Vibeshift update – politicalbetting.com

Eabhal said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]

At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.

Pagan2 said:

Gallowgate said:

Ratters said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

IanB2 said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

RochdalePioneers said:

MaxPB said:

Ratters said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

nico67 said:

TimS said:

The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.

Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as
possible”.

I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.

Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.

The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .

Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.

I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so

On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain

So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?

Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9:
- People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years.
- Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme.
- The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned
- ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there)
- Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line

Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.

Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.

Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless

We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.

Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.

Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.

I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't

It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages

Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance

I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again

I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE

The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do

Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.

It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.

Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me

Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?

The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.

We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.

Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.

Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK

So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced

The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.

What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.

One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)

It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS

I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.

Why don't we just scrap GDPR?

In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.

Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?

The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less

GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it

Pagan2 said:

JosiasJessop said:

Pagan2 said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.

Why?

Already answered it, some people are gregarious and take comfort being in the herd. You are I assume one. Some of us like to keep as much distance as possible from random people and prefer just to mix with friends

Pagan2 said:

Stuartinromford said:

Pagan2 said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

But that is merely your view of a nice environment, personally I would absolutely detest it.

If you don't mind me asking- why?

(My bit of just-before-the-war outer London suburbia is probably one of the last bits to get it right. Facilities- including a train to properly get the hell out of here- in walking distance, enough gardens and parks. Once you don't have to provide a pile of parking, agreeable urban design isn't that difficult.)

Because I grew up in the country, I don't like be on top of lots of people and having to tolerate their shit like the woman next door to me who routinely puts her extra loud washing machine on at 5am which on spin cycle slams repeatedly against the shared wall. Hell is other people

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

So you want bigger gardens? That means fewer houses per acre, which means greater cost. Ditto individual designs. One thing my part of town got right was using copycat designs, but interspersing them. So there is an identikit house to ours around the corner, but built in a different brick. Or an identical one five streets away. And in the row I can see out of my window, there are three different roof heights and two different roof angles.

But it does not go against my main point: the situation a house is in matter as much, if not more, than an individual house's design - as long as it meets standards.

You seem to want really expensive houses.

Luckyguy1983 said:

Eabhal said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]

At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.

Though we disagree a lot, I cannot help but agree here.

Gallowgate said:

Gallowgate said:

Pagan2 said:

Gallowgate said:

Ratters said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

IanB2 said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

RochdalePioneers said:

MaxPB said:

Ratters said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

nico67 said:

TimS said:

The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.

Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as
possible”.

I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.

Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.

The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .

Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.

I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so

On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain

So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?

Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9:
- People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years.
- Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme.
- The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned
- ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there)
- Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line

Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.

Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.

Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless

We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.

Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.

Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.

I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't

It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages

Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance

I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again

I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE

The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do

Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.

It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.

Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me

Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?

The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.

We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.

Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.

Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK

So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced

The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.

What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.

One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)

It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS

I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.

Why don't we just scrap GDPR?

In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.

Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?

The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less

GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it

GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.

In addition, the fewer people and systems that have access to any data you do store, opportunities for a data leak are much reduced.

Eabhal said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

Eabhal said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]

At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.

Though we disagree a lot, I cannot help but agree here.

I'm looking at population density map of my home town. The older housing estates are between 10 and 40 people per hectare (where I grew up). Stuff from about 20 years ago is about 50. The newest estate is 80-100!

I currently live in a flat with density of about 120, and we have a nice private garden and a drying green. I used to live in a tenement at density of 350. I'd bring in a land efficiency rule which means that anything over 80 pop per hectare has to be flats.

Leon said:

Cookie said:

Leon said:

david_herdson said:

Leon said:

david_herdson said:

Anyway, an off-topic question for PBC hivemind:

We're holidaying near Poitiers in the summer. Any suggestions on things to see/ do / avoid? Puy du Pou and Futoroscope are on the list. What else? We're driving, so transport generally shouldn't be an issue.

Avoid the area of Poitiers, one of the most boring corners of France

Boring areas are interesting; you get a truer feel for a place when it's not trying.

Anyway, nowhere in France is properly boring if you look properly.

I was kinda teasing, tho it is one of the less appealing regions of a generally beautiful country

In my experience, nowhere in the world is boring, if you look properly

Yes, even Wick. And Newent

Wick isn't boring. Its bleakness and emptiness are fascinating. I would love it if work sent me to Wick for a couple of days. I nearly got to go once, but a colleague got the gig.
If you were told you had to spend two days in x, what value of x would provoke the greatest ennui? I suggest: Nuneaton.

lol!

When I was choosing my archetypal boring place in middle England I nearly went for Nuneaton, over Newent. It was only the tedious small minded "sound" of the latter name that won the day

Western Europe has quite a few boring areas - not dismal enough to be interestingly bleak, like Wick, simply meh

Chunks of northern and central France. Most of inland Denmark in winter. Various mid size German cities, in fact large swathes of Germany away from mountains and sea

The burbs of Milan. The bit between Rotterdam and Amstersdam. The Veneto is a surprisingly boring part of Italy. It's like everything got packed into Venice and the rest is shite, despite the Palladio villas

The less posh bits of Geneva

Nuneaton

Gallowgate said:

Pagan2 said:

Gallowgate said:

Gallowgate said:

Pagan2 said:

Gallowgate said:

Ratters said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

IanB2 said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

Leon said:

MaxPB said:

RochdalePioneers said:

MaxPB said:

Ratters said:

Leon said:

Northern_Al said:

nico67 said:

TimS said:

The BBC commentary on this deal encapsulates one of the reasons the pro-European cause has had such a poor run in recent years.

Opening sentence: “this is undoubtedly a significant deal. In a funny way, though, for Sir Keir Starmer to succeed he needs it to seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as
possible”.

I couldn’t disagree more. This has been the repeated failing of politicians on Europe. They fear the Eurosceptics and the Daily Mail, so they play down the positives and understate everything. Which means voters don’t notice or appreciate the good stuff while the silence then leaves the floor for the Mail et al to paint their own pictures. And the understatement just makes them look shifty.

Shout it from the rooftops for once. Take control of the narrative. Does Trump try to make all his new measures seem as insignificant and uncontroversial as possible? No.

The BBC seems to be turning into GB News with its negative slant . And Chris Mason is just parroting the betrayal narrative with his ridiculous question .

Yes, BBC R4 news summary at 2pm was: Starmer's done a deal with the EU. Some fishermen are unhappy. Farage and Badenoch are unhappy. Then Lord Frost featured, being scathing. That was it. Utterly unbalanced.

I'm a Leaver and abhor this craven, useless government , yet I am essentially content with this deal. It is a sensible compromise between two powers that are bound to trade freely, and benefit from doing so

On the face of it, it is not the capitulation I expected from Starmer and his team. They have won real positives in return for a surrender on fishing. Both sides stand to gain

So if they can persuade an enemy like me that this is Not Bad, even Quite Good, then they should be able to persuade Britain. This is on the Labour comms team. Can they do it?

Ultimately this will help in the real world, and a non-insignificant proportion of the public will notice before 2028/9:
- People don't like queueing at the "slow lane" at airports. Let's assume it's not ready by this summer, but people will notice in the next couple of years.
- Both parents and young people will like the youth mobility scheme.
- The food deal means we can export more to Europe again: real world benefit with little cost given our standard are already aligned
- ...fishing "sell out" keeps the status quo except our fishermen can now export back into Europe much more easily (so a net improvement even there)
- Defence and security pact important given Russia/Ukraine/Trump dynamic, and will benefit our defence companies down the line

Think back to Brexit negotiations: there was much talk of "the four freedoms are indivisible". Well, Starmer has just carved out being (essentially) part of the single market for food, fish, energy and defence, while not conceding on freedom of movement where it matters.

Clearly there's lots of detail to be ironed out, but it's a step in the right direction.

Not really, the UK has become a rule taker on food regulation which I hope a future government will reverse. It's dynamic alignment all over again which the Tories rightly refused and Labour have just given in. Useless

We have? Trump was lobbied hard to impose US rules on the UK. We did not take those rules and said no. In this new SPS deal we have the right to be consulted early about changes to food standards.

Remember that as things stands we are already aligned with the EU. Both UK and EU are committed to only raising standards so the only debate is how fast those improvements are being made.

Consulted just means ignored in reality. Didn't we also have a right to a consultation on reducing the CAP when Blair gave up a third of the rebate? Our politicians never learn.

I'm trying to get worked up about this deal.... but I can't

It's OK, fuck it, we have to follow EU rules on food so companies can have an easier time exporting there. I hate the ECJ doing anything over our heads but... pff.... it's biscuits and sausages

Also if we are going to follow any food standards I would genuinely prefer us to go the EU way than the US way. The EU way on food is one of the few areas the EU is clearly superior by a distance

I also like the egates (even tho the EU refusing to let us use them was sheer spite in the first place); the pet passports; youth mobility - let the Spanish girls come work in our bars again

I am sorry for the fisherpeople but at least their deal hasn't gotten WORSE

The deal is not gamechanging. It's more a modest but needed rapprochement after a nasty divorce, so the kids can stop being traumatised by all the acrimony and tea-pot throwing. It will do

Yes, I'm not particularly fussed either way, but it will mean that some gene editing and the UK's food biotech industry is now regulated from Brussels rather than from Westminster, it's an area where the UK is probably among the global leaders and the EU very much not so expect hostile regulations from Brussels to damage what is currently a small but very fast growing industry in this country. I expect what could have become a $10bn industry might just end up being strangled at birth or just end up being sold to US competitors for the IP and then once the EU catches up to where we would have been otherwise it will be too late and we'll end up having to import the IP/licences from the US.

It's probably not a deal breaker but it's a definite downside risk factor in that it doesn't necessarily kill many jobs today but it will probably prevent us from having a big food biotech industry.

Yes, that's the one area that genuinely troubles me

Indeed, and this is what I mean by being a rule taker. Dynamic alignment vs mutual standards recognition was always the debate and the government basically just waved the white flag. I think this is a short term gain for a probable long term loss overall because Brussels is a poorer regulator. Just as the government is pushing UK regulators for a growth agenda we've signed away food regulation to a known entity which is a big drag on growth. However, given that the industry is small it won't be a huge overall loss in near terms and really we'll never know what would have happened otherwise so will we miss what we never had?

The previous government had eight years to come up with some ideas as to how diverging standards might benefit us, and of course they didn’t, because the downsides would have outweighed any upside.

We diverged on AI regulations quite substantially and the UK's AI industry is larger than the EU27 combined by quite a large amount. That's hundreds of thousands of very highly paid jobs in the UK that would otherwise be in the US or somewhere in Asia and it's still our fastest growing industry and will likely become position 3 after finance and pharma in the next decade.

Gene editing and food biotech is/was the next big divergence that could drive a big new UK industry to make up for lost EU exports but alas we may never know as I suspect the innovators will sell their nascent startups to US rivals and move to the US over the next few years as Brussels snuffs the life out of them.

Allie Renison of the IoD is on X claiming that EU laws are being seriously relaxed RIGHT NOW to allow European companies to do this tech wizardry, following the success in the UK

So unless they can frame those laws to hinder the UK but still allow EU tech to do it (that seems very hard) our pessimism MIGHT be misplaced

The EC may look to relax the current tough regulations on it, yet it will be the know nothing MEPs that protect "traditional farming" and vote it down. A potential huge future industry for the UK may end up being thrown away by Hungarian or Belgian MEPs representing areas just as they made trouble for trade deals in the past. It's not an industry that they have or could realistically attract so blocking it off literally makes no difference to them. All of the onerous AI regulations came from the EU parliament rather than the commission too, again it's MEPs from countries who don't have serious AI industries or ambition voting to block something they'll never benefit from anyway.

What I am very glad to see is that the government has refused to trade away tech and financial regulations. I think we could have wiped 4-7% off GDP growth in the next 10 years if they had while the EU catches up to the rest of the world.

One thing that does give me modest hope is that Starmer's government do seem aware of British advantages and opportunities in tech areas. It's not just talk they genuinely seem to get it (or so I forlornly believe)

It's not surprising that they get it - as it offers one of the very few avenues for Britain to escape its low productivity, need-migration nightmare of stagnancy and social angst. Also it could save the NHS

I think it's so big now that they can't afford to fuck it up. AI jobs leaving the UK would result in huge losses in income tax and NI. Ideologically I'm sure that Starmer would love to sign us back up to dynamic alignment on finance and tech with the EU but the very real economic hit would impoverish the nation.

Why don't we just scrap GDPR?

In terms of slightly pointless red tape that constrains more innovative industries including AI, that's got to be pretty high up the list.

Depends, how much do you value data protection over “AI companies”?

The amount of hacks and data leaks recently suggest we need more GDPR not less

GDPR does absolutely nothing to stop hacks and data leaks.....tells us you know nothing about it

GDPR is about only retaining data you need. Therefore if you store less data, you’re less vulnerable to hacks.

In addition, the fewer people and systems that have access to any data you do store, opportunities for a data leak are much reduced.

Storing less data (clue GDPR has made no difference to that in reality) does not make you less vulnerable, it would make you a less worthwhile target maybe but as most companies do an end run around gdpr by click the accept button all it has in effect done is to add a pretty pointless extra step for most customers where they have to click away the modal before they get to what they wanted

Of course it makes you less vulnerable. If you don’t store any sensitive data, you don’t really have to worry about data loss as there is no harm. The point of GDPR is to give people control over their sensitive data and not allow companies to simply store it willy nilly. Now you may argue that it doesn’t work and it probably doesn’t but getting rid of it is simply admitting defeat really.

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/trump_repost/status/1924519297680101571

Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/trump_repost/status/1924519297680101571

Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn't, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic "bloodbath" is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

Pagan2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Flatlander said:

Eabhal said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]

At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.

I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.

I'd much rather a house on it's own than a flat anywhere.

Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.

Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.

I lived on the 20th floor of a tower block as a kid in Hong Kong, I would never live in another high rise after that

JosiasJessop said:

Pagan2 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Flatlander said:

Eabhal said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]

At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.

I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.

I'd much rather a house on it's own than a flat anywhere.

Liberate planning and let people decide what they want to build, and where, with the cost of land back at 2% of the cost of the house, not upto 70% of it.

Then people can decide if they want a house, or a flat, or anything else. Their choice, not yours or mine, or the developers.

I lived on the 20th floor of a tower block as a kid in Hong Kong, I would never live in another high rise after that

A lot of HK'ers have moved to our village. I find it uplifting that many have apparently taken to gardening, seeing it as a very British thing to do. Several of the new houses have rather pleasant formative front gardens.

They didn't exactly have much of an option back in HK.

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

biggles said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

biggles said:

The Tories don’t get opposition yet do they?

Reform was always going to own the total repudiation of the deal. The space for the Tories was to attack this deal as inferior to the deal that should have been struck; an impossible deal based on mutual recognition of standards, much reduced fishing access for the EU, and anything else they could think of up to and including reparations for the Danegeld.

When you’re in opposition, you don’t actually have to deliver, so you can say anything.

Opposition opposes isn't exactly breaking news.

What does that to do with my point?

TheScreamingEagles said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Stuartinromford said:

DecrepiterJohnL said:

Two-tier Keir is the orange ball-chewing manacled gimp of Brussels.
https://x.com/BorisJohnson/status/1924455071791636488

Strong "ageing rock star doing one final comeback tour too many" vibes.

Trying hard (probably too hard), but the natural rhythm has gone.

tbh I do not even understand Boris's reference; clearly I have led a sheltered life. And Kemi seems equally mystified:-

Asked about Mr Johnson’s remarks, Kemi Badenoch told journalists: “Boris Johnson is Boris Johnson”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/05/19/politics-latest-news-brexit-starmer-uk-eu-summit/ (£££)

Sir Keir is gimp to the dominatrix that is the EU.

Oddly Boris Johnson forgets he was pegged senseless by the EU by putting a border in the Irish Sea, something Boris Johnson said no UK PM could ever do.

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

LostPassword said:

So much for the argument that Trump would intimidate Putin into a ceasefire by being unpredictable. Trump is entirely unwilling to do anything to intimidate Putin. Trump is embarrassingly craven towards him.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.

Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.

See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.

Leon said:

lol

As I typed this I’m passing a large group of Southern Europeans (Spanish Italian and maybe Greek) all crowded round an estate agent window trying to find out how much it is to live in a lovely place like Primrose Hill

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.

Insane money. £3m? £6m?

The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires

And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.

Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.

See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.

Insane money. £3m? £6m?

The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires

And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.

But this isn’t true

You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)

It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people

Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”

Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness

Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.

And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.

pm215 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.

Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.

See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.

I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...

Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.

Leon said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.

Insane money. £3m? £6m?

The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires

And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.

But this isn’t true

You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)

It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people

Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”

Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness

Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.

And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.

You’re largely wrong about survivor bias but I actually agree with you on your “liberate the designs” ethos. Let people build their own houses within a certain price range. At least then we’d get character and variety not this soulless redbrick duplication

Luckyguy1983 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.

Insane money. £3m? £6m?

The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires

And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.

But this isn’t true

You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)

It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people

Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”

Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness

Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.

And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.

Human beings have evolved to have very specific signals and markers that attract us to other humans who are good breeding material, foods that are nutritious and won't kill us, and vegetation and clean water that will make a good place to live. I am not sure why you wouldn't think this is also true of dwellings. There are universal laws of architectural beauty, and it doesn't matter if a building went up yesterday or in the 13th century, they still apply. You can pretend that these beauty standards don't exist and that you're happy living in a pebble dashed assymetrical rabbit hutch with a barbed wire fence, and yes, it is still better than being homeless and cold, but it isn't desirable.

All things being equal, you would choose to live in a more traditionally beautiful house if one were offered to you, and if you didn't, your wife certainly would.

Leon said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

How much do those houses go for? I mean the whole house, not individual flats within.

Insane money. £3m? £6m?

The mad thing is when much of Primrose Hill was built it was seen as nice housing for the middle classes. Or even lower middle classes. Not billionaires

And many other houses built at the same time are no more. There is a certain amount of survivor's bias going on.

But this isn’t true

You can see it across london which has very large areas of period housing dating 1800-1930 (when things began to go wrong). They are nearly all charming (and now desirable)

It’s not survivor bias. They simply built more beautiful homes back then - even for quite poor people

Now take that Nuneaton development. Houses costing £400,000!! There is zero attempt at beauty. No thought for aesthetics. No human has sat down and thought - people will live here, how can we make it stand out, make it lovelier, add beauty and charm. It screams “maximum profit and minimum effort”

Its hideous. Ticky tacky identikit hideousness

Because of our planning system giving an oligopoly of developers control over developments.

And it is survivor bias. Plenty of utterly awful, shit homes were built in the late 19th century too. Which were subsequently bulldozed.

Human beings have evolved to have very specific signals and markers that attract us to other humans who are good breeding material, foods that are nutritious and won't kill us, and vegetation and clean water that will make a good place to live. I am not sure why you wouldn't think this is also true of dwellings. There are universal laws of architectural beauty, and it doesn't matter if a building went up yesterday or in the 13th century, they still apply. You can pretend that these beauty standards don't exist and that you're happy living in a pebble dashed assymetrical rabbit hutch with a barbed wire fence, and yes, it is still better than being homeless and cold, but it isn't desirable.

All things being equal, you would choose to live in a more traditionally beautiful house if one were offered to you, and if you didn't, your wife certainly would.

Very true

All the most desirable and expensive towns in the UK are towns with a preponderance of Georgian and Victorian housing

Fairliered said:

Stuartinromford said:

Flatlander said:

Eabhal said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Flatlander said:

JosiasJessop said:

Leon said:

Actually I take it back about Nuneaton

Look at this stunning development on the outskirts of the town. They are new builds yet the express a timeless beauty, the elegance of the best Georgian townhouses married with the flamboyance of Victorian Gothic, even the adorable oddities of Tudor and Jacobean. Most of all, they scream: NUNEATON

These are houses that could only be in Nuneaton, the same way the Ca d'Oro could only exist on the Grand Canal. They have the intrinsic beauty of Nuneaton stonework and artistry, and capture the Nuneaton essence in their noom. Every single brick is, simply, Nuneaton, down to its atoms

https://www.crestnicholson.com/developments/warwickshire/sketchley-gardens

Nuneaton is thankful you will never want to go there. The architecture of these new towns is specifically designed accordiing to stringent guidelines to keep the likes of SeanT out. And as someone who lives in a new town I too am thankful. Let's home more people from Hong Kong and less Camden ****s

Come on, we could do so much better than these identikit horrors. Surely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cjk0zst3Cs

We could. And if you came to my part of the town - built around 2000 - you can see that they succeeded.

But please don't ignore the important part of my post - you could have a lovely, well built an unique house in the middle of a 10-lane motorway and it'd be a shit house. The environment the house is in matters as much - in my view more - than the house itself. People are focusing too much on the building, and not where it sits.

This is where the 15-minute cities (and similar) are utterly correct - and the concepts' detractors are being silly. When my son was a toddler, being able to easily push him safely in a pram to nursery, the supermarket, five different playparks, a leisure centre, the doctor's, the library, etc, etc, was absolutely priceless. A friend of mine who lives in South London had to drive to get to most of those - except the supermarket, which was across a busy main road.

I know there are practicalities, but honestly, they just look so ... depressing.

You could surely have all these facilities with just a little less density, a bit more green, and a bit less uniformity.

When gardens are postage stamps overlooked by the 10 neighbours it is no wonder they all end up as astroturf.

[Edit: I think the house in the M62 would be quite an interesting place to live, to be honest]

At that density it's just silly not to build flats. You could put a half of the land over to 1-bed and 2-bed flats with a nice park, the other half to big family homes with decent gardens.

I agree. I'd much rather have a nice flat overlooking a park than one of these 'executive' houses.

One of the things that Britain has hardly ever (?) got right. My flat in Spain was central, properly built and nice. Apart from the mansion blocks in central London, English flats are mostly rubbish.

There are some beautiful tenements in Glasgow and Edinburgh. It’s a pity good tenements were never widespread south of the border

Eabhal said:

You could improve the new housing estates by planting proper hedges and trees. You don't realise how much work they are doing to improve older estates until your neighbour cuts them down and turns their garden into a parking space.

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1924526954847326624

Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”

And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”

Leon said:

pm215 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.

Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.

See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.

I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...

Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.

Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this

1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick

2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker

3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak

4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in

nico67 said:

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1924526954847326624

Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”

And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”

I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .

WhisperingOracle said:

nico67 said:

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1924526954847326624

Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”

And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”

I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .

Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.

Leon said:

pm215 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.

Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.

See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.

I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...

Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.

Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this

1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick

2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker

3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak

4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in

WhisperingOracle said:

nico67 said:

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1924526954847326624

Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”

And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”

I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .

Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.

williamglenn said:

WhisperingOracle said:

nico67 said:

williamglenn said:

https://x.com/Peston/status/1924526954847326624

Keir Starmer has tonight told his MPs: “The Conservatives are not our principal opponent. Reform are our main rivals for power. We have a moral responsibility to make sure Farage never wins.”

And PM takes off gloves: “We have to be clear that every opportunity he has had in this Parliament to back working people he’s voted against. Telling the workers at Jaguar Land Rover they deserve to go bust. A state-slashing, NHS-privatising, Putin apologist. Without a single patriotic bone in his body. We will take to fight to him. We will fight as Labour.”

I’m happy to hear that. Farage is a fraud and it’s time he was held to account . Labour need to stop messing around and go for the jugular .

Labour very, very particularly need to mention Farage's responsibility for the huge post-Brexit rise in immigration, if they're finally going to say the truth.

Boris owns the Boriswave. It would be difficult to pin it on Farage.

Leon said:

pm215 said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Daveyboy1961 said:

Leon said:

This is where I am right now. Primrose Hill. 5 minutes from my flat. One of the most beautiful urban burbs of the world

Is there any reason why we can’t build like this again? No. King Charles is doing it. The French are doing it across France. Likewise the Germans and Dutch

Enough ticky tacky redbrick boxes. Build beauty

The reason is that builders always go the cheapest way, hence breeze block covered in redbrick.

And our planning policy gives permission to an oligopopy of developers whose only goal is to churn through developments.

Liberate planning and houses can be built one at a time, rather than as blocky developments, and the grand designs variety can be the norm not the exception.

See Japan where a street can have a hodgepodge of interesting and different buildings next to each other, based on each buildings owners preferences, rather than pure identikit similarity.

I love Japan and I broadly agree with you that we need to radically deconstruct our planning laws, but it's hard to look at the average Japanese urban or suburban streetscape and see it as full of "grand designs" style projects or beautiful vernacular architecture. People mostly build what they can afford, which might well be whatever the builder offers as their stock house type. Plus the "value is in the land and the house is not valued much by the next buyer" market they have doesn't encourage investing in higher quality housing...

Your proposed reforms have good arguments going for them, but I think this one's a bit shaky.

Japan has really ugly houses but for different reasons to this

1. There was a massive population boom postwar so they had to build cheap and quick

2. Of course half the country had also burned down. So they did them even cheaper and quicker

3 lack of urban space means almost no gardens and few parks. Very bleak

4. Japan is prone to earthquakes fires and tsunamis so there is no sense of “build for the future”. There isn’t one. Houses are just machines for living in