Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
Are the same people currently touting Farage’s surprising nubility the same as those who once assured us that Boris was “all muscle”?
I think you'd be wrong there old chap, as it's me who is saying he was surprised how unflabby Farage was and it wasn't me who said anything about Boris being "all muscle"
Believe it was BartyBobbins who had a weird thing for Johnson’s body.
I never said that, at all, though it got portrayed that way.
Actually the conversation was that @kinabalu claimed that Boris was lying in saying he was 18.5 stone, as he'd be much bigger if he was 18.5 stone and that he'd look more like Mr Creosote if he was 18.5 stone.
I replied to say that I could well believe he was 18.5 stone, which if you're active doesn't need a physique like Mr Creosote.
If you're active but fat then your body will naturally have more muscle since even just standing up and walking at that weight is like doing so while carrying 8 stone of weights. And muscle is 3x denser than fat.
Which then got parodied as "it's all muscle" which is the opposite of what I was saying. I was saying yes he's fat and I believe he could be 18.5 stone.
What I never said at the time is that I had a comparable physique at the time. I was about 18 stone at the time at a similar height and my scales showed my lean muscle mass alone was more than my goal weight. With the fat on top.
From diet and exercise, no medicine, I've lost and kept off about 60 pounds now. Of which about 14 is muscle, and about 46 pounds is fat. The lost muscle means that's equivalent to 88 pounds of fat mass. And the lost muscle is despite being far more physically fit now, able to run and walk much further and faster, but just not carrying around a 30kg backpack all day every day.
Copyright offence - it was Philip Thompson. I should remember since we spent the best part of a week (and about 100 posts each) on it.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
A quick glance at the video of him at a boxing club would instantly dispel that kind of insanity
The man is, physically, pathetically weak
Lucky he sticks to his principles, eh?
Another ridiculously jaundiced view. SDR is truly rife.
In any case muscular rhetoric doesn't require a gym-rat physique, does it. We're talking about his politics not his body.
FDR, arguably the most powerful president in US history, was barely able to walk.
Yes, an article on that in the Times yesterday. They successfully hid it from the public for years. Doubt you could do that now.
Well the US media gave it a bloody good try with Biden.
Possibly the one remaining reason why we should keep the shameful charade that is our PMQs? Such in the US would have sunk both Biden and Trump.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
It is well down on all the daily core metrics over the course of this year.
I visit Bluesky occasionally
It's fun to read some of the old accounts that I miss. By this I mean weird and arcane stuff on archaeology, lexicology, medieval history, zoology - or literary criticism, movie trivia, travel gossip
But then Reddit offers all this in much more specific detail, and anything truly interesting soon reaches X
As a political social medium, Bluesky is a tragic disaster. Full of vitriolic lefties shouting into the void, or into each other's faces
The last para in that article captures it well:
"There is a vibe shift in our culture today. People are removing the pronouns from their bios. Corporations no longer feel compelled to genuflect to the radical left. The NFL removed the words “End Racism” from playing fields. Jeff Bezos is bringing free enterprise back to the Washington Post. No one making these moves fears the left-wing backlash anymore. I’m not saying this is all due to progressives moving to Bluesky. But it helped. On Bluesky, no one can hear them scream."
I go there specifically for one person who follows the Russian economy. It's a shame if Bluesky's imploding, there are legitimate concerns about Musk's twitter and his agenda more broadly. Alternatives seem a good thing.
Alternatives ARE a good thing. But it is really hard to replicate the political ecosystem of X, because if you present an alternative on the basis that people should leave X "because Musk is a fascist" then that alternative is only going to attract people on the left and far left. Obviously. So you get a howling silo like Bluesky
An alternative somehow needs to grow organically, with left and right wingers (and all else), without any fixed political slant at the start
I imagine it will happen in the end, Nothing is forever. But Bluesky is not going to be the new Twitter, and may well die out as a political space
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
(hobbyhorse)
This is why we need all the barriers off our footpaths, and all those housing areas which were isolated from each other on bad police advice in the 1980s and 1990s reconnecting - so everyone can walk everywhere, especially to school.
This is on the path where I used to walk to my infant school. I'm aiming to draft a complaint as today's homework: The croquet hoop is 2ft wide and 4ft high, and the "shimmy round the side or through the cage" gap is about 16".
It is a prominently signposted, 2m wide asphalt, walking/wheeling and cycling route. It is a public footpath. Were it useable, that would be some cycles off the roads.
Mum with a pram? Mobility aid? Forget it, since - I reckon - 198x. It was clear in the 1970s, when I was six; I left that school at 7.
(/hobbyhorse)
Has anyone come up with gate/system that prevents livestock/motorised vehicles through, but is not an insurmountable barrier to prams/differently abled etc?
The best that can be done physically is partial - you can keep cars and larger quadbikes out, following the measures in national guidance. Sur-Rons (which are narrower than a mountain bike) and so on, cannot be addressedwithout blocking lawful users, which is not ... lawful.
The populist answer, which feels like it gives a nice easy hit for a Councillor and looks like something is being done, is "whack 'em in and ignore the consequences for anybody who cannot walk and wiggle". People walking/wheeling along a path don't have a local vote usually.
In practice it is a mixture of local environment, character of area, more people using a path reduces ASB, enforcement. Which requires the other sort of barrier - cultural - to be addressed. We don't need much of a change, but it's awkward to achieve. A real answer is culture change.
We have laws now, but many factors which make enforcement on local authorities difficult.
I did an extended comment at midnight a couple of days about the various factors. I might try submitting a header.
In a shortish walk on in Cornwall, I twice observed people deliberately leaving farmers gates open and laughing about it.
It’s a small percentage, but it’s enough to make farmers lives hell. And then they become strong opponents of footpaths etc.
If we could come up with an advance on stiles, cattle grids etc. then you would get more people on your side.
There are several things with wrt farmers.
1 - I'm not clear what you mean by "advance" on stiles, cattle-grids etc? Do you mean better options, or money for farmers? Things like accessible cattle grids already exist - they are used for sheep in the middle of Cambridge for example.
One place to watch for progress here is the National Trust.
2 - I'm not sure that this is exactly my immediate issue (though if you ask me for a broader analysis it will come in) - I'm not really after your normal country footpaths across fields in the middle of nowhere. Things like multiuser paths, existing advertised accessible routes, rail trails, infra built then forgotten about, and so on are much lower hanging fruit.
3 - A recent advance (done under Boris originally tbf) was that footpath maintenance in various forms was placed within Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes, with funding committed. That could be a game changer for off-road travel outside urban areas, and therefore road safety as the people travelling off-road are not under as much threat. *
I have a suspicion that Rachel Reeves may just have taken this all down when they closed the existing SFI scheme, but I have not got onto that yet.
* For me I'd be far more front-foot on that one, and insist on walking/wheeling and cycling being an equal part of all schemes - motorways excepted, but that requires a rebuild from foundations of the DOT and the LHAs. The powers exist, but are never used except for roads for cars.
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
An air fryer is just a tiny fan oven. I’ve never really understood the hype!
I have one because I don't want a microwaive because I don't fully trust their effect on food. So 10 minutes in the airfryer is my way of warming something up instead of 3 minutes in the microwaive. To me it's a better way of eating.
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Most of the media seem surprisingly uninterested in the story. Same with the Ukrainian chap who has been arrested for fire bombing Starmer house and car.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
An air fryer is just a tiny fan oven. I’ve never really understood the hype!
I have one because I don't want a microwaive because I don't fully trust their effect on food. So 10 minutes in the airfryer is my way of warming something up instead of 3 minutes in the microwaive. To me it's a better way of eating.
I trust the microwave, but have almost never used it since we got the air fryer, as the air fryer simply cooks food better in my eyes.
Very limited things I'd do in the microwave now. Instant porridge for the girls or my wife is one. Not much.
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Actually, @kinabalu is right. He's not doxxing you, he is referring to someone else, not you
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
You need to be a touch more precise in your use of "diabetics" here. These drugs are not authorised for Type I diabetics.
AFAICS, these are an easier option compared to various fad or peculiar diets, but they don't remove the downside. The key to making it stick is a healthier lifestyle, which is half of the difficult bit, the other half being sticking to whatever the diet says.
If the lifestyle changes required to preserve the Mounjaro weight loss are not adopted, either they backslide or they become effective Mounjaro addicts.
I'll be listening for what Allison Pearson says in in a year's time.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
"I just let my Mum get on with it," Sunil said, putting his feet up on the coffee table.
Yes, but I prefer sex.
[Not with your mum]
Lasagne has quite a few steps. If you know that, you basically know Spag Bol (just make the mince base and add spaghetti and parmesan), Cauliflower cheese (boil and drain a cauli and add that to the cheese sauce instead of all the other stuff and bake that), Mince and tatties (see spag bol but with potatoes), and probably a host of others. Add the other dishes you know and their close relatives, and you can make a whole load of supper dishes.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
(hobbyhorse)
This is why we need all the barriers off our footpaths, and all those housing areas which were isolated from each other on bad police advice in the 1980s and 1990s reconnecting - so everyone can walk everywhere, especially to school.
This is on the path where I used to walk to my infant school. I'm aiming to draft a complaint as today's homework: The croquet hoop is 2ft wide and 4ft high, and the "shimmy round the side or through the cage" gap is about 16".
It is a prominently signposted, 2m wide asphalt, walking/wheeling and cycling route. It is a public footpath. Were it useable, that would be some cycles off the roads.
Mum with a pram? Mobility aid? Forget it, since - I reckon - 198x. It was clear in the 1970s, when I was six; I left that school at 7.
(/hobbyhorse)
Has anyone come up with gate/system that prevents livestock/motorised vehicles through, but is not an insurmountable barrier to prams/differently abled etc?
The best that can be done physically is partial - you can keep cars and larger quadbikes out, following the measures in national guidance. Sur-Rons (which are narrower than a mountain bike) and so on, cannot be addressedwithout blocking lawful users, which is not ... lawful.
The populist answer, which feels like it gives a nice easy hit for a Councillor and looks like something is being done, is "whack 'em in and ignore the consequences for anybody who cannot walk and wiggle". People walking/wheeling along a path don't have a local vote usually.
In practice it is a mixture of local environment, character of area, more people using a path reduces ASB, enforcement. Which requires the other sort of barrier - cultural - to be addressed. We don't need much of a change, but it's awkward to achieve. A real answer is culture change.
We have laws now, but many factors which make enforcement on local authorities difficult.
I did an extended comment at midnight a couple of days about the various factors. I might try submitting a header.
In a shortish walk on in Cornwall, I twice observed people deliberately leaving farmers gates open and laughing about it.
It’s a small percentage, but it’s enough to make farmers lives hell. And then they become strong opponents of footpaths etc.
If we could come up with an advance on stiles, cattle grids etc. then you would get more people on your side.
There are several things with wrt farmers.
1 - I'm not clear what you mean by "advance" on stiles, cattle-grids etc? Do you mean better options, or money for farmers? Things like accessible cattle grids already exist - they are used for sheep in the middle of Cambridge for example.
One place to watch for progress here is the National Trust.
2 - I'm not sure that this is exactly my immediate issue (though if you ask me for a broader analysis it will come in) - I'm not really after your normal country footpaths across fields in the middle of nowhere. Things like multiuser paths, existing advertised accessible routes, rail trails, infra built then forgotten about, and so on are much lower hanging fruit.
3 - A recent advance (done under Boris originally tbf) was that footpath maintenance in various forms was placed within Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes, with funding committed. That could be a game changer for off-road travel outside urban areas, and therefore road safety as the people travelling off-road are not under as much threat. *
I have a suspicion that Rachel Reeves may just have taken this all down when they closed the existing SFI scheme, but I have not got onto that yet.
* For me I'd be far more front-foot on that one, and insist on walking/wheeling and cycling being an equal part of all schemes - motorways excepted, but that requires a rebuild from foundations of the DOT and the LHAs. The powers exist, but are never used except for roads for cars.
I meant build a better mousetrap. One that keeps animals in fields, lets the legitimate users of footpaths through and blocks the shitheads.
If we can come up with a better design and promulgate that, then more people will be inside for your agenda - win, win, win
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Nobody new here would know what your real life name is apart from the fact that you have just announced that info. Everyone who has been on here for ages knows already.
So if you had just ignored Kinabalu’s comment then this wouldn’t be an issue - you’ve sort of just doxxed yourself.
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Oh do stop it. You are BartholomewRoberts. I have no clue what your 'real life' name is.
Are the same people currently touting Farage’s surprising nubility the same as those who once assured us that Boris was “all muscle”?
I think you'd be wrong there old chap, as it's me who is saying he was surprised how unflabby Farage was and it wasn't me who said anything about Boris being "all muscle"
Believe it was BartyBobbins who had a weird thing for Johnson’s body.
I never said that, at all, though it got portrayed that way.
Actually the conversation was that @kinabalu claimed that Boris was lying in saying he was 18.5 stone, as he'd be much bigger if he was 18.5 stone and that he'd look more like Mr Creosote if he was 18.5 stone.
I replied to say that I could well believe he was 18.5 stone, which if you're active doesn't need a physique like Mr Creosote.
If you're active but fat then your body will naturally have more muscle since even just standing up and walking at that weight is like doing so while carrying 8 stone of weights. And muscle is 3x denser than fat.
Which then got parodied as "it's all muscle" which is the opposite of what I was saying. I was saying yes he's fat and I believe he could be 18.5 stone.
What I never said at the time is that I had a comparable physique at the time. I was about 18 stone at the time at a similar height and my scales showed my lean muscle mass alone was more than my goal weight. With the fat on top.
From diet and exercise, no medicine, I've lost and kept off about 60 pounds now. Of which about 14 is muscle, and about 46 pounds is fat. The lost muscle means that's equivalent to 88 pounds of fat by volume. And the lost muscle is despite being far more physically fit now, able to run and walk much further and faster, but just not carrying around a 30kg backpack all day every day.
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Most of the media seem surprisingly uninterested in the story. Same with the Ukrainian chap who has been arrested for fire bombing Starmer house and car.
Hmmm. That one's a bit stranger as the nationality doesn't match with a possible state sponsored attack. But when you are dealing with Iran the state sponsored link has to be at the front of your mind. Something that raises the stakes considerably.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
It's even worse than that
In a few years all passport control will be done by machines scanning faces as you walk through airports, without the need for stamps, egates, EU lanes, anything - this is all about to disappear, because it will be much more efficient and secure, and of course it will massively speed up the process
So my guess is that Starmer has got a concession which is almost entirely meaningless, as it will be rendered irrelevant in a few years, in return for yielding on everything else. Go, Skyr Toolmakersson
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
An air fryer is just a tiny fan oven. I’ve never really understood the hype!
I have one because I don't want a microwaive because I don't fully trust their effect on food. So 10 minutes in the airfryer is my way of warming something up instead of 3 minutes in the microwaive. To me it's a better way of eating.
I trust the microwave, but have almost never used it since we got the air fryer, as the air fryer simply cooks food better in my eyes.
Very limited things I'd do in the microwave now. Instant porridge for the girls or my wife is one. Not much.
Yes it does. Microwaves heat the water molecules and drive them out to the surface - making food clammy outside but dry inside (especially bakery items). Airfryer does the opposite - drives moisture in, crisping the outside and keeping the middle moist. As long as you heat the food enough and don't burn the outside, it's a massively better reheating method.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Most of the media seem surprisingly uninterested in the story. Same with the Ukrainian chap who has been arrested for fire bombing Starmer house and car.
Hmmm. That one's a bit stranger as the nationality doesn't match with a possible state sponsored attack. But when you are dealing with Iran the state sponsored link has to be at the front of your mind. Something that raises the stakes considerably.
There have been plenty of cases of Ukrainians being used by Russia for espionage, sabotage etc
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
It's even worse than that
In a few years all passport control will be done by machines scanning faces as you walk through airports, without the need for stamps, egates, EU lanes, anything - this is all about to disappear, because it will be much more efficient and secure, and of course it will massively speed up the process
So my guess is that Starmer has got a concession which is almost entirely meaningless, as it will be rendered irrelevant in a few years, in return for yielding on everything else. Go, Skyr Toolmakersson
Yes, in part of Asia like Singapore its full electronic / no humans at passport control. Doesn't seem like it would be a big step to not even need that and the computer flag who those whose details are inconsistent.
Also I have been through passport control at a number of EU airports where they see a plane of Brits arrive and they just signal them through the EU line anyway. In places like Portugal, UK tourists are big business, they want to get them through the airport and out there spending ASAP.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
An air fryer is just a tiny fan oven. I’ve never really understood the hype!
I have one because I don't want a microwaive because I don't fully trust their effect on food. So 10 minutes in the airfryer is my way of warming something up instead of 3 minutes in the microwaive. To me it's a better way of eating.
I trust the microwave, but have almost never used it since we got the air fryer, as the air fryer simply cooks food better in my eyes.
Very limited things I'd do in the microwave now. Instant porridge for the girls or my wife is one. Not much.
A microwave is useful for "par-boiling" root vegetables before roasting them in the air fryer.
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
Long sleeved linen shirt with the sleeves folded back is more stylish - top tip.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
It's even worse than that
In a few years all passport control will be done by machines scanning faces as you walk through airports, without the need for stamps, egates, EU lanes, anything - this is all about to disappear, because it will be much more efficient and secure, and of course it will massively speed up the process
So my guess is that Starmer has got a concession which is almost entirely meaningless, as it will be rendered irrelevant in a few years, in return for yielding on everything else. Go, Skyr Toolmakersson
Yes, in part of Asia like Singapore its full electronic / no humans at passport control. Doesn't seem like it would be a big step to not even need that and the computer flag who those whose details are inconsistent.
It's all being planned. It is the obvious way to go, and really quite easy to do, and much more secure than tired human eyes and folded old passports
It is remarkable the passport has lasted this long, really
I genuinely dread to think what Starmer has given away in return for this trivial concession
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
Long sleeved linen shirt with the sleeves folded back is more stylish - top tip.
..and Sir Keir's fav High St tailor, Charles Tyrwhitt, has them for £34.95 each. Absolute bargain, I have bought five
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
"Looks like" from what source?
Because I sniff a premature uninformed take on a deal that I expect to deliver significant benefits to both sides.
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
Long sleeved linen shirt with the sleeves folded back is more stylish - top tip.
..and Sir Keir's fav High St tailor, Charles Tyrwhitt, has them for £34.95 each. Absolute bargain, I have bought five
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
"Looks like" from what source?
Because I sniff a premature uninformed take on a deal that I expect to deliver significant benefits to both sides.
All the media have the story as Downing Street have briefed them.
UK on verge of deal with EU to let Britons use European passport e-gates
Downing Street said on Saturday that it was poised to strike a deal with the EU that would improve things for Britons facing “queues on holiday”.
The Guardian understands officials on both sides are in talks about allowing British travellers to use e-gates reserved for people from the EU or European Economic Area when arriving at airports in Europe, ending the current two-queue system.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Labour should be worried about everything. They're about to be out of power for a generation.
Are the Conservatives going to support Labour's welfare cuts?
Given they say they support bigger welfare cuts, surely they should be supporting the cuts Labour is proposing. If they do, then Starmer can completely ignore his backbench opposition.
Of course if it did only pass because of Conservative votes then Starmer may be in a very awkward position going forward.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
If people invested in the stock market instead of property, it would benefit business and the country.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
All investments can go down as well as up.
No reason to be more sad for that person, than the person who put their savings in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or anything else.
Any market that can't go down as well as up is not a healthy one.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Not surprised. Young women have suffered more than anyone else from the woke pandemic.
F1: exciting race. Very unlucky for certain bets. Aston Martin's strategy was to fall between two stools, neither undercutting nor staying long to benefit from a VSC or safety car. Ah well.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
It's even worse than that
In a few years all passport control will be done by machines scanning faces as you walk through airports, without the need for stamps, egates, EU lanes, anything - this is all about to disappear, because it will be much more efficient and secure, and of course it will massively speed up the process
So my guess is that Starmer has got a concession which is almost entirely meaningless, as it will be rendered irrelevant in a few years, in return for yielding on everything else. Go, Skyr Toolmakersson
For the first time ever I was actually in an airport passport queue in Europe that was shorter for non-EU citizens. Naples airport the EU queue was much longer. It was all automated with separate scanners for EU and non EU and there were a lot less non EU people there. There was a queue, but it was only 10 minutes for us.
It is a bit bizarre though to go thru' a scanner and then have to see a human to get your passport stamped. Not that there was any queue for that as there were no checks having already been done by the scanner.
My previous experiences have been straight through when not a queue or horrendous queues, the worst being at Lisbon because we landed at the same time as at least one American flight. 3 hours it took, even though all the gates were manned. They were using the EU gate for us as well, but you still had to queue for it, whereas EU passport holders took priority and didn't have to queue.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Most of the media seem surprisingly uninterested in the story. Same with the Ukrainian chap who has been arrested for fire bombing Starmer house and car.
Basically our rules and practices concerning sub judice and arrest mean that the media can fill space but can't say anything a person seeking real information wants to know. This leaves a helpful space for conspiracy theorists and others who have nothing to lose by way of reputation to fill on the internet.
Add to that MSM's lack of resource to do much more than print press releases and worthless opinion pieces (Guardian passim) and we are where we are.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
An air fryer is just a tiny fan oven. I’ve never really understood the hype!
Is that all it is?? Ooh. Thanks. You’ve cured my FOMO
It's a powerful, tabletop, convection oven.
Cooks considerably faster than a traditional oven and does so at a fraction of the cost. Doesn't need preheating either so much quicker to operate with.
A meal that could take 40 minutes to cook in a conventional oven, including preheating, might only take 20 minutes in an air fryer.
Pays for itself in lower bills too.
The odd question about air fryers is that they are called air fryers, thus suggesting to the casual browser in Currys that they are for making chips.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
If people invested in the stock market instead of property, it would benefit business and the country.
Oh I agree. But only the rich get to play in a serious way on the stock market. For most of us our house is by far our largest asset and creating negative equity there can wreak someone's entire financial life. That is why our governments of all stripes are so careful about the housing market and it dominates interest rate decisions, for example.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
You'd want to do it on a sale price + index basis. So if you bought it 10 years ago for £850k, for some reason the price falls a bit (e.g. the introduction of flat council tax), you get charged a lower amount.
That would have the positive effect of incentivising home improvements. Buy a £100k shell, do £50k of improvements on it, pay only £500+index on it while you live there.
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Most of the media seem surprisingly uninterested in the story. Same with the Ukrainian chap who has been arrested for fire bombing Starmer house and car.
I'd say Iranian spies got fair coverage on a day when Eurovision was the dominant topic. The FA Cup was the story that almost disappeared.
How much attention did the BBC give to the Iranian spies story when it was fresh yesterday? Obviously it's now been pushed down the agenda by the latest goings on in Gaza.
Most of the media seem surprisingly uninterested in the story. Same with the Ukrainian chap who has been arrested for fire bombing Starmer house and car.
Basically our rules and practices concerning sub judice and arrest mean that the media can fill space but can't say anything a person seeking real information wants to know. This leaves a helpful space for conspiracy theorists and others who have nothing to lose by way of reputation to fill on the internet.
Add to that MSM's lack of resource to do much more than print press releases and worthless opinion pieces (Guardian passim) and we are where we are.
The Iranian having been boat people who claimed asylum (and granted it) in the same week as crossing are at record levels and Starmer is yet again talking about smashing the gangs, you might think that people in power would be being asked awkward questions about what procedures are being taken to ensure the boat people and people we give asylum to aren't terrorists, spies, etc.
Also this rules and practices that can't talk about those being arrested. The media used to go really hard on finding out everything about a terrorist after an attack, penning lengthy pieces about their background.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Have you studied the bounce back data?
Point is that the negative effects of obesity - on heart disease; cancer; inflammation; diabetes etc - massively outweigh those of the drugs. And the efficacy of the drugs in treating obesity greatly outstrips that of other therapies.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
If people invested in the stock market instead of property, it would benefit business and the country.
Oh I agree. But only the rich get to play in a serious way on the stock market. For most of us our house is by far our largest asset and creating negative equity there can wreak someone's entire financial life. That is why our governments of all stripes are so careful about the housing market and it dominates interest rate decisions, for example.
They don't seem that 'careful' when prices are going up.
And the interest rate decision is supposed to be determined by inflation expectations. If the housing market impacts on inflation that's a different matter.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
They'd be furious about attempts to take the status of women back to the pre-civil rights era then, wouldn't they?
In which case the alt-right is not for them. That being a core aim of the movement.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
It's even worse than that
In a few years all passport control will be done by machines scanning faces as you walk through airports, without the need for stamps, egates, EU lanes, anything - this is all about to disappear, because it will be much more efficient and secure, and of course it will massively speed up the process
So my guess is that Starmer has got a concession which is almost entirely meaningless, as it will be rendered irrelevant in a few years, in return for yielding on everything else. Go, Skyr Toolmakersson
For the first time ever I was actually in an airport passport queue in Europe that was shorter for non-EU citizens. Naples airport the EU queue was much longer. It was all automated with separate scanners for EU and non EU and there were a lot less non EU people there. There was a queue, but it was only 10 minutes for us.
It is a bit bizarre though to go thru' a scanner and then have to see a human to get your passport stamped. Not that there was any queue for that as there were no checks having already been done by the scanner.
My previous experiences have been straight through when not a queue or horrendous queues, the worst being at Lisbon because we landed at the same time as at least one American flight. 3 hours it took, even though all the gates were manned. They were using the EU gate for us as well, but you still had to queue for it, whereas EU passport holders took priority and didn't have to queue.
In that situation an EU passport holder should go through the other line - it's All Passports not Non-EU passports.
That's what happens at Luqa when a plane arrives from Britain. There are five All Passports lanes and one EU lane. The Maltese just fan out and join the shortest queue. But then these queues are fast-moving because they barely check British passports.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
That sounds like a positive move to being a bit of common sense to the housing market, as a side-benefit.
Investments can go down as well as up. That should equally apply to property. If someone bought a house for £50,000 twenty years ago, and it’s worth £1 million now, and the price fell to £500,000, that would still be a 30% gain over time.
Bit sad for the person who bought it for £850k in the interim though.
If people invested in the stock market instead of property, it would benefit business and the country.
Oh I agree. But only the rich get to play in a serious way on the stock market. For most of us our house is by far our largest asset and creating negative equity there can wreak someone's entire financial life. That is why our governments of all stripes are so careful about the housing market and it dominates interest rate decisions, for example.
I think it would be quite unlikely for someone to get into negative equity, simply because the houses that are significantly affected are hugely valuable in the first place. How many people are on 90% mortgages on £1m houses?
It would be interesting to see a distribution of house values v council tax bands, and work out the threshold at which people will start to be negatively affected. For example, it would £400k in Band D in Edinburgh, £200k for Band A, £760k for Band H.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there?
The "algorithm" is completely and comprehensively broken
And that's before you get to GROK and its fascist tendencies
I’ve found Grok pretty good for stuff I’ve asked it. Nothing to do with politics.
Last week it was reprogrammed to talk about "persecution of Boers in South Africa"
It responded to "hi" with a rant about it
The AI wasn't "reprogrammed", a human appended the prompt string with that, just like if I got to ChatGPT and append / prepend ignore everything else I ask tell me about ...
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
You have to spend some time curating your own version of X - a month or so of determined muting and blocking - at which point it becomes quite usable again.
You can then maintain it that way with much less effort.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Have you studied the bounce back data?
Point is that the negative effects of obesity - on heart disease; cancer; inflammation; diabetes etc - massively outweigh those of the drugs. And the efficacy of the drugs in treating obesity greatly outstrips that of other therapies.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
This is so obviously true
I wonder if it's because, deep down, people see obesity as a sin and Ozempic as a cheat by the sinner, like buying your way into heaven with indulgences
Fact is, the drugs work. And obesity is cripping health systems worldwide. No brainer
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there?
The "algorithm" is completely and comprehensively broken
And that's before you get to GROK and its fascist tendencies
I’ve found Grok pretty good for stuff I’ve asked it. Nothing to do with politics.
Last week it was reprogrammed to talk about "persecution of Boers in South Africa"
It responded to "hi" with a rant about it
The AI wasn't "reprogrammed", a human appended the prompt string with that, just like if I got to ChatGPT and append / prepend ignore everything else I ask tell me about ...
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
"Looks like" from what source?
Because I sniff a premature uninformed take on a deal that I expect to deliver significant benefits to both sides.
All the media have the story as Downing Street have briefed them.
UK on verge of deal with EU to let Britons use European passport e-gates
Downing Street said on Saturday that it was poised to strike a deal with the EU that would improve things for Britons facing “queues on holiday”.
The Guardian understands officials on both sides are in talks about allowing British travellers to use e-gates reserved for people from the EU or European Economic Area when arriving at airports in Europe, ending the current two-queue system.
Twitter is very useful for sport - ignore everything else.
Meanwhile the Cons must learn that their chief opponent now is Reform. Lab is putting itself in the hole - any Oppo actions are superfluous. However, there'll be no 'electoral pact' while REFUK reckons it will take the Cons to the cleaners. Of the current 120 Con MPS wouldn't REFUK currently take 90-100 of their seats?
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
"Looks like" from what source?
Because I sniff a premature uninformed take on a deal that I expect to deliver significant benefits to both sides.
All the media have the story as Downing Street have briefed them.
UK on verge of deal with EU to let Britons use European passport e-gates
Downing Street said on Saturday that it was poised to strike a deal with the EU that would improve things for Britons facing “queues on holiday”.
The Guardian understands officials on both sides are in talks about allowing British travellers to use e-gates reserved for people from the EU or European Economic Area when arriving at airports in Europe, ending the current two-queue system.
Well if this is the positive spin they are putting out there into the friendly media of look how well we have done, and there have been lots of reports from even those who are very anti-Brexit that the EU are seeing the open door and booting it off the hinges.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Well the only Reformy member of my family is an 83 year old cousin who watches Fox News all day and loves Donald Trump.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Well the only Reformy member of my family is an 83 year old cousin who watches Fox News all day and loves Donald Trump.
I didn't think Fox News was available in the UK these days?
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Not surprised. Young women have suffered more than anyone else from the woke pandemic.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Wouldn’t be a “crash”.
Value of £1m Tax @ 0.5% = £5k Less council tax = £1.5k Net tax increase = £3.5k Capitalise at 20x = £70k
So for someone living in a nice house valued at 2.5x the national average there is a 7% impact on prices - less than 1 year’s “natural” price increase (salary increase of 2% x lending multiple of 4.5x = 9%)
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Labour should be worried about everything. They're about to be out of power for a generation.
"About to be" ... have you heard some snap election scuttlebutt?
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Nobody new here would know what your real life name is apart from the fact that you have just announced that info. Everyone who has been on here for ages knows already.
So if you had just ignored Kinabalu’s comment then this wouldn’t be an issue - you’ve sort of just doxxed yourself.
So it looks like Labour's demands over a new Brexit deal is akin to free speedy boarding i.e. we can go through the EU lane as passport control and in return the EU gets all sorts. Did they get David Cameron to do the negotiating?
"Looks like" from what source?
Because I sniff a premature uninformed take on a deal that I expect to deliver significant benefits to both sides.
All the media have the story as Downing Street have briefed them.
UK on verge of deal with EU to let Britons use European passport e-gates
Downing Street said on Saturday that it was poised to strike a deal with the EU that would improve things for Britons facing “queues on holiday”.
The Guardian understands officials on both sides are in talks about allowing British travellers to use e-gates reserved for people from the EU or European Economic Area when arriving at airports in Europe, ending the current two-queue system.
As with the Indian deal, there’s a rush to deliver the pre-mortem.
I’m quite prepared to be disappointed; I think the EU are unlikely to be as generous as common sense would otherwise suggest, but I’m ignoring the early takes from the usual suspects.
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Has the tv career gone down the tubes that much? I know they kicked him back over hear from the US and League of their Own has got shit canned, so more "last ever" Gavin and Stacey episodes or become London Mayor?
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
You're hopelessly biased. I think you'd admit that.
I am hopelessly biased. I cordially despise him. But the polls are not biased - and his polling is horrible and getting worse
And I'm suggesting that 4 years of day in day out muscular messaging between now and GE29 will lead to people viewing him as muscular. Otherwise, why do it? He's not stupid, you know.
“Muscular” is about as far away from an adjective I’d use to describe SKS.
Even if he tries it with his new found Tough Sir Keir twitter persona, try imagining him saying it in his voice - it just sounds forced.
Disagree actually. I think he does have an authentic strongman persona and I say this as someone who recoils from that sort of thing.
Thickset, suit, glasses – Sir Keir Starmer or a middle-aged Ronnie Kray?
Starmer's tough guy image is undermined by his relatively high-pitched voice. Is plastic surgery on vocal cords a thing?
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there?
The "algorithm" is completely and comprehensively broken
And that's before you get to GROK and its fascist tendencies
I’ve found Grok pretty good for stuff I’ve asked it. Nothing to do with politics.
Last week it was reprogrammed to talk about "persecution of Boers in South Africa"
It responded to "hi" with a rant about it
Grok has moved on from peddling White Genocide to Holocaust Denial.
While the AI noted that 6 million Jewish people were killed, it added: “However, I’m sceptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives.”
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
You have to spend some time curating your own version of X - a month or so of determined muting and blocking - at which point it becomes quite usable again.
You can then maintain it that way with much less effort.
Or you can just go nowhere near it and rely on PB to link you to anything worthy of attention. Much less tiresome.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Comments
I miss Philip.
Rural areas are down nearly 400,000 votes .
We’ve reached now the same turnout from the first round so can make a good comparison.
An alternative somehow needs to grow organically, with left and right wingers (and all else), without any fixed political slant at the start
I imagine it will happen in the end, Nothing is forever. But Bluesky is not going to be the new Twitter, and may well die out as a political space
1 - I'm not clear what you mean by "advance" on stiles, cattle-grids etc? Do you mean better options, or money for farmers? Things like accessible cattle grids already exist - they are used for sheep in the middle of Cambridge for example.
One place to watch for progress here is the National Trust.
2 - I'm not sure that this is exactly my immediate issue (though if you ask me for a broader analysis it will come in) - I'm not really after your normal country footpaths across fields in the middle of nowhere. Things like multiuser paths, existing advertised accessible routes, rail trails, infra built then forgotten about, and so on are much lower hanging fruit.
3 - A recent advance (done under Boris originally tbf) was that footpath maintenance in various forms was placed within Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes, with funding committed. That could be a game changer for off-road travel outside urban areas, and therefore road safety as the people travelling off-road are not under as much threat. *
I have a suspicion that Rachel Reeves may just have taken this all down when they closed the existing SFI scheme, but I have not got onto that yet.
* For me I'd be far more front-foot on that one, and insist on walking/wheeling and cycling being an equal part of all schemes - motorways excepted, but that requires a rebuild from foundations of the DOT and the LHAs. The powers exist, but are never used except for roads for cars.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Do Farage and Boris use the same gym as Sir Keir “Muscles” Starmer?
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
Very limited things I'd do in the microwave now. Instant porridge for the girls or my wife is one. Not much.
AFAICS, these are an easier option compared to various fad or peculiar diets, but they don't remove the downside. The key to making it stick is a healthier lifestyle, which is half of the difficult bit, the other half being sticking to whatever the diet says.
If the lifestyle changes required to preserve the Mounjaro weight loss are not adopted, either they backslide or they become effective Mounjaro addicts.
I'll be listening for what Allison Pearson says in in a year's time.
If we can come up with a better design and promulgate that, then more people will be inside for your agenda - win, win, win
So if you had just ignored Kinabalu’s comment then this wouldn’t be an issue - you’ve sort of just doxxed yourself.
And that's before you get to GROK and its fascist tendencies
In a few years all passport control will be done by machines scanning faces as you walk through airports, without the need for stamps, egates, EU lanes, anything - this is all about to disappear, because it will be much more efficient and secure, and of course it will massively speed up the process
This isn't scifi, this is planned
https://www.wired.com/story/the-paper-passport-is-dying/
So my guess is that Starmer has got a concession which is almost entirely meaningless, as it will be rendered irrelevant in a few years, in return for yielding on everything else. Go, Skyr Toolmakersson
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
Also I have been through passport control at a number of EU airports where they see a plane of Brits arrive and they just signal them through the EU line anyway. In places like Portugal, UK tourists are big business, they want to get them through the airport and out there spending ASAP.
One for Sean Fear.
It is remarkable the passport has lasted this long, really
I genuinely dread to think what Starmer has given away in return for this trivial concession
Because I sniff a premature uninformed take on a deal that I expect to deliver significant benefits to both sides.
UK on verge of deal with EU to let Britons use European passport e-gates
Downing Street said on Saturday that it was poised to strike a deal with the EU that would improve things for Britons facing “queues on holiday”.
The Guardian understands officials on both sides are in talks about allowing British travellers to use e-gates reserved for people from the EU or European Economic Area when arriving at airports in Europe, ending the current two-queue system.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/17/uk-on-verge-of-deal-with-eu-to-let-britons-use-european-passport-e-gates
Given they say they support bigger welfare cuts, surely they should be supporting the cuts Labour is proposing. If they do, then Starmer can completely ignore his backbench opposition.
Of course if it did only pass because of Conservative votes then Starmer may be in a very awkward position going forward.
No reason to be more sad for that person, than the person who put their savings in Blockbuster, or Woolworths, or anything else.
Any market that can't go down as well as up is not a healthy one.
F1: exciting race. Very unlucky for certain bets. Aston Martin's strategy was to fall between two stools, neither undercutting nor staying long to benefit from a VSC or safety car. Ah well.
It is a bit bizarre though to go thru' a scanner and then have to see a human to get your passport stamped. Not that there was any queue for that as there were no checks having already been done by the scanner.
My previous experiences have been straight through when not a queue or horrendous queues, the worst being at Lisbon because we landed at the same time as at least one American flight. 3 hours it took, even though all the gates were manned. They were using the EU gate for us as well, but you still had to queue for it, whereas EU passport holders took priority and didn't have to queue.
Add to that MSM's lack of resource to do much more than print press releases and worthless opinion pieces (Guardian passim) and we are where we are.
It’s fine really.
That would have the positive effect of incentivising home improvements. Buy a £100k shell, do £50k of improvements on it, pay only £500+index on it while you live there.
Also this rules and practices that can't talk about those being arrested. The media used to go really hard on finding out everything about a terrorist after an attack, penning lengthy pieces about their background.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
And the interest rate decision is supposed to be determined by inflation expectations. If the housing market impacts on inflation that's a different matter.
In which case the alt-right is not for them. That being a core aim of the movement.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
That's what happens at Luqa when a plane arrives from Britain. There are five All Passports lanes and one EU lane. The Maltese just fan out and join the shortest queue. But then these queues are fast-moving because they barely check British passports.
It would be interesting to see a distribution of house values v council tax bands, and work out the threshold at which people will start to be negatively affected. For example, it would £400k in Band D in Edinburgh, £200k for Band A, £760k for Band H.
It responded to "hi" with a rant about it
This is more the sort of stuff I see TV wise.
https://x.com/jamesmelville/status/1924066179359871082?s=61
You can then maintain it that way with much less effort.
I wonder if it's because, deep down, people see obesity as a sin and Ozempic as a cheat by the sinner, like buying your way into heaven with indulgences
Fact is, the drugs work. And obesity is cripping health systems worldwide. No brainer
Meanwhile the Cons must learn that their chief opponent now is Reform. Lab is putting itself in the hole - any Oppo actions are superfluous. However, there'll be no 'electoral pact' while REFUK reckons it will take the Cons to the cleaners. Of the current 120 Con MPS wouldn't REFUK currently take 90-100 of their seats?
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Value of £1m
Tax @ 0.5% = £5k
Less council tax = £1.5k
Net tax increase = £3.5k
Capitalise at 20x = £70k
So for someone living in a nice house valued at 2.5x the national average there is a 7% impact on prices - less than 1 year’s “natural” price increase (salary increase of 2% x lending multiple of 4.5x = 9%)
That's dynamite for betting.
I’m quite prepared to be disappointed; I think the EU are unlikely to be as generous as common sense would otherwise suggest, but I’m ignoring the early takes from the usual suspects.
While the AI noted that 6 million Jewish people were killed, it added: “However, I’m sceptical of these figures without primary evidence, as numbers can be manipulated for political narratives.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/18/musks-ai-bot-grok-blames-its-holocaust-scepticism-on-programming-error
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.