has something of both Douglas Murray and Roger Scruton about him.

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

    and here is a piece for background about how he was converted to Christianity by reading a Greek New Testament.

    https://justinbrierley.beehiiv.com/p/conversion-classicist-reading-greek-new-testament-led-james-orr-christ
    Vance and Orr don’t understand “realism” in foreign policy.

    They assume it’s all about screwing other nations over, for immediate advantage, whilst ignoring the long term advantages to being known as a good actor.
    Basic economics is not a strong point of the current administration.
    Or good administration. Or the concepts of right and wrong. Or the reasons behind the rule of law. I could go on all day here.
  • carnforthcarnforth Posts: 5,517
    edited March 29

    Roger said:

    Roger said:

    ydoethur said:

    Roger said:

    Scott_xP said:

    WTAF???

    @NOELreports

    🇺🇸 Fox News host Jesse Watters: “We don’t need friends. If we have to burn some bridges with Denmark to take Greenland, so be it. We’re big boys. We dropped bombs on Japan, and now they’re our ally. America isn’t handcuffed by history.”

    https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1905927108712386791

    Time to batten down the hatches. If our principal ally has gone rogue we neen a new one. China or the EU. I'd prefer either to Trump's America
    You can't despise Trump more than I do, but to suggest what America under Trump is doing is as bad as what China is doing to the Uighers and Tibetans, or indeed the people of Hong Kong, is simply nonsensical. Cosying up to China to distance ourselves from America would be like trying to bargain with a rattlesnake to take on an enormous blundering elephant.
    Perhaps a better analogy is a rattlesnake living quietly resting under a rock or an out of control elephant with a red hot poker shoved up its bum
    Or at the next election and a two horse race between Farage and Jenrick, who would I vote for with a gun to my head? Well, probably Farage, as I don't believe British politics has seen anyone quite so evil ( Braverman excepted, which goes without saying) since Alan B'Stard.
    Jenrick. I would leave the UK and live in France full time and without hesitation if Farage ever became PM. Jenrick is just an opportunist who will be found out. I'd put Braverman in the Farage category but not quite Jenrick
    Would you leave France if Le Pen became President?
    You're assuming (and Roger is claiming) that it's about politics. But Roger would have his beloved EU citizenship by now if he'd taken up residence in France in 2016. So we all know it's about tax.
  • Pagan2Pagan2 Posts: 10,656

    malcolmg said:

    stodge said:

    MattW said:

    stodge said:

    Morning all :)

    We have Canada voting on April 28th and Australia voting on May 3rd so the new CANZUK alliance might look very different by early May (or it might not as you could easily imagine Carney keeping the Liberals in power and Albanese getting back with Independent help in Canberra).

    Some betting opportunities to consider perhaps next month?

    On topic, almost all elections are "pocket book" elections inasmuch as how people "feel" economically is a big factor around how they vote. The decisive rejections of Government aren't usually because of a belief the Opposition would do much better but more a perception they couldn't do any worse.

    As we now find in many instances they can and do, the option is either to "get the other lot back in" (which is your only option in a rigid 2-party system) or to look elsewhere at the coterie of snake oil salespeople on both and neither extreme (a bit cynical perhaps).

    I've raised this many times on here but there still seems to be no practical solution to the issues of stagnant growth and ambient inflation (I seem to recall the UK economy was particularly prone to stubborn inflation). Getting energy prices and council tax rises back to somewhere in the neighbourhood of actual CPI or RPI inflation would be a good start. The notion our energy prices go up so the customers in the countries which own our energy suppliers can see theirs go down (or not rise as much) is a huge bone of contention.

    As for local Government finance, notwithstanding the unnecessary costs of pointless re-organisations, the issues of social care, SEN and temporary accommodation costs all remain unresolved - Newham's 8.9% rise in 2025/26 may be part down to overarching incompetence and part down to the same costs as every other councils but the fact remains most people's incomes haven't risen by 8.9% so it's another cost.

    I've no statistical evidence but my assertion is we have stagnated since 2008 in terms of living standards. Yes, our assets (primarily but not exclusively property) have appreciated strongly but unless you can release some of that asset (by downsizing) it's not much help. Yet there's plenty of people with plenty of money - I wonder what the take up in ISAs will be in April 2025?

    A slow down in Council Tax rises won't happen. They have had 15 years decades of being shredded, which has fed through to quality of localities and services.

    Funding is down hugely - perhaps 30% in real terms since 2010.
    Agreed and one million local Government jobs lost since 2012 suggests, contrary to what the supply siders would have you believe, there was plenty of austerity going
    on especially in the Coalition years.
    why has council tax soared if they got rid of a million duffers. The clowns could not run a bath.
    Mainly social care, but also SEN

    Both obligations committed to by central government and then handed off to their local colleagues without new funding streams
    That's the thing with council tax. A bug chunk of it gets spent on a minority of residents. Leaving a majority thinking that they get charged a fortune but see little in return.
    The same with all tax
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