The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
Donald's other tariffs will melt away in due course. No point making too much of a song and dance about it all. The New Epoch is dead.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
Donald's other tariffs will melt away in due course. No point making too much of a song and dance about it all. The New Epoch is dead.
How many thousand car workers will lose their jobs before that happens? This is really pathetic from the EU. Once again, they have failed the test of being a serious player in world events.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
I bet sales of American stuff in Europe is already on the decline, nevertheless
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
Donald's other tariffs will melt away in due course. No point making too much of a song and dance about it all. The New Epoch is dead.
How many thousand car workers will lose their jobs before that happens? This is really pathetic from the EU. Once again, they have failed the test of being a serious player in world events.
EU obviously missing the strong, decisive voice of the UK.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
I think that is sensible by the EU. The 10% tariff I suspect will have little impact on exports to the US as far as Europe is concerned. The American consumer however will pay more for stuff, but it won't dent Europe's exports as everyone else has the 10% tariff and it is unlikely US manufacturers can step up in the short term.
The steel/aluminium/cars will have an impact, but I am guessing it isn't worth doing anything about it until the dust settles and Trump stops playing silly buggers. For a start where is America going to get its shortage of Aluminium from? Usually Canada, but what about the tariff. Although it produces a large amount of steel, it also imports it and guess where its number 1 and 3 suppliers are: Canada and Mexico. So how is America going to replace that in the short term? Also America does not produce the type of vehicles made in Europe and a lot of them are high end. They are either going to keep selling at a much much higher price to the US consumer or stop buying. Probably a mixture of both. How does that help America? They either pay more or go without what they want. I suspect in a few months if not sooner commonsense will prevail.
In January Trump told Putin to stop the war. In March he told Hamas to release all the hostages. In his State of the Union speech he told Greenland to become part of the United States. He's told Canada to cede the Great Lakes. He's told China to surrender on tariffs. No-one has.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
I bet sales of American stuff in Europe is already on the decline, nevertheless
I’ve definitely stopped drinking JD and Pabst. Never started mind.
Did pick up a vintage Harley Davidson cap the other week, but it was made in China so that’s ok.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
So your defence of Harris is that she visited a factory on 28th October ?
Ever heard of the phrase 'too little and too late' ?
Harris should have been at one of those new factories every single day for three months.
What the Dems, and Dem supporters, need to do is to stop denying and defending their mistakes but to accept them and learn from them.
The fact is that Harris was thrown a hospital pass, at the last minute. She ran an at least average, and I'd argue pretty good campaign, in the circumstances.
After Biden waited as long as he did to thrown in the towel, it doesn't now seem likely that anyone else would have done much better.
That's the way I see it. Biden should have been told more than a year before the election that his time was up and he was not fit. Getting him to stand down in favour of Harris would have been even more effective. Hanging on meant Harris did not have enough time to make herself distinctive, to ease herself away from the more problematical parts of the Biden legacy and to reset the party. She was constantly asked why she tolerated the country being run by someone not fit too.
Despite all that I think she spoke well, demolished Trump in the debate, generated huge sums of money, chose a reasonable VP (although Shapiro would probably have been better) and did her best in circumstances which were extremely hostile to incumbents as was seen around the world.
There's been some reporting since that Biden was much less than helpful, after he had stepped down. FWIW.
In January Trump told Putin to stop the war. In March he told Hamas to release all the hostages. In his State of the Union speech he told Greenland to become part of the United States. He's told Canada to cede the Great Lakes. He's told China to surrender on tariffs. No-one has.
But the problem is that the media that his supporters slurp up spin those failures as successes. In their eyes, they are not failures; they're all part of a great game he's winning.
Kevin Hassett tells us at the WH that "One of the options that the president was considering" before his tariff pause yesterday was "to announce deals that were already so far along that we could pretty much much finish them up and make them public"
"But in the end he decided a more general announcement ... was the best way to let everyone understand that he's 100% serious about putting American workers first," Hassett said
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
Donald's other tariffs will melt away in due course. No point making too much of a song and dance about it all. The New Epoch is dead.
How many thousand car workers will lose their jobs before that happens? This is really pathetic from the EU. Once again, they have failed the test of being a serious player in world events.
Except that the EU increasing their tariffs on the US will do nothing to help that, either.
There's no particularly good response to a former ally becoming an arsehole. Other than making plans to be able not to rely on them in the future.
Allow william his small moment of petty celebration.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
So your defence of Harris is that she visited a factory on 28th October ?
Ever heard of the phrase 'too little and too late' ?
Harris should have been at one of those new factories every single day for three months.
What the Dems, and Dem supporters, need to do is to stop denying and defending their mistakes but to accept them and learn from them.
The fact is that Harris was thrown a hospital pass, at the last minute. She ran an at least average, and I'd argue pretty good campaign, in the circumstances.
After Biden waited as long as he did to thrown in the towel, it doesn't now seem likely that anyone else would have done much better.
That's the way I see it. Biden should have been told more than a year before the election that his time was up and he was not fit. Getting him to stand down in favour of Harris would have been even more effective. Hanging on meant Harris did not have enough time to make herself distinctive, to ease herself away from the more problematical parts of the Biden legacy and to reset the party. She was constantly asked why she tolerated the country being run by someone not fit too.
Despite all that I think she spoke well, demolished Trump in the debate, generated huge sums of money, chose a reasonable VP (although Shapiro would probably have been better) and did her best in circumstances which were extremely hostile to incumbents as was seen around the world.
There's been some reporting since that Biden was much less than helpful, after he had stepped down. FWIW.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
Isn't that just her being awake? She's always angry and irritated when asked questions. Don't they know who She is? Don't they know how brilliant She is?
I think very few are giving attention to the Tories at the moment. One Nationers are either in despair or hoping for something from Lab/LD, the less thoughtful are either for Reform or have given up on politics altogether in favour of something more sensible like daytime television or growing potatoes.
What the Tories need to do is rethink themselves. They can't out Reform Reform, what they can do is command attention by the top quality of their contribution to public policy, attention to underlying principle. They need 15-20 people who are both extremely intelligent and presentable prepared to do this on the media for years so that when the centre ground voter is ready to receive them again, they are in place.
So far, the populists are useless, and the thoughtful are invisible or dull. So the field is clear for a new generation.
Yup. I'm not a conservative and even I can see a gaping hole for a pro-business pro-capitalism give people responsibility and more freedom political platform. Its astonishing that the Tories can't.
In what way aren't they? Kemi opposed the tax rises on business owners and farmers and wants to reduce regulation and spend less.
Though of course your platform sounds remarkably like Clegg's LDs in 2015 who got a resounding 8% of the vote, so don't overestimate the support for pro business, small state, socially liberal parties either
Deluded.
No factual, elections have proved that parties which are pro business, pro small state, socially liberal and pro immigration have a ceiling of about 10% of the vote. As they are too rightwing economically for the left and too liberal socially for the traditional right
It was directed at your lack of comprehension of what the Conservative party represents to business owners, especially given you dedicate so much of your time supporting the party, rather than your view on the LD ceiling.
Most larger business owners still vote Tory, small business owners increasingly vote Reform, unless they are very anti Brexit in which case they will vote LD.
After the NI employers rise, minimum wage rise and new employment regulations and IHT changes for family businesses barely any vote Labour
Do you understand the vast majority of small businesses employing less than 10 people are seeing employer NI either falling or zero after the changes?
It is probably not a good line to use to convince us you understand our needs.
The median business in the UK employs more than 10 people and has been hit by the NI rise on employers and even some businesses with less than 10 people have more than £1 million in assets and will be hit by the IHT rise on family firms.
The minimum wage rise and extra employment regulations also hit very small businesses like pubs and newsagents
5.5m businesses with 0-9 employees 350k businesses with 10+ employees
Which is the larger voting bloc of business owners.....
No business owner is immune from the NI rise for employers and as I said even the smallest business is hit by the rising minimum wage costs and extra employment regulations
No business owner is immune from the NI rise for employers
What does that mean? Our employers NI has actually gone down due to the changes. Millions of others have no change as they have fewer employees. It is for businesses with 10+ where it increases, and the likes of the supermarkets, who have taken the piss out of both employees and taxpayers, where it increases sharpest.
It is hard to get away from the assumption you don't understand how employer NI works.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
In January Trump told Putin to stop the war. In March he told Hamas to release all the hostages. In his State of the Union speech he told Greenland to become part of the United States. He's told Canada to cede the Great Lakes. He's told China to surrender on tariffs. No-one has.
But the problem is that the media that his supporters slurp up spin those failures as successes. In their eyes, they are not failures; they're all part of a great game he's winning.
Nothing can be done to make his idiot supporters see sense, but luckily the swing voters in the US are still in touch with reality.
His approval numbers are sinking rapidly & he's at 45.7% approval & 50.7% disapproval in Nate Silver's average.
The Ruling in FWS v Scottish Ministers will be handed down next Weds 16th April at 9.45am
It will also be streamed via the UKSC website, so you can watch live.
Thank you. Bad in the sense there's no way I can get the article out in a week, good in the sense that I now have more time to do the background reading. I suspect the decision will not affect it overmuch except for the last few sentences/paragraph.
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to walk England's entire Public Footpath network?
It'd be next to impossible. There are apparently 140,000 miles or RoW (fp's and bridleways) in E&W. In a year's solid walking, I did 6,000 miles with only a handful of days off. So you're talking a couple of decades of solid walking. But the worse thing is it'd be more than that, as there are loads of dead-ends or paths where there is no economic routes you can take without 'wasting' loads of miles. Then there are sections of paths that are not actually accessible, like the one through Alton Towers I mentioned yesterday, or the old flood banks to the east of Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
I've walked nearly 20,000 miles in the UK (from memory...) and there are entire cities I have yet to visit.
Locally, I have run nearly every path and road in a diamond between Cambridge, Royston, Sandy and Huntingdon - excepting the M11 and stretches of dual carriageway with no pavement. There was a vast amount of road running in that, but there are many, many paths and bridleways in an area that is not exactly famed for access.
I thought the same in terms of the near impossibility of walking the whole footpath network.
But just to say what you've done is a pretty fantastic achievement.
Thanks. And not bad considering, when I was thirteen or so, I was told I'd never walk properly again!
(To which a friend says: "You don't walk properly. You walk stupid distances...")
I make it 30k steps per day for 50 years. Assuming 100% efficiency.
(Snip)
The problem is that you also knacker your body. I walked, on average, 18 miles a day, and after a year I had a series of niggles that really needed a period of rest. I could have walked on - we considered my walking down to Hull and getting a ferry across to Holland to do the European coast, but I was in need of a rest. I was also mentally exhausted.
In fact, IME doing a walk like that is 80% mental effort, 20% physical. It is mentally hard, despite the per-day distances being easy. But doing it day after day *is* mentally tough, especially when you are passing through areas you don't know. Even finding accommodation can be difficult - and I had a motorhome to support me.
Another odd thing is that time becomes a geographical constant: you start thinking not of "last Wednesday", but of "Grimsby"; i.e. where you were. Also, the day of the week often becomes unimportant.
As a fomer chairman of a National Park Authority I suspect it might just about be manageable to walk the entire Rights of Way network within a single national park. No doubt someone will now say they have "done" all the UK National Parks. And "done" them is all they would have done. It is like the people who tick off all the Monroes in Scotland and are surprised others are not impressed.
My cousin had the pleasure of taking a relative from across the globe to Hadrian's Wall, who insisted they went via Kirkstone Pass. Got there, did they want to go to Housesteads or Vindolanda - no Tan Hill was next on the list. Then they wondered why I didn't want to tick off all the places in NZ when I visited them. Could not understand why I wanted to help with the sheep and cattle on their farm rather than go to Hobbiton. Mind you I did go to a lot of touristy places, but the market at Te Kuiti and a shearing competition near Oranui were much more to my taste.
If I ever escape the Flatlands long enough to finish the Munros I wouldn't expect anyone to be impressed.
That's not the point, is it? I'm not doing it for anyone else.
Quite. It's a mammoth undertaking, which thousands of other people have already achieved. Some people do it over half a century, others in just a few weeks.
The benefit of ticking things off is it brings you to parts of the UK that you wouldn't visit otherwise. I've now moved onto Corbetts and the National Cycle Network and continue to find pockets of beauty and peace.
In the next few years I hope to complete the Furths. I've done relatively little walking in Wales and Ireland, yet this simple goal will provide me the structure to do so.
Twitching rare birds took me to every corner of the UK. Offshore - Shetland, Orkney, Fair Isle, Lindisfarne, Skomer, Scilly Isles, Sheppey, the Treshnish Isles, Handa, Barra. Virtually all the coast roads in Great Britain. Every county (except Herefordshire). And every mile of motorway too.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
I bet sales of American stuff in Europe is already on the decline, nevertheless
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to walk England's entire Public Footpath network?
It'd be next to impossible. There are apparently 140,000 miles or RoW (fp's and bridleways) in E&W. In a year's solid walking, I did 6,000 miles with only a handful of days off. So you're talking a couple of decades of solid walking. But the worse thing is it'd be more than that, as there are loads of dead-ends or paths where there is no economic routes you can take without 'wasting' loads of miles. Then there are sections of paths that are not actually accessible, like the one through Alton Towers I mentioned yesterday, or the old flood banks to the east of Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
I've walked nearly 20,000 miles in the UK (from memory...) and there are entire cities I have yet to visit.
Locally, I have run nearly every path and road in a diamond between Cambridge, Royston, Sandy and Huntingdon - excepting the M11 and stretches of dual carriageway with no pavement. There was a vast amount of road running in that, but there are many, many paths and bridleways in an area that is not exactly famed for access.
I thought the same in terms of the near impossibility of walking the whole footpath network.
But just to say what you've done is a pretty fantastic achievement.
Thanks. And not bad considering, when I was thirteen or so, I was told I'd never walk properly again!
(To which a friend says: "You don't walk properly. You walk stupid distances...")
I make it 30k steps per day for 50 years. Assuming 100% efficiency.
(Snip)
The problem is that you also knacker your body. I walked, on average, 18 miles a day, and after a year I had a series of niggles that really needed a period of rest. I could have walked on - we considered my walking down to Hull and getting a ferry across to Holland to do the European coast, but I was in need of a rest. I was also mentally exhausted.
In fact, IME doing a walk like that is 80% mental effort, 20% physical. It is mentally hard, despite the per-day distances being easy. But doing it day after day *is* mentally tough, especially when you are passing through areas you don't know. Even finding accommodation can be difficult - and I had a motorhome to support me.
Another odd thing is that time becomes a geographical constant: you start thinking not of "last Wednesday", but of "Grimsby"; i.e. where you were. Also, the day of the week often becomes unimportant.
As a fomer chairman of a National Park Authority I suspect it might just about be manageable to walk the entire Rights of Way network within a single national park. No doubt someone will now say they have "done" all the UK National Parks. And "done" them is all they would have done. It is like the people who tick off all the Monroes in Scotland and are surprised others are not impressed.
My cousin had the pleasure of taking a relative from across the globe to Hadrian's Wall, who insisted they went via Kirkstone Pass. Got there, did they want to go to Housesteads or Vindolanda - no Tan Hill was next on the list. Then they wondered why I didn't want to tick off all the places in NZ when I visited them. Could not understand why I wanted to help with the sheep and cattle on their farm rather than go to Hobbiton. Mind you I did go to a lot of touristy places, but the market at Te Kuiti and a shearing competition near Oranui were much more to my taste.
If I ever escape the Flatlands long enough to finish the Munros I wouldn't expect anyone to be impressed.
That's not the point, is it? I'm not doing it for anyone else.
Quite. It's a mammoth undertaking, which thousands of other people have already achieved. Some people do it over half a century, others in just a few weeks.
The benefit of ticking things off is it brings you to parts of the UK that you wouldn't visit otherwise. I've now moved onto Corbetts and the National Cycle Network and continue to find pockets of beauty and peace.
In the next few years I hope to complete the Furths. I've done relatively little walking in Wales and Ireland, yet this simple goal will provide me the structure to do so.
Twitching rare birds took me to every corner of the UK. Offshore - Shetland, Orkney, Fair Isle, Lindisfarne, Skomer, Scilly Isles, Sheppey, the Treshnish Isles, Handa, Barra. Virtually all the coast roads in Great Britain. Every county (except Herefordshire). And every mile of motorway too.
This being a political forum, someone should be constituency bagging.
Visit the controversial locations of the day within each for a few photographs. Posing with the MP optional.
In January Trump told Putin to stop the war. In March he told Hamas to release all the hostages. In his State of the Union speech he told Greenland to become part of the United States. He's told Canada to cede the Great Lakes. He's told China to surrender on tariffs. No-one has.
But the problem is that the media that his supporters slurp up spin those failures as successes. In their eyes, they are not failures; they're all part of a great game he's winning.
Nothing can be done to make his idiot supporters see sense, but luckily the swing voters in the US are still in touch with reality.
His approval numbers are sinking rapidly & he's at 45.7% approval & 50.7% disapproval in Nate Silver's average.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
People keep on conflating our production of virgin steel with steel in general, so you get erroneous claims that closure of Scunthorpe means the "end of all steel production in the UK". Most of our steel production (over 90%, I think) is from recycled steel - and almost all steel is reused in some way. We still export a surprising volume and value of high quality steel products.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
Isn't the big problem that it's not yet clear what the best route towards decarbonising virgin steel production will turn out to be? It might be CCS, it might be green hydrogen, it might be some other process entirely - lots of possibilities, but nothing working economically at scale (yet).
At one point, it looked like the UK was going to try to take a leading role in scaling up CCS and/or hydrogen, but we've spent so long faffing around that we've now missed the opportunity to do so before the Scunthorpe blast furnace needs to be replaced.
Given that, surely the best thing to do is make do with electric arc furnaces supplemented by imports until some other country has proven the economics of decarbonised virgin steel production?
Otherwise we're going to end up spending stupid money for a stop-gap solution, only to find ourselves back in the same position in the late 2030s.
The skyscraper boom in Manc shows no sign of slowing, the last 30 years of economic success in the city should be far bigger news and something that should be tried to be replicated elsewhere.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
People keep on conflating our production of virgin steel with steel in general, so you get erroneous claims that closure of Scunthorpe means the "end of all steel production in the UK". Most of our steel production (over 90%, I think) is from recycled steel - and almost all steel is reused in some way. We still export a surprising volume and value of high quality steel products.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
Isn't the big problem that it's not yet clear what the best route towards decarbonising virgin steel production will turn out to be? It might be CCS, it might be green hydrogen, it might be some other process entirely - lots of possibilities, but nothing working economically at scale (yet).
At one point, it looked like the UK was going to try to take a leading role in scaling up CCS and/or hydrogen, but we've spent so long faffing around that we've now missed the opportunity to do so before the Scunthorpe blast furnace needs to be replaced.
Given that, surely the best thing to do is make do with electric arc furnaces supplemented by imports until some other country has proven the economics of decarbonised virgin steel production?
Otherwise we're going to end up spending stupid money for a stop-gap solution, only to find ourselves back in the same position in the late 2030s.
Since in the next 10-15 years we will need a lot of steel for replacing the electricity grid, erecting turbines, building new road and railway bridges and building and indeed new weapons I don’t actually think that’s a killer argument on its own.
My contrarian opinion is that the cuts won't be politically damaging at all, to Labour, in the long run.
The usual attack by conservative parties against centre-left parties is that the centre-left wastes money on tax-and-spend policies.
The Democrats lost the election partly because of these types of attacks. The spending on CHIPS Act, Build Back Better, Ukraine assistance etc was used to portray the Democrats as being excessively wasteful & spendthrift. The Democrats added to the potency of these attacks by constantly touting the billions of dollars they were spending on these initiatives.
If a centre-left party demonstrates that it is aggressively cutting spending, then it is actually building valuable political capital to neutralise these types of attacks.
Labour might become unpopular now because of the cuts, but this can be very helpful in the future to build the perception that they are responsible stewards of public finances.
The Dems weren't helped by the coastal liberal lawyer Harris not bothering to visit those new factories the investment had funded.
Kamala Harris tours computer chip factory in Michigan
So your defence of Harris is that she visited a factory on 28th October ?
Ever heard of the phrase 'too little and too late' ?
Harris should have been at one of those new factories every single day for three months.
What the Dems, and Dem supporters, need to do is to stop denying and defending their mistakes but to accept them and learn from them.
The fact is that Harris was thrown a hospital pass, at the last minute. She ran an at least average, and I'd argue pretty good campaign, in the circumstances.
After Biden waited as long as he did to thrown in the towel, it doesn't now seem likely that anyone else would have done much better.
That's the way I see it. Biden should have been told more than a year before the election that his time was up and he was not fit. Getting him to stand down in favour of Harris would have been even more effective. Hanging on meant Harris did not have enough time to make herself distinctive, to ease herself away from the more problematical parts of the Biden legacy and to reset the party. She was constantly asked why she tolerated the country being run by someone not fit too.
Despite all that I think she spoke well, demolished Trump in the debate, generated huge sums of money, chose a reasonable VP (although Shapiro would probably have been better) and did her best in circumstances which were extremely hostile to incumbents as was seen around the world.
There's been some reporting since that Biden was much less than helpful, after he had stepped down. FWIW.
Rather crapped on his legacy, sadly. It's likely to be "slaying the beast then resuscitating it and inviting it back in".
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
I bet sales of American stuff in Europe is already on the decline, nevertheless
In the morning, checked out the brand new Silvertown Tunnel via the equally brand new London bus route SL4, then went into town to check out the new entrance to Knightsbridge tube at Hoopers Court, not quite done but nearly there, and then caught the 1702 from St Pancras to traverse two bits of rare rail track way up north, Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions, and Chesterfield platform 3 to Woodhouse via Beighton. Of course, ended up in TSE-Land (ie. Sheffield), but was there less than 20 minutes before returning to London.
On topic sort of, here's a nice new (Chinese!) BYD bus used on the SL4:
"Clay Cross South to Clay Cross North junctions"
You mean the cross-over from the fast lines to the slow lines?
Now you are getting desperate with your yellow pen!
I wonder if anyone has ever tried to walk England's entire Public Footpath network?
It'd be next to impossible. There are apparently 140,000 miles or RoW (fp's and bridleways) in E&W. In a year's solid walking, I did 6,000 miles with only a handful of days off. So you're talking a couple of decades of solid walking. But the worse thing is it'd be more than that, as there are loads of dead-ends or paths where there is no economic routes you can take without 'wasting' loads of miles. Then there are sections of paths that are not actually accessible, like the one through Alton Towers I mentioned yesterday, or the old flood banks to the east of Snape Maltings in Suffolk.
I've walked nearly 20,000 miles in the UK (from memory...) and there are entire cities I have yet to visit.
Locally, I have run nearly every path and road in a diamond between Cambridge, Royston, Sandy and Huntingdon - excepting the M11 and stretches of dual carriageway with no pavement. There was a vast amount of road running in that, but there are many, many paths and bridleways in an area that is not exactly famed for access.
I thought the same in terms of the near impossibility of walking the whole footpath network.
But just to say what you've done is a pretty fantastic achievement.
Thanks. And not bad considering, when I was thirteen or so, I was told I'd never walk properly again!
(To which a friend says: "You don't walk properly. You walk stupid distances...")
I make it 30k steps per day for 50 years. Assuming 100% efficiency.
(Snip)
The problem is that you also knacker your body. I walked, on average, 18 miles a day, and after a year I had a series of niggles that really needed a period of rest. I could have walked on - we considered my walking down to Hull and getting a ferry across to Holland to do the European coast, but I was in need of a rest. I was also mentally exhausted.
In fact, IME doing a walk like that is 80% mental effort, 20% physical. It is mentally hard, despite the per-day distances being easy. But doing it day after day *is* mentally tough, especially when you are passing through areas you don't know. Even finding accommodation can be difficult - and I had a motorhome to support me.
Another odd thing is that time becomes a geographical constant: you start thinking not of "last Wednesday", but of "Grimsby"; i.e. where you were. Also, the day of the week often becomes unimportant.
As a fomer chairman of a National Park Authority I suspect it might just about be manageable to walk the entire Rights of Way network within a single national park. No doubt someone will now say they have "done" all the UK National Parks. And "done" them is all they would have done. It is like the people who tick off all the Monroes in Scotland and are surprised others are not impressed.
My cousin had the pleasure of taking a relative from across the globe to Hadrian's Wall, who insisted they went via Kirkstone Pass. Got there, did they want to go to Housesteads or Vindolanda - no Tan Hill was next on the list. Then they wondered why I didn't want to tick off all the places in NZ when I visited them. Could not understand why I wanted to help with the sheep and cattle on their farm rather than go to Hobbiton. Mind you I did go to a lot of touristy places, but the market at Te Kuiti and a shearing competition near Oranui were much more to my taste.
If I ever escape the Flatlands long enough to finish the Munros I wouldn't expect anyone to be impressed.
That's not the point, is it? I'm not doing it for anyone else.
Quite. It's a mammoth undertaking, which thousands of other people have already achieved. Some people do it over half a century, others in just a few weeks.
The benefit of ticking things off is it brings you to parts of the UK that you wouldn't visit otherwise. I've now moved onto Corbetts and the National Cycle Network and continue to find pockets of beauty and peace.
In the next few years I hope to complete the Furths. I've done relatively little walking in Wales and Ireland, yet this simple goal will provide me the structure to do so.
Twitching rare birds took me to every corner of the UK. Offshore - Shetland, Orkney, Fair Isle, Lindisfarne, Skomer, Scilly Isles, Sheppey, the Treshnish Isles, Handa, Barra. Virtually all the coast roads in Great Britain. Every county (except Herefordshire). And every mile of motorway too.
This being a political forum, someone should be constituency bagging.
Visit the controversial locations of the day within each for a few photographs. Posing with the MP optional.
Whilst there is a good case for regulating trading by legislators, the fact a congressman bought shares the day before yesterday doesn't actually prove anything. It's a perfectly adequate defence to say, "I thought the markets were overreacting to the President's genius trade policy, and saw value in buying when prices were low".
If they had insider information in terms of a specific forewarning that Trump was about to u-turn, that's another matter. But it wouldn't actually be surprising if a true believer thought the markets were going to correct upwards.
Whilst there is a good case for regulating trading by legislators, the fact a congressman bought shares the day before yesterday doesn't actually prove anything. It's a perfectly adequate defence to say, "I thought the markets were overreacting to the President's genius trade policy, and saw value in buying when prices were low".
If they had insider information in terms of a specific forewarning that Trump was about to u-turn, that's another matter. But it wouldn't actually be surprising if a true believer thought the markets were going to correct upwards.
It would be extremely surprising if Marjorie Taylor Greene actually thought anything.
I've had a very small bet on Spaun for the Masters.
My main bets are MacIntyre and Bhatia. Rationale is that the course slightly favour left-handers (see Mickleson's record) and current Greens in Regulation stats are important for this course. Add to that a bit of current form and some experience of playing here before and those two players leap out at me. Also good value at the odds.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
Must admit to being mildly surprised that it’s allowed.
It isn't. Insider trading is banned whether in Congress or not. I suppose what she means is to automatically make any trading from Congress (in times of volatility?) insider trading? Which doesn't sound like a runner to me.
The problem is the laws are hard to enforce and currently there is zero chance of the government prosecuting their friends.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
Consumer prices rise in USA. Consumer prices don't rise in EU.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
People keep on conflating our production of virgin steel with steel in general, so you get erroneous claims that closure of Scunthorpe means the "end of all steel production in the UK". Most of our steel production (over 90%, I think) is from recycled steel - and almost all steel is reused in some way. We still export a surprising volume and value of high quality steel products.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
Isn't the big problem that it's not yet clear what the best route towards decarbonising virgin steel production will turn out to be? It might be CCS, it might be green hydrogen, it might be some other process entirely - lots of possibilities, but nothing working economically at scale (yet).
At one point, it looked like the UK was going to try to take a leading role in scaling up CCS and/or hydrogen, but we've spent so long faffing around that we've now missed the opportunity to do so before the Scunthorpe blast furnace needs to be replaced.
Given that, surely the best thing to do is make do with electric arc furnaces supplemented by imports until some other country has proven the economics of decarbonised virgin steel production?
Otherwise we're going to end up spending stupid money for a stop-gap solution, only to find ourselves back in the same position in the late 2030s.
Since in the next 10-15 years we will need a lot of steel for replacing the electricity grid, erecting turbines, building new road and railway bridges and building and indeed new weapons I don’t actually think that’s a killer argument on its own.
But the steel for all of those can be produced in electric arc furnaces, can't they?
Lutnick: "The golden age of America. It's coming now. You feel it now. Finally someone is behind the desk in the Oval Office who is gonna protect America and the world. And it's coming. And it's coming now. And I tell you what -- it feels great." https://x.com/atrupar/status/1910080973804314884
A more realistic assessment.
You could put all the living writers of The Onion, SNL, Veep, National Lampoon, and get George Orwell’s ghost to lead them and they’d still never come up with anything as weird, unhinged, creepy, and screwed up as the actual reality of our government right now https://x.com/rumpfshaker/status/1910136934447329540
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
I’m assuming either Goodwin made a rather amusing typo rather than that he’s actually taken to ranting about how actions he disapproves of could well be lawful.
The skyscraper boom in Manc shows no sign of slowing, the last 30 years of economic success in the city should be far bigger news and something that should be tried to be replicated elsewhere.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
People keep on conflating our production of virgin steel with steel in general, so you get erroneous claims that closure of Scunthorpe means the "end of all steel production in the UK". Most of our steel production (over 90%, I think) is from recycled steel - and almost all steel is reused in some way. We still export a surprising volume and value of high quality steel products.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
Isn't the big problem that it's not yet clear what the best route towards decarbonising virgin steel production will turn out to be? It might be CCS, it might be green hydrogen, it might be some other process entirely - lots of possibilities, but nothing working economically at scale (yet).
At one point, it looked like the UK was going to try to take a leading role in scaling up CCS and/or hydrogen, but we've spent so long faffing around that we've now missed the opportunity to do so before the Scunthorpe blast furnace needs to be replaced.
Given that, surely the best thing to do is make do with electric arc furnaces supplemented by imports until some other country has proven the economics of decarbonised virgin steel production?
Otherwise we're going to end up spending stupid money for a stop-gap solution, only to find ourselves back in the same position in the late 2030s.
Since in the next 10-15 years we will need a lot of steel for replacing the electricity grid, erecting turbines, building new road and railway bridges and building and indeed new weapons I don’t actually think that’s a killer argument on its own.
But the steel for all of those can be produced in electric arc furnaces, can't they?
I think there are two different questions here: 1) is it worth retaining a blast furnace in the UK? 2) Should the government step in an ensure the development of EAFs at Teesside and Scunthorpe?
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
The EU has just made its choice: they will suspend the retaliatory tariffs that were approved yesterday - by 90 days.
But let's be clear here: the 25% 🇺🇸steel/aluminium tariffs that these 🇪🇺tariffs were retaliating against are *not* being paused. They're already being levied.
The EU will therefor accept the 25% tariff on steel-aluminium exports to the US that started in March and will not retaliate. The reason is because they are afraid the White House will misconstrue yesterday's retaliatory tariff vote as being about the 'Liberation Day' extra 10% of tariffs on the EU which he has paused. The fault lies with national EU governments who delayed the steel/aluminium response for so long that the vote coincidentally (and unhelpfully) fell on the day that the Liberation Day tariffs took effect.
So this is how things stand right now:
🇺🇸👊🇪🇺 tariffs: 25% on steel/aluminium 25% on automobiles 10% on everything else
🇪🇺👊🇺🇸 retaliatory tariffs: 0%
Consumer prices rise in USA. Consumer prices don't rise in EU.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
My understanding was that the application process was opened early for those in minority groups.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Would it be legal to have the window for white applicants only open for, say, 1 minute?
I've had a very small bet on Spaun for the Masters.
My main bets are MacIntyre and Bhatia. Rationale is that the course slightly favour left-handers (see Mickleson's record) and current Greens in Regulation stats are important for this course. Add to that a bit of current form and some experience of playing here before and those two players leap out at me. Also good value at the odds.
Spawn is very solid and he's value but if he does get in the mix I'd take profit because I don't think he would close it out.
Left handers, yes. I can see both of those doing well.
But I think Rory finally. Possibly by a distance. Although with the caveat that Scheffler if he putts is better than anybody.
Nick Palmer first pointed out this page featuring German opinion polls about 10 years ago, and it's generally very informative, but it doesn't seem to include Ipsos polls of which there was one yesterday.
Must admit to being mildly surprised that it’s allowed.
How do you think that everyone in Congress ends up a millionaire?
AOC has been on this one for years. The especial stink is options. Numerous cases of people being gifted options at absurd strike prices.
For those who don’t know - an option is a right to buy a stock. One way a company rewards employees and friends is giving out options at well below the market price. Some of those given to politicians were at 10% of strike. Which is insane.
That is, the price was 10% of the full price of the stock. So you buy and immediately sell - and get the 90% as profit. But that isn’t giving people money. No sir.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Would it be legal to have the window for white applicants only open for, say, 1 minute?
Surely the argument is that opening applications at a different time is fundamentally different from opening applications for such a short window that it makes it difficult if not impossible to apply? The comparison is just bogus.
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
I read that as white candidates can apply 'through their local lodge...'
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
I’m assuming either Goodwin made a rather amusing typo rather than that he’s actually taken to ranting about how actions he disapproves of could well be lawful.
Though based on my dealings with the police in other matters, it is quite possible that their view of the law is rather hazy.
President Trump suffered a legislative setback after Republican leaders in the House of Representatives postponed a vote on his multitrillion-dollar plans to cut taxes and spending amid fears of a party rebellion
US bans government personnel in China from romantic or sexual relations with Chinese citizens
Reminds me of the only piece of advice that an older, male friend who was posted to the Moscow embassy during the Cold War was given when he started the job:
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Would it be legal to have the window for white applicants only open for, say, 1 minute?
Yes - they should of course have allowed anyone to apply but then binned all the applications from racial groups they didn't want. You know the way its always been done..
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Would it be legal to have the window for white applicants only open for, say, 1 minute?
Surely the argument is that opening applications at a different time is fundamentally different from opening applications for such a short window that it makes it difficult if not impossible to apply? The comparison is just bogus.
Is it? Both limit the ability of one group of people to apply. There must be a point where it becomes unacceptable, surely?
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
However, the producer of the pickles in question subsequently confirmed that they are, in fact, made in Poland. Trzaskowski has called on the opposition to apologise to the firm.
he controversy began after Trzaskowski – the candidate of the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), Poland’s main ruling party – gave a campaign speech during which he said that, as president, he would be “an ambassador of Polish industry, of all Polish products, of Polish entrepreneurship” around the world.
“The president should support Polish companies and, even if he flies to the other end of the world, he should take Polish entrepreneurs and [representatives of] Polish companies on the plane and convince the whole world that it should be open to our investments and buying our goods,” he added.
Trzaskowski then showed the crowd examples of Polish products that have succeeded abroad, such as Prince Polo chocolate wafer bars, which he said are popular in Iceland, and Solidarity chocolates, which have been a hit in Azerbaijan. The politician also brandished a jar of pickles produced by Polish firm Urbanek, which he said are “in every store in Mongolia” and should be “promoted all over the world”...
I am relying on Leon to fact check the Mongolia claims.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Would it be legal to have the window for white applicants only open for, say, 1 minute?
Surely the argument is that opening applications at a different time is fundamentally different from opening applications for such a short window that it makes it difficult if not impossible to apply? The comparison is just bogus.
Is it? Both limit the ability of one group of people to apply. There must be a point where it becomes unacceptable, surely?
For judges to decide, if it needs to get to that. And they would do it case by case, not saying it must be open for 3 days 6 hours, 25 minutes else it is illegal.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
Given the many decades of central government's dismal policy failure when it comes to transport in the north of England, this is perhaps not as daft as it sounds.
Better than waiting another decade for nothing to happen.
🧵 eVTOLs, (re)industrialisation, and the North of England
Industrialisation in America, Japan and Korea was kickstarted with cars.
It's only about 35 miles between Leeds and Manchester, or Manchester and Liverpool, so range is not really a problem. And fast charging facilities could be concentrated in a handful of places.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
Every story like this inches Reform nearer to power. FFS...
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Given the many decades of central government's dismal policy failure when it comes to transport in the north of England, this is perhaps not as daft as it sounds.
Better than waiting another decade for nothing to happen.
🧵 eVTOLs, (re)industrialisation, and the North of England
Industrialisation in America, Japan and Korea was kickstarted with cars.
It's only about 35 miles between Leeds and Manchester, or Manchester and Liverpool, so range is not really a problem. And fast charging facilities could be concentrated in a handful of places.
Why does that scream hyperloop 2 with a technology pretending to fix a problem in a way that won’t fix it.
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
I read that as white candidates can apply 'through their local lodge...'
Given the many decades of central government's dismal policy failure when it comes to transport in the north of England, this is perhaps not as daft as it sounds.
Better than waiting another decade for nothing to happen.
🧵 eVTOLs, (re)industrialisation, and the North of England
Industrialisation in America, Japan and Korea was kickstarted with cars.
It's only about 35 miles between Leeds and Manchester, or Manchester and Liverpool, so range is not really a problem. And fast charging facilities could be concentrated in a handful of places.
Why does that scream hyperloop 2 with a technology pretending to fix a problem in a way that won’t fix it.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
The whistleblower in the actual article is saying that far more than that was happening. To the point he/she was worried about participating in illegal behaviour.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
The whistleblower in the actual article is saying that far more than that was happening. To the point he/she was worried about participating in illegal behaviour.
Who knows ? I'm not defending it; I'm saying it's stupid, whatever the precise details.
I posted this earlier today. It took place about 100 yards from the main police station.
Ahmad Mamdouh Al Ibrahim, 16, was stabbed in the neck in the town centre – the second time he had been there – while being shown around by his cousin, his uncle told the Guardian.
A 20-year-old man, Alfie Franco, of Kirkburton, near Huddersfield, appeared in court on Friday charged with his murder and was remanded in custody before a further hearing next month.
Ahmad’s uncle, who he was living with in Huddersfield, said he had encouraged the boy to go out and make friends his own age after spending a lot of time with the family during Ramadan.
In the hours before his death, Ahmad had asked to see Kirklees College, where he had been enrolled, and his uncle had promised to take him later that day, he said. In the meantime his cousin offered to show him around Huddersfield town centre, including a new supermarket that sells Asian and Arabic food, and the market...
The more I travel the more I realise how remarkably wonderfully beautiful Europe is - especially on a per square km basis. The beauty is densely packed - plus history and culture
Europe should charge every visitor £200 a day simply for the privilege of seeing it. I shall refrain from mentioning the migrants who want in for good for free
Given the many decades of central government's dismal policy failure when it comes to transport in the north of England, this is perhaps not as daft as it sounds.
Better than waiting another decade for nothing to happen.
🧵 eVTOLs, (re)industrialisation, and the North of England
Industrialisation in America, Japan and Korea was kickstarted with cars.
It's only about 35 miles between Leeds and Manchester, or Manchester and Liverpool, so range is not really a problem. And fast charging facilities could be concentrated in a handful of places.
Why does that scream hyperloop 2 with a technology pretending to fix a problem in a way that won’t fix it.
I am amused by some of the responses to the eVTOL thing - which is already here. We just aren’t in the mass market phase. Yet.
Actually thinking about what they can do is probably too much like hard work.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
So target market, but give colourblind assistance with applications. Otherwise, the whole policy becomes self-defeating (and allegedly illegal), which seems likely here.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
There is a very small subset of people in the UK who actually do think that the nation is outraged that Kemi hasn't watched Adolescence. They don't vote Tory and never will. Kemi is best off treating them with the contempt that most people who may vote Tory no doubt share.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
Dude, you admit you haven't even visited most of it, so eff off.
More to the point, if we can spend 3% of GDP on defence, then the odd billion each year, to keep the blast furnaces going for strategic reasons, is something of a no brainer. Not least electorally.
How much steel does the UK need for 'strategic reasons'?
Most of the extra defence funding, assuming it actually happens, will be wasted to no particular effect.
The only modern defence procurement that consumes a significant amount of steel is shipbuilding. There's about 4,000 - 5,000 tons of steel in a modern frigate and the UK is only finishing one of those every other year. That consumption is a rounding error in global steel production.
"Strategic" doesn't just mean building ships, obvs.
People keep on conflating our production of virgin steel with steel in general, so you get erroneous claims that closure of Scunthorpe means the "end of all steel production in the UK". Most of our steel production (over 90%, I think) is from recycled steel - and almost all steel is reused in some way. We still export a surprising volume and value of high quality steel products.
Even then, most of our scrap steel is exported. The idea is to bring more of that recycling back to the UK, and given massive excess overnight electricity from renewables, this might end up making new electric arc furnaces commercially viable. That would contribute to our security as it doesn't depend on imports of coal or iron ore.
The issue is that there are a few grades of steel which you cannot make anywhere other than in a blast furnace, some of which are essential for military use. But, AFAIK, the MOD does not insist on UK steel for this anyway, and I think most of that is already imported from NATO allies. Scunthorpe is owned by the Chinese, FFS.
Isn't the big problem that it's not yet clear what the best route towards decarbonising virgin steel production will turn out to be? It might be CCS, it might be green hydrogen, it might be some other process entirely - lots of possibilities, but nothing working economically at scale (yet).
At one point, it looked like the UK was going to try to take a leading role in scaling up CCS and/or hydrogen, but we've spent so long faffing around that we've now missed the opportunity to do so before the Scunthorpe blast furnace needs to be replaced.
Given that, surely the best thing to do is make do with electric arc furnaces supplemented by imports until some other country has proven the economics of decarbonised virgin steel production?
Otherwise we're going to end up spending stupid money for a stop-gap solution, only to find ourselves back in the same position in the late 2030s.
Since in the next 10-15 years we will need a lot of steel for replacing the electricity grid, erecting turbines, building new road and railway bridges and building and indeed new weapons I don’t actually think that’s a killer argument on its own.
But the steel for all of those can be produced in electric arc furnaces, can't they?
I don't know (I'm the manager of an international teaching agency, not an engineer). My understanding is the tech for EAF isn't at that stage yet, but if I'm wrong I'm happy to be corrected.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
There is a very small subset of people in the UK who actually do think that the nation is outraged that Kemi hasn't watched Adolescence. They don't vote Tory and never will. Kemi is best off treating them with the contempt that most people who may vote Tory no doubt share.
No one cares whether or not she has. They just think she's a bit odd.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
My understanding was that the application process was opened early for those in minority groups.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
Dude, you admit you haven't even visited most of it, so eff off.
I’m not allowed to discuss my own country because I’ve seldom been to Sheffield?!
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
I'm getting strong Bernard Manning vibes from this one:
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
There is a very small subset of people in the UK who actually do think that the nation is outraged that Kemi hasn't watched Adolescence. They don't vote Tory and never will. Kemi is best off treating them with the contempt that most people who may vote Tory no doubt share.
I’ve not watched it. Tempted not to just because of the stupid culture war surrounding it
Also, having The Gulag Archipelago as my audiobook on a roadtrip around Kazakhstan is plenty harrowing enough, by itself
Omg
I had to turn it off today after 2 hours as it was so monumentally dark
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
Dude, you admit you haven't even visited most of it, so eff off.
I’m not allowed to discuss my own country because I’ve seldom been to Sheffield?!
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
Dude, you admit you haven't even visited most of it, so eff off.
I’m not allowed to discuss my own country because I’ve seldom been to Sheffield?!
Pontificating about "WEST YORKSHIRE" (which doesn't contain Sheffield) deserves the dusty reply. You're allowed say what you like, but so am I.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
There is a very small subset of people in the UK who actually do think that the nation is outraged that Kemi hasn't watched Adolescence. They don't vote Tory and never will. Kemi is best off treating them with the contempt that most people who may vote Tory no doubt share.
I’ve not watched it. Tempted not to just because of the stupid culture war surrounding it
Also, having The Gulag Archipelago as my audiobook on a roadtrip around Kazakhstan is plenty harrowing enough, by itself
Omg
I had to turn it off today after 2 hours as it was so monumentally dark
If its not dark enough you could migrate to KL - A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nicholaus Wachsmann. I've not even reached 1939 and its harrowing enough.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
There would be if it didn't create the obvious resentment it does, whether the resentment is justified or not. There are better ways of achieving their objectives.
She’s coming across as very angry and irritated on BBC Breakfast.
I thought she was broadly right that she doesn't really need to watch Adolescence. But there are ways of saying that which don't come across as frosty, defensive, and rather hostile.
She probably needs to get Corbyn's "stop being so damned tetchy" coach in. He started with that being a real problem in interviews, and it never fully went away, but he did at least listen to the point and tried to manage it.
There is a very small subset of people in the UK who actually do think that the nation is outraged that Kemi hasn't watched Adolescence. They don't vote Tory and never will. Kemi is best off treating them with the contempt that most people who may vote Tory no doubt share.
I’ve not watched it. Tempted not to just because of the stupid culture war surrounding it
Also, having The Gulag Archipelago as my audiobook on a roadtrip around Kazakhstan is plenty harrowing enough, by itself
Omg
I had to turn it off today after 2 hours as it was so monumentally dark
If its not dark enough you could migrate to KL - A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nicholaus Wachsmann. I've not even reached 1939 and its harrowing enough.
I once tried reading Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking, and I had to stop, it was so disturbing.
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
It's not lawful. "Positive action" is ensuring that a minority group member is interviewed and is legal. Preventing an individual applying on grounds of race is racial discrimination and is *wildly* illegal. Hopefully somebody will sue them to perdition.
What does the Telegraph story actually say ?
West Yorkshire Police (WYP) is currently preventing white British candidates from applying for jobs as recruits to its police constable entry programmes. However, “under-represented” groups can lodge their applications early.
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Sounds pointless to me. And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
It allows them to market to under represented communities separately to the more general recruitment campaign.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
So target market those communities. Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
Presumably can feedback to the applicants what they've done wrong so they can correct their applications. If you're not from a background that is used to the sort of turgidity involved in mass recruitment then seems reasonable to provide some extra coaching on this (of course it would be better if there wasn't this turgidity but HR types gonna HR).
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
You can’t think of any reasons why preventing white men from joining the police might be a particular issue in… WEST YORKSHIRE?
Dude, you admit you haven't even visited most of it, so eff off.
I’m not allowed to discuss my own country because I’ve seldom been to Sheffield?!
What's WYP got to do with Sheffield ?
No idea. Never been to West Yorkshire and I have no intention of starting now
Comments
The steel/aluminium/cars will have an impact, but I am guessing it isn't worth doing anything about it until the dust settles and Trump stops playing silly buggers. For a start where is America going to get its shortage of Aluminium from? Usually Canada, but what about the tariff. Although it produces a large amount of steel, it also imports it and guess where its number 1 and 3 suppliers are: Canada and Mexico. So how is America going to replace that in the short term? Also America does not produce the type of vehicles made in Europe and a lot of them are high end. They are either going to keep selling at a much much higher price to the US consumer or stop buying. Probably a mixture of both. How does that help America? They either pay more or go without what they want. I suspect in a few months if not sooner commonsense will prevail.
@DPJHodges
In January Trump told Putin to stop the war. In March he told Hamas to release all the hostages. In his State of the Union speech he told Greenland to become part of the United States. He's told Canada to cede the Great Lakes. He's told China to surrender on tariffs. No-one has.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1910294065322635678
Did pick up a vintage Harley Davidson cap the other week, but it was made in China so that’s ok.
But the problem is that the media that his supporters slurp up spin those failures as successes. In their eyes, they are not failures; they're all part of a great game he's winning.
@alaynatreene
Kevin Hassett tells us at the WH that "One of the options that the president was considering" before his tariff pause yesterday was "to announce deals that were already so far along that we could pretty much much finish them up and make them public"
"But in the end he decided a more general announcement ... was the best way to let everyone understand that he's 100% serious about putting American workers first," Hassett said
https://x.com/alaynatreene/status/1910305028599919046
That will be helpfully painful for Russia.
It will also undermine Trump's drill baby drill.
And reduce costs in the UK.
... Can't find of many other unambiguously good market movements of late.
There's no particularly good response to a former ally becoming an arsehole. Other than making plans to be able not to rely on them in the future.
Allow william his small moment of petty celebration.
What does that mean? Our employers NI has actually gone down due to the changes. Millions of others have no change as they have fewer employees. It is for businesses with 10+ where it increases, and the likes of the supermarkets, who have taken the piss out of both employees and taxpayers, where it increases sharpest.
It is hard to get away from the assumption you don't understand how employer NI works.
@GoodwinMJ
One of the UK’s biggest police forces has just temporarily blocked applications from white British candidates in an attempt to “boost diversity”. This is ‘positive discrimination’ or some might say ‘anti-white racism’ that could well be lawful. It will also fuel claims of a two-tier justice system"
https://x.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1910238255171125493
His approval numbers are sinking rapidly & he's at 45.7% approval & 50.7% disapproval in Nate Silver's average.
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bulletin
I’ve been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor.
Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We’re about to learn a few things.
It’s time to ban insider trading in Congress.
https://x.com/AOC/status/1910153921252696559
Visit the controversial locations of the day within each for a few photographs. Posing with the MP optional.
At one point, it looked like the UK was going to try to take a leading role in scaling up CCS and/or hydrogen, but we've spent so long faffing around that we've now missed the opportunity to do so before the Scunthorpe blast furnace needs to be replaced.
Given that, surely the best thing to do is make do with electric arc furnaces supplemented by imports until some other country has proven the economics of decarbonised virgin steel production?
Otherwise we're going to end up spending stupid money for a stop-gap solution, only to find ourselves back in the same position in the late 2030s.
https://x.com/thomasforth/status/1910284410198384922
On that score, I'm currently watching The Art of Negotiation Kdrama on the Viki platform.
Very good.
Though I might have to break the boycott when Weak Hero Class 2 comes out next week on Netflix.
(First series is already up)
If they had insider information in terms of a specific forewarning that Trump was about to u-turn, that's another matter. But it wouldn't actually be surprising if a true believer thought the markets were going to correct upwards.
I've had a very small bet on Spaun for the Masters.
My main bets are MacIntyre and Bhatia. Rationale is that the course slightly favour left-handers (see Mickleson's record) and current Greens in Regulation stats are important for this course. Add to that a bit of current form and some experience of playing here before and those two players leap out at me. Also good value at the odds.
The problem is the laws are hard to enforce and currently there is zero chance of the government prosecuting their friends.
Consumer prices don't rise in EU.
Lutnick: "The golden age of America. It's coming now. You feel it now. Finally someone is behind the desk in the Oval Office who is gonna protect America and the world. And it's coming. And it's coming now. And I tell you what -- it feels great."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/1910080973804314884
A more realistic assessment.
You could put all the living writers of The Onion, SNL, Veep, National Lampoon, and get George Orwell’s ghost to lead them and they’d still never come up with anything as weird, unhinged, creepy, and screwed up as the actual reality of our government right now
https://x.com/rumpfshaker/status/1910136934447329540
Just when you think these sycophants can’t beclown themselves any more than they already have…
https://bsky.app/profile/bgrueskin.bsky.social/post/3lmhk3zjcdc2k
Well played EU.
US bans government personnel in China from romantic or sexual relations with Chinese citizens
...
WYP says online that applications from ethnic backgrounds “are processed through to interview stage, but then held until recruitment is opened for everyone”.
It adds: “Enabling people from an ethnic minority background to apply early does not give them an advantage in the application process, it simply provides us with more opportunity to attract talent from a pool of applicants who reflect the diverse communities we serve.”
Left handers, yes. I can see both of those doing well.
But I think Rory finally. Possibly by a distance. Although with the caveat that Scheffler if he putts is better than anybody.
https://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
AOC has been on this one for years. The especial stink is options. Numerous cases of people being gifted options at absurd strike prices.
For those who don’t know - an option is a right to buy a stock. One way a company rewards employees and friends is giving out options at well below the market price. Some of those given to politicians were at 10% of strike. Which is insane.
That is, the price was 10% of the full price of the stock. So you buy and immediately sell - and get the 90% as profit. But that isn’t giving people money. No sir.
Rhode Island proposing a tariff-free trade zone using its Royal Charter from 1663 is some remarkably creative policy thinking.
https://x.com/mattmfm/status/1910120464657371250
(Edited to remove doubled quote)
President Trump suffered a legislative setback after Republican leaders in the House of Representatives postponed a vote on his multitrillion-dollar plans to cut taxes and spending amid fears of a party rebellion
https://x.com/thetimes/status/1910302299605418443
@Reuters
House Speaker Johnson speaks on decision to pull budget resolution vote
https://x.com/Reuters/status/1910319897416282540
"Keep it adult, female and in NATO".
He was gay, so rather wasted on him.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/1999/jan/06/guardianobituaries
Not a word of disapproval of the abuse. Seems a lifetime ago now, but 1999.
And of course winds a load of people up unnecessarily.
Polish opposition in a pickle over presidential candidate’s “German” gherkins
https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/04/10/polish-opposition-in-a-pickle-over-presidential-candidates-german-gherkins/
The frontrunner in Poland’s presidential race, Rafał Trzaskowski, has been accused by the opposition of presenting German-made pickled cucumbers as a Polish product.
However, the producer of the pickles in question subsequently confirmed that they are, in fact, made in Poland. Trzaskowski has called on the opposition to apologise to the firm.
he controversy began after Trzaskowski – the candidate of the centrist Civic Coalition (KO), Poland’s main ruling party – gave a campaign speech during which he said that, as president, he would be “an ambassador of Polish industry, of all Polish products, of Polish entrepreneurship” around the world.
“The president should support Polish companies and, even if he flies to the other end of the world, he should take Polish entrepreneurs and [representatives of] Polish companies on the plane and convince the whole world that it should be open to our investments and buying our goods,” he added.
Trzaskowski then showed the crowd examples of Polish products that have succeeded abroad, such as Prince Polo chocolate wafer bars, which he said are popular in Iceland, and Solidarity chocolates, which have been a hit in Azerbaijan.
The politician also brandished a jar of pickles produced by Polish firm Urbanek, which he said are “in every store in Mongolia” and should be “promoted all over the world”...
I am relying on Leon to fact check the Mongolia claims.
I can see why racist people wish to get on their high horse about it but there is some sensible logic there
Better than waiting another decade for nothing to happen.
🧵 eVTOLs, (re)industrialisation, and the North of England
Industrialisation in America, Japan and Korea was kickstarted with cars.
Reindustrialisation of the North and Midlands could be done with eVTOLs, because the UK is in a unique position.
https://x.com/bendunnflores/status/1910319759645700203
It's only about 35 miles between Leeds and Manchester, or Manchester and Liverpool, so range is not really a problem. And fast charging facilities could be concentrated in a handful of places.
Why mess with the applications process ? It just gives unnecessary ammunition to the racists.
https://www.reddit.com/r/policeuk/s/fHF5pXAtiz
You are succumbing to our influence.
As for wider objective - I think somewhere like West Yorkshire there's a perfectly legit policiing goal in having more brown people in the force even if this is acheived through explicit discrimination. It's not like most jobs.
I'm not defending it; I'm saying it's stupid, whatever the precise details.
I posted this earlier today. It took place about 100 yards from the main police station.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/10/boy-killed-huddersfield-stabbing-ahmad-mamdouh-al-ibrahim
...A teenage Syrian refugee who was stabbed to death in Huddersfield last Thursday had lived in the town for only two weeks before the attack and was out making friends on the day he was killed, his family has said.
Ahmad Mamdouh Al Ibrahim, 16, was stabbed in the neck in the town centre – the second time he had been there – while being shown around by his cousin, his uncle told the Guardian.
A 20-year-old man, Alfie Franco, of Kirkburton, near Huddersfield, appeared in court on Friday charged with his murder and was remanded in custody before a further hearing next month.
Ahmad’s uncle, who he was living with in Huddersfield, said he had encouraged the boy to go out and make friends his own age after spending a lot of time with the family during Ramadan.
In the hours before his death, Ahmad had asked to see Kirklees College, where he had been enrolled, and his uncle had promised to take him later that day, he said. In the meantime his cousin offered to show him around Huddersfield town centre, including a new supermarket that sells Asian and Arabic food, and the market...
It’s wild up here. Not beautiful. Bleak. Grand. Noomy
Bit scary
Europe should charge every visitor £200 a day simply for the privilege of seeing it. I shall refrain from mentioning the migrants who want in for good for free
Actually thinking about what they can do is probably too much like hard work.
Otherwise, the whole policy becomes self-defeating (and allegedly illegal), which seems likely here.
They just think she's a bit odd.
Kemi Badenoch torches BBC Breakfast: ‘I don’t need to watch Casualty to know what's going on in the NHS.’ 🔥
This is insane. The BBC are visibly offended that Kemi Badenoch *hasn't* watched the Netflix drama Adolescence.
I had to post the whole thing, it's utterly absurd.
https://youtu.be/5WVdADL9tlU?si=8VkYDbuLeWviYRqL
Also, having The Gulag Archipelago as my audiobook on a roadtrip around Kazakhstan is plenty harrowing enough, by itself
Omg
I had to turn it off today after 2 hours as it was so monumentally dark
You're allowed say what you like, but so am I.
https://x.com/NewsWire_US/status/1910316347638112683