I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I have already suggested to my MSP that the Scottish Government should compulsorily purchase Ardrossan Harbour, and that a fair price would be £1. If anyone knows Ardrossan, they will realise the whole town is worth about £5.
There was much chortling from the usual suspects when the SG bought Prestwick for £1 but it seems to have worked out ok.
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
There’s a long history of obligations on private companies to maintain derived and infrastructure for government use. See shipping, communication ms since the days of the non-electric telegraph, the railways etc etc.
As usual the problem is writing a clear, simple requirement. And enforcing it.
For a port, you put - “x docks for ships of y displacement, of types a, b and c”. Failure to maintain that capability results in loss of ownership of the port.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
But they are NOT free and fair elections.
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
"The Russian government continued to crack down on domestic dissent, adding to a total of nearly 20,000 detentions for alleged antiwar activities since February 2022. Concerns over the well-being of two political prisoners, opposition politicians Aleksey Gorinov and Aleksey Navalny, grew in December, when both disappeared from the prisons where they had been serving their sentences. They were located weeks later, having been secretly transferred to different facilities. "In November, the Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, intensifying the regime’s persecution of LGBT+ people and effectively prohibiting any advocacy on their behalf." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2024
There are scales of free and fair, a true autocracy would have no multi party elections at all, as the USSR didn't
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
It's just the usual Great Replacement Theory bollocks so beloved of the far right.
It was an article in conservative home. Here.
Before proceeding, I should clarify what White British refers to, it is an ethnic category used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and other Governmental departments to refer to those who are white and are English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British – effectively the group you could call the native or indigenous population.
Every year the ONS releases data on births in England & Wales for the previous year, the latest data is available for 2023. If you want to see data on births for previous years, you have to download a different dataset that contains the ethnicity of births in England & Wales from 2007 to 2022, I do not believe this data was collected prior to 2007.
Using the data from these documents, I have created a chart showing the percentage of births in England & Wales that are White British, from 2007 to 2023.
If we look at 2013 to 2023, White British births, as a percentage, have declined by 8.49 per cent and if we go from the peak in 2010 at 66.25 per cent, White British births have declined by 10.69 per cent — I’m no statistician, but on current course, I would not be surprised if we see White British births fall below 50 per cent before 2030.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
The latter excludes white Eastern Europeans living and working in the UK yes
It doesn’t really. I am white Eastern European by descent (third generation) but describe myself as white British because what’s the difference?
You were born and raised in the UK, most Eastern Europeans weren't but came to live and work in the UK in the last 20 years, especially when Blair allowed Eastern European migrants free movement to the UK with no transition controls after 2004
I have been very busy and haven't fully been following the British Steel thing. Why are the government passing this slightly odd bill giving all these powers to the minister to basically run the show, with another bill implied in several weeks times to fully nationalise the plant? Can it not be done in one step?
Looks like old Trump blinked again on much of the high-tech stuff made in China. I guess somebody slowly explained to the fool how damaging his tariffs would be and how implausible onshoring Shenzhen is.
I have been very busy and haven't fully been following the British Steel thing. Why are the government passing this slightly odd bill giving all these powers to the minister to basically run the show, with another bill implied in several weeks times to fully nationalise the plant? Can it not be done in one step?
I think it was too complicated to do that at very short notice so they went for this initial simpler Bill .
Lord Reid made a good point . Wasn’t it in Chinese interests for the UK lose the ability to make virgin steel . That asks the question why sell this strategic industry to a Chinese company .
In a sign of weakening confidence, the Bank of England on Thursday decided to postpone an auction of gilts “in light of recent market volatility”.
Telegraph
None of this helps my retirement income. Shares are down but so are bonds which are supposed to protect against stock market falls.
In the short term, this might not matter politically because, as a wise man once said, it started in America so no-one will blame our own government but further out it will have wrecked many retirement plans and left younger workers, especially those newly and compulsorily enrolled into DC pension schemes, wondering what on earth is the point if their savings are instantly eroded.
If we’d stayed in the EU and joined the Euro we would be enjoying ECB gilt yields of around 3.5% and the government could sell paper to its heart’s content.
The French bond yield has fallen by 0.3% this month. The Eurozone is a safe haven.
Even if we were Italy we’d be looking at a yield of only 3.8%.
So with debt redemption rounded to £170bn, and the deficit over £130bn, that's £300bn of debt sales every year.
So just in debt interest, Brexit could be costing us an extra £3bn this year - and every year thereafter. And we could conceivably be adding the same again next year.
After a while that would become very costly.
Alternatively we could have a competent central bank.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
But they are NOT free and fair elections.
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
"The Russian government continued to crack down on domestic dissent, adding to a total of nearly 20,000 detentions for alleged antiwar activities since February 2022. Concerns over the well-being of two political prisoners, opposition politicians Aleksey Gorinov and Aleksey Navalny, grew in December, when both disappeared from the prisons where they had been serving their sentences. They were located weeks later, having been secretly transferred to different facilities. "In November, the Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, intensifying the regime’s persecution of LGBT+ people and effectively prohibiting any advocacy on their behalf." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2024
There are scales of free and fair, a true autocracy would have no multi party elections at all, as the USSR didn't
I have been very busy and haven't fully been following the British Steel thing. Why are the government passing this slightly odd bill giving all these powers to the minister to basically run the show, with another bill implied in several weeks times to fully nationalise the plant? Can it not be done in one step?
I think it was too complicated to do that at very short notice so they went for this initial simpler Bill .
I think the honest answer is just that they were very slow in deciding what to do about steel policy (possibly still haven't done so) and the Chinese called their bluff.
It was either let it shut down, or move very quickly; this is the latter.
I must say that I am enjoying the flap on my YouTube channel. Various people suggesting that I am the victim of "MSM propaganda" when criticising Musk. Then I point out that my source is Musk's posts on X, and they go a bit quiet.
There's an awful lot of MAGA snowflakes is all I can say
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
Private owners having to pay for maintenance and upgrades? Don’t be silly. Perhaps Sir Keir could sort of nationalise Ardrossan.
I have already suggested to my MSP that the Scottish Government should compulsorily purchase Ardrossan Harbour, and that a fair price would be £1. If anyone knows Ardrossan, they will realise the whole town is worth about £5.
There was much chortling from the usual suspects when the SG bought Prestwick for £1 but it seems to have worked out ok.
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
I would hazard that the reason Labour and the Conservatives are seen as 'similar' is because the problems facing the country are the same, and the only sane solutions are similar. And since Labour and Conservatives either have, or hope to get, power, they need to propose or have relatively sane solutions to those problems.
But a party like Farage, I mean Reform, do not need to propose sane solutions. They can propose insane ones that blame others for things that are our fault. A decade ago he was blaming the EU; we left, and the problems remain (or, depending on viewpoint, are larger). Now he is blaming immigration, and the same thing will happen. Immigration will be 'dealt' with (*) and the problems will remain.
Because the problems are us, not just the other. And until we admit that, the 'solutions' will not work.
But there may be hope: Farage is tied to the Trump project, and as Trump proposes (and implements...) insane 'solutions' to problems, the snake-oil Farage is selling might start getting tainted by reality.
(*) And that will be nasty.
The immigration one is tricky as it comes down to what sort of country you want to live in. On present trends white schoolchildren will be a minority by 2032. Some will be happy with this others wont be .
I don't know where you get your figures, but they do not match the 2021 census. In all age ranges British children are 71% or more white. Many of the others are completely integrated 3rd or more generation Britons of migrant descent, with the growing group being mixed ethnicity again confirming integration.
It's just the usual Great Replacement Theory bollocks so beloved of the far right.
It was an article in conservative home. Here.
Before proceeding, I should clarify what White British refers to, it is an ethnic category used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and other Governmental departments to refer to those who are white and are English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or British – effectively the group you could call the native or indigenous population.
Every year the ONS releases data on births in England & Wales for the previous year, the latest data is available for 2023. If you want to see data on births for previous years, you have to download a different dataset that contains the ethnicity of births in England & Wales from 2007 to 2022, I do not believe this data was collected prior to 2007.
Using the data from these documents, I have created a chart showing the percentage of births in England & Wales that are White British, from 2007 to 2023.
If we look at 2013 to 2023, White British births, as a percentage, have declined by 8.49 per cent and if we go from the peak in 2010 at 66.25 per cent, White British births have declined by 10.69 per cent — I’m no statistician, but on current course, I would not be surprised if we see White British births fall below 50 per cent before 2030.
These are the usual tricks of the Great Replacement Theory brigade. Note the switch from “white” to “white British”, which mean different things.
The latter excludes white Eastern Europeans living and working in the UK yes
It doesn’t really. I am white Eastern European by descent (third generation) but describe myself as white British because what’s the difference?
You were born and raised in the UK, most Eastern Europeans weren't but came to live and work in the UK in the last 20 years, especially when Blair allowed Eastern European migrants free movement to the UK with no transition controls after 2004
Yes but our Russian friend was not accepting that non-white people could ever be British, or at least heavily implying so. If so then Gallowgate is Eastern European and I am Australian, and the King is German.
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
Frit I tell thee
Do you have a better source than this? Someone we've heard of?
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
Frit I tell thee
Do you have a better source than this? Someone we've heard of?
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
Frit I tell thee
Called it. How does that leave Walmart, though ? Or indeed Tesla.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
100 years ago most nations were not democracies but Fascist, Communist or absolute monarchies.
Now with a few exceptions like China, North Korea and Saudi Arabia most nations are democracies of some form.
Autocracies are also slow to react sometimes to change and rely on the military and secret police to keep control
Yes, it's worth noting that while there are legitimate concerns of creeping autocracy in UsA, India and a few other places, by and large the world is much more democratic than it used to be. Venezuela is now the only non-democratic country in South America now for example, though not all the others are perfect democracies. This is almost the opposite of a half century ago. Africa is not quite so dramatic, but particularly in Anglophone Africa democracy is increasingly secure.
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
Frit I tell thee
He's out of his depth with this 'running a country' business.
That's bollocks, Trump has never been like Kim Jung Un, who famously made 11 holes in one in his first golf game. Trump has never been that good.
Yes, I'm on Rory for the Masters but that's only because neither Kim nor Trump are in the field.
The BBC golf team must have their mortgage money on Rory. 90 per cent of their Masters coverage has been on him.
Sky are the same.
Golf has long had a bit of a problem e.g. when Tiger was it his peak, 90% of the coverage would be Tiger...he's on the range....he on the practice putting green...he gone for a piss....3hrs until he tees off.... It as if they think if they elevate one player as THE superstar it helps grow interest / the game.
I find it rather grinding, especially as McIlroy isn't even Tiger, he isn't even the best player in the world. He is a top player, but not one of the GOATs.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
But they are NOT free and fair elections.
"Power in Russia’s authoritarian political system is concentrated in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. With loyalist security forces, a subservient judiciary, a controlled media environment, and a legislature consisting of a ruling party and pliable opposition factions, the Kremlin manipulates elections and suppresses genuine dissent." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia
"The Russian government continued to crack down on domestic dissent, adding to a total of nearly 20,000 detentions for alleged antiwar activities since February 2022. Concerns over the well-being of two political prisoners, opposition politicians Aleksey Gorinov and Aleksey Navalny, grew in December, when both disappeared from the prisons where they had been serving their sentences. They were located weeks later, having been secretly transferred to different facilities. "In November, the Supreme Court designated the “international LGBT public movement” as an extremist organization, intensifying the regime’s persecution of LGBT+ people and effectively prohibiting any advocacy on their behalf." https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-world/2024
There are scales of free and fair, a true autocracy would have no multi party elections at all, as the USSR didn't
Russia scores 12/100, China 9/100 for Freedom.
UK scores 92/100
So Russia higher than China, thanks for confirming
That's bollocks, Trump has never been like Kim Jung Un, who famously made 11 holes in one in his first golf game. Trump has never been that good.
Yes, I'm on Rory for the Masters but that's only because neither Kim nor Trump are in the field.
The BBC golf team must have their mortgage money on Rory. 90 per cent of their Masters coverage has been on him.
Is it on the Beeb? I thought only Sky had it?
They also have commentary rights for the radio, but Fatty Nolan is deemed more important than it, so they shoved it on Five Live Extra...which probably means it got 2 listeners.
Lawyers talk a good game on protecting the rights of the oppressed, but the moment there is a threat to their fees, or above all their precious licenses, 99% of their high principles collapse more quickly than Keir Starmer can claim a freebie.
Everybody knows that virtually the whole profession is a bunch of greedy parasites, long overdue for competition and deregulation, but they are obviously spineless cowards as well.
Actually, yesterday the first US Law firm stuck their head above the parapet after being subject to one of Trump's lawless executive orders, and intend to take their case to the Supreme Court.
How about you - would you risk shutting down three quarters of your business to take the government to court ?
They are, though, a firm with very deep pockets, having made a mint suing Fox News. And my mistake, they are not the first.
Law firm targeted by Trump sues as five other top firms make deals https://www.reuters.com/legal/trump-says-law-firms-agree-pro-bono-work-common-causes-2025-04-11/ U.S. President Donald Trump's administration was hit with another lawsuit on Friday over his executive orders sanctioning prominent law firms, even as five other firms offered costly concessions to avoid the president's crackdowns. Susman Godfrey filed the lawsuit in Washington to challenge an executive order that it said violated its rights under the U.S. Constitution, becoming the fourth firm targeted by Trump to sue the administration in response...
So not "virtually the whole profession", just a large proportion of it.
I’m still amused that anyone ever thought Kirkland & Ellis was on the side of the angels
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
Frit I tell thee
He's out of his depth with this 'running a country' business.
F1: just waiting for a certain market to get odds. If it doesn't soon then it'll be the usual no tip for qualifying (or if the odds are bad, of course).
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
I have only been to Ardrossan once and that was a long time ago. It was highly dilapidated then. It seems to have been recognised that larger ferries would need more and better facilities at the time. As you said this has been in discussion for 8 years, long before some of it ultimately collapsed. There are a variety of things that could have been done including nationalisation, ordering smaller ferries, enforcing obligations under various Ferries and Ports Acts, but we are still in the same mess. Its genuinely pathetic project management.
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
Pitiful to compare being pulled over for what sounds like a legitimate driving offence with the millions of people sent to labour camps for years for no reason whatsoever.
If you are reading the Gulag Archipelago for the first time during your travels - which I’d wager many PB’ers read years ago - it’s shameful that your only reaction to it is to try and draw some trite comparison with your being pulled over for bad driving.
I note with entertainment that the Orange wazzock is frit once more. Smartphones and laptops are now excluded from the eleventyzillion tariff on China.
Frit I tell thee
He'll soon be down to just tariffing Halloween masks and Christmas baubles.
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
It says a lot that is great about the UK that your link points here:
edit In 2021, multiple complaints were made about parking fines being issued by automated systems at Stockport Peel Centre even after motorists had purchased parking tickets.
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
I have only been to Ardrossan once and that was a long time ago. It was highly dilapidated then. It seems to have been recognised that larger ferries would need more and better facilities at the time. As you said this has been in discussion for 8 years, long before some of it ultimately collapsed. There are a variety of things that could have been done including nationalisation, ordering smaller ferries, enforcing obligations under various Ferries and Ports Acts, but we are still in the same mess. Its genuinely pathetic project management.
It's the wrong way round, I guess. You'd want the SG to own and maintain the ports while the service itself goes out to franchise - like rail, which has been highly successful in terms of passenger terms.
Otoh, our trunk roads are in decent condition (Skye aside) and they are maintained on long term contracts with BEAR etc.
If there was a rationale for this nonsense it was that Trump wanted to pressure big tech to start making more of these goods in America, employing American workers. Given that the most valuable imports are now exempt what exactly is the point of this? Do Americans want to invest in making cheap plastic toys?
This started off barking. I am really not sure what point we have reached on the madness scale now. To misquote Jaws we're going to need a bigger scale.
He’s backing down more and more, but will pretend he’s “winning” and Fox News will go along with it.
as long as it de-escalates I don’t really care, I said in the week he wanted wins, or to be seen to win. He got hammered by the bond markets this week and claimed it was a win. Only his most devoted of followers could think what happened this week was in any way a win
My son loves penguins, and loved that story - especially as everyone was uninjured.
But yes, improperly secured loads have caused lots of crashes in the past. Not usually by falling on controls, but often by altering the plane's centre of gravity. Although I think there was a case where a plane nearly crashed because a binocular case wedged under some of the controls?
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
I have only been to Ardrossan once and that was a long time ago. It was highly dilapidated then. It seems to have been recognised that larger ferries would need more and better facilities at the time. As you said this has been in discussion for 8 years, long before some of it ultimately collapsed. There are a variety of things that could have been done including nationalisation, ordering smaller ferries, enforcing obligations under various Ferries and Ports Acts, but we are still in the same mess. Its genuinely pathetic project management.
It's the wrong way round, I guess. You'd want the SG to own and maintain the ports while the service itself goes out to franchise - like rail, which has been highly successful in terms of passenger terms.
Otoh, our trunk roads are in decent condition (Skye aside) and they are maintained on long term contracts with BEAR etc.
Ardrossan is the only harbour used by Cal Mac that is not already publicly owned. If they are looking to enhance the service (with larger and better ferries) to boost tourism and economic activity on the Islands nationalisation seems a sensible option. The owners have been given far too long to provide a viable alternative. But these decisions should have been made 7 or 8 years ago. And we are still dithering.
This is a good article, though its premise that the US might be involved seems deeply flawed for the foreseeable future. The point about scale is entirely valid, though, and needs some hard thinking.
My son loves penguins, and loved that story - especially as everyone was uninjured.
But yes, improperly secured loads have caused lots of crashes in the past. Not usually by falling on controls, but often by altering the plane's centre of gravity. Although I think there was a case where a plane nearly crashed because a binocular case wedged under some of the controls?
One of my favourite Blake's 7 episodes is one in which a shuttle taking Avon and Vila into orbit is sabotaged by placing a small amount of highly dense matter aboard, so it can't achieve escape velocity and is going to crash. Avon and Vila both also realise Avon could resolve the problem by ejecting Vila...
I apologise if this point has already been made, I haven't had time to read the thread yet, but this polling shows how little the general public understand about the world and position we are in.
It is not that the Tories and Labour are the same, they come from different places and have different priorities and ideologies. It is that THERE IS NO ALTERNATIVE. Our government, of whatever stripe has extremely little room for manoeuvre. This was demonstrated to all but the very dimmest by Truss and her hapless Chancellor and yet Labour still managed to get elected after persuading people that "austerity was a choice". Even some on here, who are inevitably better informed and more engaged than most, seem to have believed it.
Well it wasn't and it isn't. Ask Rachel Reeves. And if the collection of crackpots known as Reform took over they would discover exactly the same. Unless and until our politics comes into alignment with that reality we face ever more disillusionment and disengagement.
A Fukker government would be chortlesome though. It would be a neverending cavalcade of policy fuck ups, attempts at extra-parliamentary overreach and scandals fuelled by 15 year old Facebook posts about how AIDS came from an EU lab.
Labour are boring and the tories are utterly irrelevant until Badenexit is achieved. We, the smirking cynics insulated from the nation's relentless decline by our wealth and social capital, deserve to be entertained.
So we really don't need a Reform government to see how bad it can get. We know.
Genuine question. Why didn’t they rent some ferries as a stop gap? There’s a fair sized market in such around the world. Even some quite small ships get moved around on the deck ships, because of this.
I really don't know. I think they wanted to pretend for years that the ferries were only weeks or months from coming into service. Hence the story of Nicola having portholes painted on the hull so long ago. They seemed to want to live in unreality rather than face difficult choices and acknowledge their own incompetence.
But, after all those years, to work out now that another £80m of upgrades are required in Ardrossen before they can operate from there is simply stupifying. We've had nearly 10 years (including the planning and ordering process) to work that out.
They have known for eight years that Ardrossan Harbour required upgrading. The Scottish Government have been in dispute since then with the owners, Peel Ports, about who pays for the upgrade. AFAIK, Peel Ports are refusing to pay a penny towards the upgrade. In addition, there are two berths at Ardrossan. The larger berth (called the Irish Berth as ferries to Belfast used to sail from there) was closed to all traffic about a year ago after part of the harbour wall fell into the water due to lack of maintenance. This was the berth that the new ferries were supposed to use. So, not entirely the Scottish Government’s fault.
So, a nationalised ferry company orders replacement ferries, under a completely inadequate contract which they continually mess around with, ferries that the existing facilities can't cope with in the knowledge that they need upgraded and which are in private hands without a deal as to how that is going to happen years after the ferries were supposed to be in service and you think that isn't their fault?
I'd offer to sell you a bridge that is at the planning stage without any clear idea of where or how it is to be built at what cost if you are interested.
When the ferries were ordered, the Irish Berth was suitable. The question is how does the Scottish Government, or any government, force a private company to maintain its assets, Thames Water also comes to mind.
I have only been to Ardrossan once and that was a long time ago. It was highly dilapidated then. It seems to have been recognised that larger ferries would need more and better facilities at the time. As you said this has been in discussion for 8 years, long before some of it ultimately collapsed. There are a variety of things that could have been done including nationalisation, ordering smaller ferries, enforcing obligations under various Ferries and Ports Acts, but we are still in the same mess. Its genuinely pathetic project management.
It's the wrong way round, I guess. You'd want the SG to own and maintain the ports while the service itself goes out to franchise - like rail, which has been highly successful in terms of passenger terms.
Otoh, our trunk roads are in decent condition (Skye aside) and they are maintained on long term contracts with BEAR etc.
Ardrossan is the only harbour used by Cal Mac that is not already publicly owned. If they are looking to enhance the service (with larger and better ferries) to boost tourism and economic activity on the Islands nationalisation seems a sensible option. The owners have been given far too long to provide a viable alternative. But these decisions should have been made 7 or 8 years ago. And we are still dithering.
If it makes you feel any better, the Australians made a similar mistake with the new Tasmania ferries. Their example is much, much worse (and funnier).
Looks like European travel to the USA is dropping swiftly.
You know, when you are obsessed with the serious trade deficit being run by your country policies that cause a reaction like this might be thought to be suboptimal. That is many tens of billions of "exports" that have been lost and a serious reduction in domestic demand very likely leading to major losses in employment in the tourism industries.
Reeves may have driven many of those who paid the highest taxes (indirectly on their expenditure) out of the country, she has made employing people more expensive both by the ENI and minimum wage changes increasing unemployment, she has made both our private schools and Universities less attractive to foreigners with predictable results, she continues to put up with absolute nonsense by Ed Miliband and she is yet to deliver on the planning simplification but compared with her American equivalents she is JM Keynes reincarnated.
I saw these for a tenner in my local,Sainsbury’s in Durham. Suffice to say was not tempted. My wife was really annoyed I’d not bought one. She had seen it on Instagram. Something I’ve heard of but never used.
If there was a rationale for this nonsense it was that Trump wanted to pressure big tech to start making more of these goods in America, employing American workers. Given that the most valuable imports are now exempt what exactly is the point of this? Do Americans want to invest in making cheap plastic toys?
This started off barking. I am really not sure what point we have reached on the madness scale now. To misquote Jaws we're going to need a bigger scale.
Another explanation is that it took him a week to work out that Lutnick is even more stupid than he is.
My son loves penguins, and loved that story - especially as everyone was uninjured.
But yes, improperly secured loads have caused lots of crashes in the past. Not usually by falling on controls, but often by altering the plane's centre of gravity. Although I think there was a case where a plane nearly crashed because a binocular case wedged under some of the controls?
One of my favourite Blake's 7 episodes is one in which a shuttle taking Avon and Vila into orbit is sabotaged by placing a small amount of highly dense matter aboard, so it can't achieve escape velocity and is going to crash. Avon and Vila both also realise Avon could resolve the problem by ejecting Vila...
Following the tradition of political books containing the word "Out" or "In", "Get In" is the story of how lobotomy victim Keir Starmer became leader of the Labour Party and PM (2024-2029). The sequel, provisionally entitled "Fuck Off", is scheduled for 2030.
Is Trump America's Boris? What really brought Boris down was ministers repeatedly being sent out to defend Boris, only to discover the line had changed shortly after they came off air.
Trump might be lining up the same trouble with his frequent changes of direction, often announced not through official channels but on social media.
F1: Qualifying in just over 10 minutes. McLaren looking very strong. Behind them Leclerc and Russell. Red Bull seem off the pace, but, then, nobody saw Verstappen's Japanese qualifying lap coming, so...
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
Pitiful to compare being pulled over for what sounds like a legitimate driving offence with the millions of people sent to labour camps for years for no reason whatsoever.
If you are reading the Gulag Archipelago for the first time during your travels - which I’d wager many PB’ers read years ago - it’s shameful that your only reaction to it is to try and draw some trite comparison with your being pulled over for bad driving.
Omg.
What’s “Kazakh” for *whooosh*?
Вуш apparently.
The determination to find reasons to take offence by some posters is remarkable.
I suspect they will be pretty rubbish at running councils. Speaking of which, how would Farage resolve the bins in Brum? Maybe someone would like to ask him. Unless they have some ex-counsellors in their ranks - maybe defectors from the Tories? - they will be pretty clueless from day one.
The truth is that no party has the answers to our problems.
Hard, long-term decisions are required but if anyone attempted to be really honest with the electorate they would howl and whine because a substantial wedge of the electorate want everything to be excellent (healthcare, education, defence) but don't want to pay the price necessary (not personally at least). No party can square that circle so the voters lurch about latching on to the next snake-oil salesman.
Like it or not autocracies have the upper hand over democracies in this respect which is why I also expect China to win its battle with Trump.
I’ve been saying for a while. Democracy is dwindling - and it is probably doomed over time. A relatively brief experiment in the context of human history
There are multiple reasons for this. Just one is the greater ability of autocracies to make difficult long term decisions
The ability to make difficult long term decisions is usually outweighed by the inability to distinguish right from wrong and efficient from inefficient. However polling organisations, social credit and mass observation now enable autocracies to "consult the people" constantly and make popular decisions without changing governments, reducing the historic problem of autocracy. This has been tried and tested in Russia and has worked for over twenty years now.
Russia also has multi party elections for president and parliament
you let yourself down every time you repeat this 'fact'
I know I’ve been joking about Solzhenitsyn and the Terror and the “Gooly Archypoo” but - incredibly - I’ve just had a real proper taste of what life was like under that police state
I overtook a slow lorry on the steppes - crossing a solid line - and I was IMMEDIATELY pulled over. Almost brutally. The copper swaggered out and we couldn’t understand each other. Then he made serious threats about bad stuff happening to me
So then he got in my car - got in my car!!! - and we drove to a nearby place with decent cell signal. And we used google translate. With that it became clear I was either going to jail or I could bribe him
I offered a bribe. He said yes. Then we drove back to his friend in the cop car and the copper got out of my car and he shrugged and changed his mind and said into Google translate “nah, what the hell, you’re a guest, we don’t want a bribe - on you go. Enjoy Kazakhstan”
The whole ordeal must have taken 12-14 minutes
Now I can look the great Russian dissidents in the eye. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Solzhenitsyn, the many that died in the camps. I’ve been there
Pitiful to compare being pulled over for what sounds like a legitimate driving offence with the millions of people sent to labour camps for years for no reason whatsoever.
If you are reading the Gulag Archipelago for the first time during your travels - which I’d wager many PB’ers read years ago - it’s shameful that your only reaction to it is to try and draw some trite comparison with your being pulled over for bad driving.
Omg.
What’s “Kazakh” for *whooosh*?
Вуш apparently.
The determination to find reasons to take offence by some posters is remarkable.
Have you kept hold of the stamped piece of loose tissue paper they hand back with your passport (or use to 5 years ago)? I had a colleague who spent the weekend in a prison cell because the flight was delayed and they'd 'overstayed' by 5 minutes when security opened.
My son loves penguins, and loved that story - especially as everyone was uninjured.
But yes, improperly secured loads have caused lots of crashes in the past. Not usually by falling on controls, but often by altering the plane's centre of gravity. Although I think there was a case where a plane nearly crashed because a binocular case wedged under some of the controls?
One of my favourite Blake's 7 episodes is one in which a shuttle taking Avon and Vila into orbit is sabotaged by placing a small amount of highly dense matter aboard, so it can't achieve escape velocity and is going to crash. Avon and Vila both also realise Avon could resolve the problem by ejecting Vila...
I remember watching that. Some of the instruments on their consoles were everyday objects sprayed to look like impressive technology. One I spotted because it was my hairdryer.
Comments
As usual the problem is writing a clear, simple requirement. And enforcing it.
For a port, you put - “x docks for ships of y displacement, of types a, b and c”. Failure to maintain that capability results in loss of ownership of the port.
Particularly from the government's law officer.
Attorney General Pam Bondi to Trump: “You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority.”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1910673838318190856
UK scores 92/100
It was either let it shut down, or move very quickly; this is the latter.
There's an awful lot of MAGA snowflakes is all I can say
Frit I tell thee
Trump’s “Reciprocal Tariffs” Have Reportedly Exclude PCs & Smartphone Imports
https://wccftech.com/trumps-reciprocal-tariffs-have-reportedly-excluded-pc-smartphone-imports/
How does that leave Walmart, though ? Or indeed Tesla.
Golf has long had a bit of a problem e.g. when Tiger was it his peak, 90% of the coverage would be Tiger...he's on the range....he on the practice putting green...he gone for a piss....3hrs until he tees off.... It as if they think if they elevate one player as THE superstar it helps grow interest / the game.
I find it rather grinding, especially as McIlroy isn't even Tiger, he isn't even the best player in the world. He is a top player, but not one of the GOATs.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cyvqm83z1nrt
What’s “Kazakh” for *whooosh*?
https://x.com/kobeissiletter/status/1911060759871729814?s=61
That'll show 'em who is boss!
South African R44 crashed during lift-off after unsecured penguin fell on controls
https://www.flightglobal.com/safety/south-african-r44-crashed-during-lift-off-after-unsecured-penguin-fell-on-controls/162602.article
edit
In 2021, multiple complaints were made about parking fines being issued by automated systems at Stockport Peel Centre even after motorists had purchased parking tickets.
“Fairly ruthless” 😂
Otoh, our trunk roads are in decent condition (Skye aside) and they are maintained on long term contracts with BEAR etc.
This started off barking. I am really not sure what point we have reached on the madness scale now. To misquote Jaws we're going to need a bigger scale.
https://xcancel.com/LoftusSteve/status/1910348410651058521#m
The taskforce, led by Musk confidante Antonio Gracias, is providing the technical infrastructure for a sweeping set of actions aimed at revoking parole and terminating visas.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/11/doge-immigration-taskforce-00287327
But yes, improperly secured loads have caused lots of crashes in the past. Not usually by falling on controls, but often by altering the plane's centre of gravity. Although I think there was a case where a plane nearly crashed because a binocular case wedged under some of the controls?
The point about scale is entirely valid, though, and needs some hard thinking.
Underestimating China
Why America Needs a New Strategy of Allied Scale to Offset Beijing’s Enduring Advantages
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/underestimating-china
I'm not pregnant but I gagging for one....
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c209ndewxy3o
Reeves may have driven many of those who paid the highest taxes (indirectly on their expenditure) out of the country, she has made employing people more expensive both by the ENI and minimum wage changes increasing unemployment, she has made both our private schools and Universities less attractive to foreigners with predictable results, she continues to put up with absolute nonsense by Ed Miliband and she is yet to deliver on the planning simplification but compared with her American equivalents she is JM Keynes reincarnated.
Not tempted.
Otherwise you’d have the unfortunate opposing construction of “rimming demand”, which no one wants.
https://x.com/AaronBlake/status/1911043934958035077
Lutnick 5 days ago said smartphone manufacturing was coming to the U.S. because of tariffs…
https://generalelectionbooks.substack.com/p/get-in-the-inside-story-of-labour
Following the tradition of political books containing the word "Out" or "In", "Get In" is the story of how lobotomy victim Keir Starmer became leader of the Labour Party and PM (2024-2029). The sequel, provisionally entitled "Fuck Off", is scheduled for 2030.
Trump might be lining up the same trouble with his frequent changes of direction, often announced not through official channels but on social media.
https://x.com/YorkshireSlang/status/1910369817909203052
The determination to find reasons to take offence by some posters is remarkable.
I had a colleague who spent the weekend in a prison cell because the flight was delayed and they'd 'overstayed' by 5 minutes when security opened.
That said: for those of us who want to use airmiles to fly around, it's fabulous news.