There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Ah, same thought I had. Maybe it’ll start an overdue debate over excessive reliance on agency workers in social care, which is where I assume the costs mainly sit.
Still, the tweet is successful on its own terms already.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Ah, same thought I had. Maybe it’ll start an overdue debate over excessive reliance on agency workers in social care, which is where I assume the costs mainly sit.
Still, the tweet is successful on its own terms already.
If you hire them directly, aren't the pension costs bigger? And no demand-sizing? Does that partially offset or fully offset the agency overhead?
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
I’ve no idea of the details of this case, but is it possible that the “recruitment services” here is actually a tender for agency services, including actual cost of the employee. 22% of payroll as recruitment commission doesn’t sound plausible. 22% of payroll costs as agency workers sounds all too plausible,
Especially if he's comparing four years cost of agency staff with one year of council payroll.
'People need to be told that they can't have their cake and eat it - either taxes go up or services stop' - say PB shrewdies.
If you’re saying we need more proper permanent jobs in council services and less reliance on agency hires and contractors then I agree. More people who really know their job and community because they have a real career. It just compounds the problem of staff turnover and asset sweating we have in this country.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
I’ve no idea of the details of this case, but is it possible that the “recruitment services” here is actually a tender for agency services, including actual cost of the employee. 22% of payroll as recruitment commission doesn’t sound plausible. 22% of payroll costs as agency workers sounds all too plausible,
Especially if he's comparing four years cost of agency staff with one year of council payroll.
He’s comparing one year with one year. It just looks like he’s misunderstood. Fair enough, he’s not a council HR manager he’s a politician.
Either that or Kent CC has the most expensive headhunters in history.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Quite possibly. But equally, the voters won't understand - and will always put the worst interpretation on it in their current mood.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Ah, same thought I had. Maybe it’ll start an overdue debate over excessive reliance on agency workers in social care, which is where I assume the costs mainly sit.
Still, the tweet is successful on its own terms already.
If you hire them directly, aren't the pension costs bigger? And no demand-sizing? Does that partially offset or fully offset the agency overhead?
That’s exactly the business case that has been used for decades, and is also used in the private sector.
But it comes at a long term cost: less continuity in care or other essential services, far lower individual productivity and less motivated employees, quite possibly lower quality and less qualified staff. In the long run the evidence from health, social care and education seems to be that it increases costs overall.
BREAKING: Chief Judge James Boasberg finds that those people sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15-16 had their due process rights violates and certifies them as a class. He orders that the government "facilitate" the ability for them to seek habeas relief.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Quite possibly. But equally, the voters won't understand - and will always put the worst interpretation on it in their current mood.
Trump has shown the way on that front.
Note that Kent CC was Tory controlled, not Labour.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Yes, it is probably not great, but not quite as bad as suggested. Though as TimS notes the tweet is already successful on its own terms - and it is not as though people are well inclind towards local government, so it makes a good punching bag for Westminster.
But then it often seems in politics that parties ignore what might be perfectly good attack lines by overreaching, or even outright inventing things - that was often the case with attacks against Boris as I recall.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Ah, same thought I had. Maybe it’ll start an overdue debate over excessive reliance on agency workers in social care, which is where I assume the costs mainly sit.
Still, the tweet is successful on its own terms already.
If you hire them directly, aren't the pension costs bigger? And no demand-sizing? Does that partially offset or fully offset the agency overhead?
My Trust is cracking down on Agency and bank staff as a cost saving measure*. So bank working is severely restricted.
Mrs Foxy worked purely bank (effectively a ZHC) but is now transferring to a permanent contract for the same hours. She is now eligible for overtime, holiday and sick pay so gets a pay rise, albeit with a loss of flexibility. Bank work was already pensionable.
* I don't expect it to last, as it never does. Too many critical teams have key vacancies that can only be kept going with agency and bank staff.
BREAKING: Chief Judge James Boasberg finds that those people sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15-16 had their due process rights violates and certifies them as a class. He orders that the government "facilitate" the ability for them to seek habeas relief.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Quite possibly. But equally, the voters won't understand - and will always put the worst interpretation on it in their current mood.
Oh get you lies and half truths in first and the reality won’t get a look in.
As for employing permanent staff the council won’t be paying enough so those who want more cash today work via agencies
BREAKING: Chief Judge James Boasberg finds that those people sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15-16 had their due process rights violates and certifies them as a class. He orders that the government "facilitate" the ability for them to seek habeas relief.
What jurisdiction does an American judge have with regard to El Salvador? (I'd have thought none).
And what does his order have to do with that? The bit you've quoted is that the US government has violated and rights and needs to take action to address that.
Of course the government will likely tell the court to eff off, or make token moves to 'facilitate' but say it's a done deal now and cannot be undone, but that's a different issue.
BREAKING: Chief Judge James Boasberg finds that those people sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15-16 had their due process rights violates and certifies them as a class. He orders that the government "facilitate" the ability for them to seek habeas relief.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
I’ve no idea of the details of this case, but is it possible that the “recruitment services” here is actually a tender for agency services, including actual cost of the employee. 22% of payroll as recruitment commission doesn’t sound plausible. 22% of payroll costs as agency workers sounds all too plausible,
Especially if he's comparing four years cost of agency staff with one year of council payroll.
He’s comparing one year with one year. It just looks like he’s misunderstood. Fair enough, he’s not a council HR manager he’s a politician.
Either that or Kent CC has the most expensive headhunters in history.
He has no incentive to understand it, but if they are smart they will have found other councils which are do not have anywhere near that amount (or even better have contrasted themselves with Kent positively), so that if the story is critiqued they can fall back on it still being way too much, even if the precise point is not the original.
'People need to be told that they can't have their cake and eat it - either taxes go up or services stop' - say PB shrewdies.
If you’re saying we need more proper permanent jobs in council services and less reliance on agency hires and contractors then I agree. More people who really know their job and community because they have a real career. It just compounds the problem of staff turnover and asset sweating we have in this country.
Somewhat related public sector news, we finally hired someone two weeks ago to take us up to the 'projected' need ~2-3 years ago. Taking us to a team of two software developers for ~4,000 staff.
But the 'professional' management brought in to bring 'professional' techniques to our processes just landed me with a new retro-tastic PRINCE2 process which will add a 30-40% admin overhead to everything we do. Roughly 1/2 to 1/3rd of the teams time will be filling in forms (quite literally) to justify doing work users have asked for.
No 'these are the metrics we want' or 'we need insight into XYZ' discussions. Just 'for every request - fill in eight forms'. (I do mean that - not 'tick a box that tells a computer to update X' - I really mean 'fill in a form with up to 15 required fields for... everything. Every change, every update to a change, every change to a change).
So that's about £100+ grand on the professional management salary, about a 30% reduction in productivity. Top work all round.
I'm almost tempted to go work for the central team who get paid better, and spend their time wasting taxpayer money arranging consultants to spend more taxpayer money on half-baked projects that never meet their goals.
'People need to be told that they can't have their cake and eat it - either taxes go up or services stop' - say PB shrewdies.
If you’re saying we need more proper permanent jobs in council services and less reliance on agency hires and contractors then I agree. More people who really know their job and community because they have a real career. It just compounds the problem of staff turnover and asset sweating we have in this country.
Somewhat related public sector news, we finally hired someone two weeks ago to take us up to the 'projected' need ~2-3 years ago. Taking us to a team of two software developers for ~4,000 staff.
But the 'professional' management brought in to bring 'professional' techniques to our processes just landed me with a new retro-tastic PRINCE2 process which will add a 30-40% admin overhead to everything we do. Roughly 1/2 to 1/3rd of the teams time will be filling in forms (quite literally) to justify doing work users have asked for.
No 'these are the metrics we want' or 'we need insight into XYZ' discussions. Just 'for every request - fill in eight forms'. (I do mean that - not 'tick a box that tells a computer to update X' - I really mean 'fill in a form with up to 15 required fields for... everything. Every change, every update to a change, every change to a change).
So that's about £100+ grand on the professional management salary, about a 30% reduction in productivity. Top work all round.
I'm almost tempted to go work for the central team who get paid better, and spend their time wasting taxpayer money arranging consultants to spend more taxpayer money on half-baked projects that never meet their goals.
Curious what experience/skills you guys were looking for?
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I thought Mr Starmer was quite gentle with her.
I am not aware of any evidence that Burka-bans improve race relations in a society, or that the UK has poorer communal relations than the three countries she mentioned - was it Fr, NL and Be. If our race relations are better, then it implies if anything that they should get rid of their bans (though I suspect it is perhaps correlation not causation).
Politically, it's just another shit-stirring dog whistle imo. Up there with Philp and Lam's stuff about how Afghans are an existential sex crime risk to our society because they are responsible for 59 sec crime convictions out of a total 12104. Of course, they adopt the dishonest framing of 'Afghan 22 times more likely to commit a sex crime than an average white Brit' - without pointing out that the impact is less than a rounding error.
It's aimed at frightening gullibles - if they can't make an honest argument to support their case, then it suggests that the protagonists are bullshit artists.
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I thought Mr Starmer was quite gentle with her.
I am not aware of any evidence that Burka-bans improve race relations in a society, or that the UK has poorer communal relations than the three countries she mentioned - was it Fr, NL and Be. If our race relations are better, then it implies if anything that they should get rid of their bans (though I suspect it is perhaps correlation not causation).
Politically, it's just another shit-stirring dog whistle imo. Up there with Philp and Lam's stuff about how Afghans are an existential sex crime risk to our society because they are responsible for 59 sec crime convictions out of a total 12104. Of course, they adopt the dishonest framing of 'Afghan 22 times more likely to commit a sex crime than an average white Brit' - without pointing out that the impact is less than a rounding error.
It's aimed at frightening gullibles - if they can't make an honest argument to support their case, then it suggests that the protagonists are bullshit artists.
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I thought Mr Starmer was quite gentle with her.
I am not aware of any evidence that Burka-bans improve race relations in a society, or that the UK has poorer communal relations than the three countries she mentioned - was it Fr, NL and Be. If our race relations are better, then it implies if anything that they should get rid of their bans (though I suspect it is perhaps correlation not causation).
Politically, it's just another shit-stirring dog whistle imo. Up there with Philp and Lam's stuff about how Afghans are an existential sex crime risk to our society because they are responsible for 59 sec crime convictions out of a total 12104. Of course, they adopt the dishonest framing of 'Afghan 22 times more likely to commit a sex crime than an average white Brit' - without pointing out that the impact is less than a rounding error.
It's aimed at frightening gullibles - if they can't make an honest argument to support their case, then it suggests that the protagonists are bullshit artists.
Per capita is "dishonest framing"? Come on now...
Of course it is, if you're talking about threats to society. The fact is, far more sex crimes are carried out by white men because there are a lot more of them. Also the vast majority of men, whether Afghan or white, have nothing to do with sex crimes. So what point are these dog whistlers making?
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
His numbers look way off. He asserts that the Kent CC annual payroll is 87.5/.22 = £400 million.
Kent CC has 30k staff. There is no way they are paying them an average of £13,333.
He's making the Musk mistake - rushing to social media with cocked up bollocks.
Unless I have cocked up myself, that will bite him hard; an accounting panjandrum who can't do sums, or even order of magnitude sanity checks on a calculation.
This is perhaps the first thing I would welcome Carol Vorderman diving into on Twitter .
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I thought Mr Starmer was quite gentle with her.
I am not aware of any evidence that Burka-bans improve race relations in a society, or that the UK has poorer communal relations than the three countries she mentioned - was it Fr, NL and Be. If our race relations are better, then it implies if anything that they should get rid of their bans (though I suspect it is perhaps correlation not causation).
Politically, it's just another shit-stirring dog whistle imo. Up there with Philp and Lam's stuff about how Afghans are an existential sex crime risk to our society because they are responsible for 59 sec crime convictions out of a total 12104. Of course, they adopt the dishonest framing of 'Afghan 22 times more likely to commit a sex crime than an average white Brit' - without pointing out that the impact is less than a rounding error.
It's aimed at frightening gullibles - if they can't make an honest argument to support their case, then it suggests that the protagonists are bullshit artists.
Per capita is "dishonest framing"? Come on now...
Of course it is, if you're talking about threats to society. The fact is, far more sex crimes are carried out by white men because there are a lot more of them. Also the vast majority of men, whether Afghan or white, have nothing to do with sex crimes. So what point are these dog whistlers making?
Correct - the aim is to pretend that "Afghans" are a huge problem wrt to sex-crime, and it is not true when you look at the numerical stats. It fits the political agenda. They give a misleading impression by leaving out the context that shows the claim to be baloney.
"Get rid of all the Afghans and reduce sex crime convictions from 12104 to 12045" does not have the same ring.
Even the Telegraph, where I think the numbers came from in March *, did not go that far - though they did pull a couple of tricks in their peace back in March.
(* I have been asked not to post archive.today links, as apparently newspapers are intending to crack down on this practice. I previously took it as a deliberate hole they left in their firewalls to get links, as that used to be the practice in various places. I can link the article page if anyone wants.)
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I agree. I was being silly with the French comment.
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I agree. I was being silly with the French comment.
On the French, the Daily Telegraph Ukraine the Latest has a new (double-barreled English sounding) presenter who is French, and has been speaking with a poshish English accent, and there has been some kerfuffle in the comments box.
So she did the last bit in a French accent today.
They are apparently going to introduce her to Allo Allo.
We do of course risk with some of this turning into local news tv 'Tonight on Look East the regions oldest woman meets the regions fattest man in the regions oldest church to discuss Norwich City's prospects in the worlds oldest League'
Not easy to get to St Peter’s at Bradwell. The nuclear power station, or what’s left of it, overshadows it.
I had a Hoopoe fly in off the sea there - and land not ten feet away, feeding like a crazed thing.
That's my daily birding anecdote related to a place somebody else has named.
Desolate spot, isn’t it!
Remote ancient chapel and nuclear power station - noom central!
Ooh yes, and, even better, a DISUSED nuclear power station
One of the noomiest places in the UK
Dark noom - the nuke station, and bright noom - the ravishingly lonely chapel. Described as a “bare boned box of holiness” by thriller writer S K Tremayne, I believe
Off the bat I am struggling to think of a noomier place in the UK, apart from St Kilda, which is one of the noomiest places on EARTH, so that’s a high bar
Candidates; the first two now consigned to noom heaven: Broad Street Station after it closed and before it was redeveloped. Bradford Park Avenue football ground ditto. The stained glass at All Saints, North Street, York. Loch Ba.
Good list, tho I have never been to any of them! Clearly thought involved
Right, with the Poncho of Pondering about my shoulders, I’ll go for
almost anywhere in west Herefordshire, Galway or Craswall or Abbey Dore, but if forced to choose:
Kilpeck
Yes, a cliche, but what a place
Kilmartin is overlooked for its wild extent of megaliths, in Scotland
The Isle of Harris in toto, for bright noom and dark noom, which infect each other, as everyone was forced to leave the beautiful western coast, eg Luskentyre and go and live on the craggy uninhabitable but striking east coast
Coalbrookdale must be in the top 100 worldwide, with its bright noom of Progress, industry, so much good, yet the dark noom of the Satanic mills, birthed here
In London: Kenwood. I don’t know what it is, but I find it very hard to be unhappy in Kenwood. It has the brightest of bright nooms. The perfect beauty of the Regency house, the sweeping gardens and slopes, the view over the Heath and then London, the art collection (Vermeer!!!!), and then Spaniard’s Inn, right behind
If you know anyone suicidal in London, take them to Kenwood
Wandering about the flow country and also across in assynt always makes me quite dizzy.
Ah, Assynt.
There's a view, from the coast, from which you can see all the peaks, from Quinag, via Suilven, to Ben Mor Coigach, lined up facing the sea, one after the other. Mountain noom.
The view across to those peaks from the top of Stac Pollaidh might be the most noom view on the UK mainland
I just asked Google AI a very simple questions (for a computer).
Q: "How many London Underground tube stations are in zones 1 and 2?"
A: "There are a total of approximately 83 London Underground tube stations in zones 1 and 2, including major and smaller stations. Zone 1 has 63 smaller tube stations, and approximately 8 major stations, totaling around 71. Zone 2 includes the remaining 12 stations."
BREAKING: Chief Judge James Boasberg finds that those people sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15-16 had their due process rights violates and certifies them as a class. He orders that the government "facilitate" the ability for them to seek habeas relief.
What jurisdiction does an American judge have with regard to El Salvador? (I'd have thought none).
It will give SCOTUS a chuckle before they throw it out
Imagine if Trump decides to round up all the Democratic members of Congress and send them to the El Salvador prison. (He has already told Bukele that he wants to send American citizens to the prison.)
Are the US Courts just supposed to shrug their shoulders and say they can't do anything because "an American judge has no jurisdiction with regard to El Salvador" ?
The judge is asserting jurisdiction on the US government and not the El Salvador government.
Boasberg is using the exact words that SCOTUS used, that is, that the US government is required to "facilitate" the return of the people sent to El Salvador.
If the US government fails to do good faith efforts to facilitate their return, then the judiciary will hold the US government in contempt.
"There is no escaping the fierce political tradition of the Glasgow suburbs. Here, nationalism brushes up against some of the staunchest unionism in the country. In Hamilton, but especially in nearby Larkhall, sectarianism remains a way of life. Union Jacks flutter and many Orange walks start from here in the summer. The traditionally Protestant football team, Rangers, is sacrosanct, and anything green is associated with “Old Firm” rivals Celtic. The Subway sandwich shop is painted black and even green traffic lights have been vandalised."
I just asked Google AI a very simple questions (for a computer).
Q: "How many London Underground tube stations are in zones 1 and 2?"
A: "There are a total of approximately 83 London Underground tube stations in zones 1 and 2, including major and smaller stations. Zone 1 has 63 smaller tube stations, and approximately 8 major stations, totaling around 71. Zone 2 includes the remaining 12 stations."
The answer is actually 137.
It is a language model & not capable of doing any "analysis" in the way that a human brain analyses things. It just predicts words & numbers based on the database of text (created by humans) that it has scraped from the Internet.
If someone had answered this exact question somewhere on the Internet, then it might have picked the correct number, but if it's a brand new question that (almost) no one has answered before then the AI, by itself, can't analyse the London Underground map & answer it correctly.
My guess is that it picked the specific number "83" based on this specific text from an answer on Quora:
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I thought Mr Starmer was quite gentle with her.
I am not aware of any evidence that Burka-bans improve race relations in a society, or that the UK has poorer communal relations than the three countries she mentioned - was it Fr, NL and Be. If our race relations are better, then it implies if anything that they should get rid of their bans (though I suspect it is perhaps correlation not causation).
Politically, it's just another shit-stirring dog whistle imo. Up there with Philp and Lam's stuff about how Afghans are an existential sex crime risk to our society because they are responsible for 59 sec crime convictions out of a total 12104. Of course, they adopt the dishonest framing of 'Afghan 22 times more likely to commit a sex crime than an average white Brit' - without pointing out that the impact is less than a rounding error.
It's aimed at frightening gullibles - if they can't make an honest argument to support their case, then it suggests that the protagonists are bullshit artists.
Per capita is "dishonest framing"? Come on now...
Even per capita can be misleading: what proportion of sex crimes are committed by men in their 20s?
What proportion of Afghani immigrants are men in their 20s?
It's entirely possible for two things to be true: that Afghan immigrants are more likely to commit sex offences, and for them to be less likely to commit then than (say) White British men in their 20s. (I don't know that to be the case, but if you don't control for age and gender, you can get highly misleading statistics.)
I just asked Google AI a very simple questions (for a computer).
Q: "How many London Underground tube stations are in zones 1 and 2?"
A: "There are a total of approximately 83 London Underground tube stations in zones 1 and 2, including major and smaller stations. Zone 1 has 63 smaller tube stations, and approximately 8 major stations, totaling around 71. Zone 2 includes the remaining 12 stations."
The answer is actually 137.
hopefully you corrected it -- i've found AI bots grateful when mistakes are pointed out to them, and they are always interested to learn more about a subject
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
BREAKING: Chief Judge James Boasberg finds that those people sent to CECOT under the Alien Enemies Act on March 15-16 had their due process rights violates and certifies them as a class. He orders that the government "facilitate" the ability for them to seek habeas relief.
What jurisdiction does an American judge have with regard to El Salvador? (I'd have thought none).
It will give SCOTUS a chuckle before they throw it out
Imagine if Trump decides to round up all the Democratic members of Congress and send them to the El Salvador prison. (He has already told Bukele that he wants to send American citizens to the prison.)
Are the US Courts just supposed to shrug their shoulders and say they can't do anything because "an American judge has no jurisdiction with regard to El Salvador" ?
The judge is asserting jurisdiction on the US government and not the El Salvador government.
Boasberg is using the exact words that SCOTUS used, that is, that the US government is required to "facilitate" the return of the people sent to El Salvador.
If the US government fails to do good faith efforts to facilitate their return, then the judiciary will hold the US government in contempt.
Just to emphasise that the Trump administration can comply with a judge's orders to "facilitate" the return of a person who has been deported overseas:
The Trump administration has brought back to the United States a Guatemalan man who was wrongfully deported to Mexico, albeit to an uncertain future, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Last week, the Justice Department said it would comply with a federal judge’s order to “facilitate” the return of O.C.G., a gay man who was sent to Mexico this year despite having told American authorities that he had experienced violence there and was afraid to go back.
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I'm in the same boat.
I vehemently dislike it and thing its misogynistic and wrong.
But we should not be banning things we dislike.
Exactly.
I’d counter that it is a form of institutionalised abuse of women and hence should be banned. If they were choosing of their own free will to wear it then fine. But I have my doubts.
That said the one this that popularised the dress more than anything else was the Brits banning it in Egypt
It also just means that women who are forced to wear it will be banned from going out by their misogynist husbands.
That’s the risk, yes. Although one would have assumed that would fall under other laws.
“Cultural sensitivity” should not extend to ignoring fundamental principles of British society
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
Ah, same thought I had. Maybe it’ll start an overdue debate over excessive reliance on agency workers in social care, which is where I assume the costs mainly sit.
Still, the tweet is successful on its own terms already.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Lee Anderson joins Pochin in calling for a Burqa ban. Will Farage, Tice and McMurdock ? With Rupert Lowe aboard maybe not!
The French did it, so it can't be that bad.
I oppose banning it because the government shouldn't ban things unless absolutely necessary. There has to be a very fucking high barrier before the the government should be saying "you cannot wear that".
I'm in the same boat.
I vehemently dislike it and thing its misogynistic and wrong.
But we should not be banning things we dislike.
Exactly.
I’d counter that it is a form of institutionalised abuse of women and hence should be banned. If they were choosing of their own free will to wear it then fine. But I have my doubts.
That said the one this that popularised the dress more than anything else was the Brits banning it in Egypt
It also just means that women who are forced to wear it will be banned from going out by their misogynist husbands.
That’s the risk, yes. Although one would have assumed that would fall under other laws.
“Cultural sensitivity” should not extend to ignoring fundamental principles of British society
Unbelievably to me, some women want to wear it. AIUI when Turkey banned the hijab (covering a much smaller area than the niqab or burqa) the number of women wanting to wear the various head coverings *increased*. Partly as a result of it being an enhanced sign of religious devotion; partly because of *men* telling them what they could and could not do.
Which led university lecturers and staff to have moral quandaries: did they report women wearing headscarves in class and get them thrown out, depriving them of a uni education, or did they ignore it, and potentially get in trouble? Many women continued wearing headscarves and still graduated...
(Ataturk himself banned man from wearing 'traditional' clothes, forcing them into western-style clothing, but did not ban headscarves.)
Be very careful of us reverting down the road of telling grown women what they can, and can not, wear.
But girls under 18? They should not be wearing the niqab or burka. But if we ban that, there's a good chance that the parents will remove them out of education...
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Born in 1964 in a remote village in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, Lee grew up in extreme poverty. After completing elementary school, financial hardship forced him to work as a teenage factory laborer in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, earning just 200 won (about $0.15) a day at a clock factory. A workplace accident left him with a permanent disability in his left arm, but Lee refused to let hardship define his future.
Determined to change his circumstances, Lee passed the high school qualification exam and earned a scholarship to Chung-Ang University’s law school. During his university years, the 1980 Gwangju Uprising inspired him to dedicate his career to social justice and advocacy for the underprivileged...
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
While that is true on a standalone basis it is symptomatic of the government disease to look for one big solution. Small steps make for great journeys.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
Furthermore, suppose something bad has happened.
If it's actual fraud, go to the police.
If it's incompetence, move on to finding how to unwind the contract to save the money.
Either way, you don't do a breathless post on social media. Trouble is that DOGE-UK, like its stateside friend, is based on the theory that everyone who isn't DOGE is relatively completely stupid.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
He links to the Tender Notice in his next Tweet - it mentions nothing about paying the wages of any staff, and it would be odd if it did - how could you budget for agency staff on a fixed quote?
So it seems like it might be Nigel who is 'misleading people' and FF43 who is 'happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth'. But I am sure if that turns out to be the outcome, they'll be along to offer their unequivocal apologies in their usual gracious style.
Quite an interesting listen to a Gresham lecture from Rory Stewart on the political/cultural shift to what he calls the Age of Populism - starting with 1989; 1989 being the end of what Eric Hobsbawm called "the short 20th century". It's a broad survey.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
Furthermore, suppose something bad has happened.
If it's actual fraud, go to the police.
If it's incompetence, move on to finding how to unwind the contract to save the money.
Either way, you don't do a breathless post on social media. Trouble is that DOGE-UK, like its stateside friend, is based on the theory that everyone who isn't DOGE is relatively completely stupid.
When, in reality, the supporters of DOGE / DOGE UK seem completely stupid.
Or in the US, take the gullible along for a ride; enriching their friends whilst impoverishing their supporters.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
I think I’ll be going electric in the next 18 months. I’ll not hold out for one of these
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
I absolutely agree, BUT ... the chap who reinvented it says he used it to let his wife cycle after an injury that made traditional pedals hard for her to use. So there is a niche application, even though I'd argue that his promotion to a broader base was mistargeted.
it as something that his I see the market as driven by technology, fashion and deep discounts. The initial pitch of the company Sport Pursuit the deep discounter, who started out by email with a non-widely visible website, was that "Brands" sold 10-15% of a product at full price, 50-60% at normal retail discount, and wanted to clear out the last fraction at deep discount without damaging the next range.
I think the fashion is also an internalisation of Brit Cycling type "marginal gains". But utility cycling is adding another strand, as is the slow recognition (it's always been there) of cycles as perhaps the most common mobility aid.
Personally I try to ignore brands, and to never pay more than about half the full price for anything, unless I an see the immediate benefit for me - so I have had an (expensive) Gruber Assist (an e-motor inside the seat tube) since 2015, a Hornit which is loud enough to penetrate buses, and various other useful bits and pieces including a deeply unfashionable touring triple chainset.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
Furthermore, suppose something bad has happened.
If it's actual fraud, go to the police.
If it's incompetence, move on to finding how to unwind the contract to save the money.
Either way, you don't do a breathless post on social media. Trouble is that DOGE-UK, like its stateside friend, is based on the theory that everyone who isn't DOGE is relatively completely stupid.
When, in reality, the supporters of DOGE / DOGE UK seem completely stupid.
Or in the US, take the gullible along for a ride; enriching their friends whilst impoverishing their supporters.
It goes beyond that. Look at the politicians - MTG as an example. Or Matt Vickers having his arse handed to him by Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight.
It isn’t just that the voters are kept dumb - the politicians are morons. They don’t even understand what they are being told to say, so how do we expect the low-information voters they are trying to manipulate to know any better?
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
He links to the Tender Notice in his next Tweet - it mentions nothing about paying the wages of any staff, and it would be odd if it did - how could you budget for agency staff on a fixed quote?
So it seems like it might be Nigel who is 'misleading people' and FF43 who is 'happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth'. But I am sure if that turns out to be the outcome, they'll be along to offer their unequivocal apologies in their usual gracious style.
Really ?
"If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story."
I gave my opinion, and laid out the two possibilities. Your assessment might differ, but please don't say I'm misleading people when I'm not.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
Wider tyres at lower pressure would have more contact area with the road service, and therefore a higher coefficient of friction - requiring more energy to push the bike.
That said, they may be practically better because very narrow tyres at very high pressure may not be as safe at high speed or in rain or in corners, leading cyclists to bleed off some speed to avoid crashes, whereas fatter tyres do not, so it all depends on how they're used.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
I think I’ll be going electric in the next 18 months. I’ll not hold out for one of these
That type of niche thing comes around every so often - some really take off (eg Swytch bike conversion), others don't. Here's a treadle "stand up" bicycle from 2014, called the ElliptiGO.
It's mainly sold as eg a training aid for runners.
I'm not sure what sort of electric-assist you are after, but the Axxon Rides e-folder I bought in spring last year to get back in the saddle after serious illness are still on half price sale at £899, and are very well built and comfortable. A very good local utility bike, which you can just bung in the shopping trolley if you need. Range is not that huge for the sale model (15-20 miles), very comfortable due to big tyres, and has lights and a horn built in. Not really for peeps far over 100kg or 5'10". https://www.e-bikesdirect.co.uk/brands/axon-rides-folding-electric-bikes/
Otherwise things with big tyres and largish batteries seem to be the thing. This is a local Youtuber in Derby within the PB demographic who films his recreational rides of 10-40 miles - "Brooksey The Emtb Explorer". https://www.youtube.com/@brooksey234
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
It's like that for any hobby, in my experience. I've gone for simplicity for my bike (e.g. external cables, steel frame, mechanical brakes), while spending lots of cash on stuff that just works, like ortlieb panniers and quadlock phone mounts. It handles like a freight train, but I get admiring looks for it's sheer utility.
My main gripe with tubeless is that most tyres are tubeless ready, making them extremely difficult to get on and off if you're running tubes and get a puncture.
If/when I get promoted, and we move to a bigger place, I'll splash out on a fancy bike with all the stuff you mention. I did a tour of the Cairngorms on a top-spec trail bike and it was amazing, and my old carbon road bike was much better for zipping out to North Berwick than what I have now.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
I think I’ll be going electric in the next 18 months. I’ll not hold out for one of these
That type of niche thing comes around every so often - some really take off (eg Swytch bike conversion), others don't. Here's a treadle "stand up" bicycle from 2014, called the ElliptiGO.
It's mainly sold as eg a training aid for runners.
I'm not sure what sort of electric-assist you are after, but the Axxon Rides e-folder I bought in spring last year to get back in the saddle after serious illness are still on half price sale at £899, and are very well built and comfortable. A very good local utility bike, which you can just bung in the shopping trolley if you need. Range is not that huge for the sale model (15-20 miles), very comfortable due to big tyres, and has lights and a horn built in. Not really for peeps far over 100kg or 5'10". https://www.e-bikesdirect.co.uk/brands/axon-rides-folding-electric-bikes/
Otherwise things with big tyres and largish batteries seem to be the thing. This is a local Youtuber in Derby within the PB demographic who films his recreational rides of 10-40 miles - "Brooksey The Emtb Explorer". https://www.youtube.com/@brooksey234
I’m definitely not after a Swytch. Read a bit about it and not impressed.
I’m just after a bike to replace the current one. Hybrid. And pedal assist. I tend to do 10 mile trips maximum.
I did look at a Brompton after RCS mentioned it, I quite liked it but they are pricey.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
Wider tyres at lower pressure would have more contact area with the road service, and therefore a higher coefficient of friction - requiring more energy to push the bike.
That said, they may be practically better because very narrow tyres at very high pressure may not be as safe at high speed or in rain or in corners, leading cyclists to bleed off some speed to avoid crashes, whereas fatter tyres do not, so it all depends on how they're used.
It's been a sea change in cycling over the last 15 years or so - from 25mm to 28mm tyres up to about 35mm to 45mm. There are lots of drivers - tyre technology, in the UK deteriorating roads since the noughties, they are often faster and less rolling resistance than narrow tyres in real conditions, in the UK 'orrible surfaces on cycling trails, comfort etc. And it's a trend in top level racing so fashiobale.
I swapped my hybrid's tyres for as-large-as-would fit when I got the bike back in 2014, because I have used it for everything from touring to shopping.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
I think I’ll be going electric in the next 18 months. I’ll not hold out for one of these
That type of niche thing comes around every so often - some really take off (eg Swytch bike conversion), others don't. Here's a treadle "stand up" bicycle from 2014, called the ElliptiGO.
It's mainly sold as eg a training aid for runners.
I'm not sure what sort of electric-assist you are after, but the Axxon Rides e-folder I bought in spring last year to get back in the saddle after serious illness are still on half price sale at £899, and are very well built and comfortable. A very good local utility bike, which you can just bung in the shopping trolley if you need. Range is not that huge for the sale model (15-20 miles), very comfortable due to big tyres, and has lights and a horn built in. Not really for peeps far over 100kg or 5'10". https://www.e-bikesdirect.co.uk/brands/axon-rides-folding-electric-bikes/
Otherwise things with big tyres and largish batteries seem to be the thing. This is a local Youtuber in Derby within the PB demographic who films his recreational rides of 10-40 miles - "Brooksey The Emtb Explorer". https://www.youtube.com/@brooksey234
I’m definitely not after a Swytch. Read a bit about it and not impressed.
I’m just after a bike to replace the current one. Hybrid. And pedal assist. I tend to do 10 mile trips maximum.
I did look at a Brompton after RCS mentioned it, I quite liked it but they are pricey.
Trad Man - brilliant.
Watch out for the N+1 demon ("What is the ideal number of bicycles to own?") .
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
It's like that for any hobby, in my experience. I've gone for simplicity for my bike (e.g. external cables, steel frame, mechanical brakes), while spending lots of cash on stuff that just works, like ortlieb panniers and quadlock phone mounts. It handles like a freight train, but I get admiring looks for it's sheer utility.
My main gripe with tubeless is that most tyres are tubeless ready, making them extremely difficult to get on and off if you're running tubes and get a puncture.
If/when I get promoted, and we move to a bigger place, I'll splash out on a fancy bike with all the stuff you mention. I did a tour of the Cairngorms on a top-spec trail bike and it was amazing, and my old carbon road bike was much better for zipping out to North Berwick than what I have now.
When @Dura_Ace finally wakes up and spies this thread we might set a new world record for the number of acronyms in a single post.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
Wider tyres at lower pressure would have more contact area with the road service, and therefore a higher coefficient of friction - requiring more energy to push the bike.
That said, they may be practically better because very narrow tyres at very high pressure may not be as safe at high speed or in rain or in corners, leading cyclists to bleed off some speed to avoid crashes, whereas fatter tyres do not, so it all depends on how they're used.
The reason I gave up with narrow tyres was because I got sick of changing punctures - they seem to get five to ten times as many as their broader competitors if you ride them on anything but absolutely perfect, clean roads.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
Furthermore, suppose something bad has happened.
If it's actual fraud, go to the police.
If it's incompetence, move on to finding how to unwind the contract to save the money.
Either way, you don't do a breathless post on social media. Trouble is that DOGE-UK, like its stateside friend, is based on the theory that everyone who isn't DOGE is relatively completely stupid.
When, in reality, the supporters of DOGE / DOGE UK seem completely stupid.
Or in the US, take the gullible along for a ride; enriching their friends whilst impoverishing their supporters.
It goes beyond that. Look at the politicians - MTG as an example. Or Matt Vickers having his arse handed to him by Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight.
It isn’t just that the voters are kept dumb - the politicians are morons. They don’t even understand what they are being told to say, so how do we expect the low-information voters they are trying to manipulate to know any better?
It's not quite that. Even the dumbest elected politician will be smarter than the dumbest voter. And some of these people, JD Vance or Dom Cummings, say, are clearly bright and well-educated.
I reckon the trouble is a kind of unwisdom that all people are prone to; having a worldview as a pair of spectacles that define the way that you interpret everything you see. Intelligent, knowledgeable people are more at risk, because they can better do the necessary mental contortions. Doublethink requires a lot of mental effort.
A lot of people of the Cummings/Musk worldview hero-worship Richard Feynman, and in many ways, fair enough. But as the great man said,
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
Worth noting that the recruitment contract winner in Kent is “Connect2Kent” which is owned by Kent County Council.
This is accounting, not scandal.
I'm still interested in seeing the full story when it comes out.
If it is purely for recruitment, that is a very large number. Kent staff turnover (according to their website) is somewhere around 10-15% annually. Recruitment costs are around 10-15% of first year salary.
Yusuf says the total number amounts to "22% of their annual payroll". It's a four year contract, so the annualised cost is actually 5.5% of annual payroll.
If it is purely recruitment, then the cost shouldn't be much more than 1.5% ?
Worth noting that the recruitment contract winner in Kent is “Connect2Kent” which is owned by Kent County Council.
This is accounting, not scandal.
Connect2Kent is just a trading name of Kent Commercial Services Limited which is wholly owned by Kent County Council. It had 823 staff in 2024 (including temporary workers) with a wage bill of £28m not including pensions etc. It seems to provide a load of council services on behalf of the council including payroll and HR. It has 8 directors who where paid on average under £100k each and it paid just under £3m back to the council including dividends.
Worth noting that the recruitment contract winner in Kent is “Connect2Kent” which is owned by Kent County Council.
This is accounting, not scandal.
I'm still interested in seeing the full story when it comes out.
If it is purely for recruitment, that is a very large number. Kent staff turnover (according to their website) is somewhere around 10-15% annually. Recruitment costs are around 10-15% of first year salary.
Yusuf says the total number amounts to "22% of their annual payroll". It's a four year contract, so the annualised cost is actually 5.5% of annual payroll.
If it is purely recruitment, then the cost shouldn't be much more than 1.5% ?
I think its all contract work going through a marketplace - at which point 22% is about right.
There was promotion of them several years ago, and it's actually a mechanism that was on very early cycles - dating back initially to 1840 or so. For your standard cyclist, it is thought less smooth/inefficient as a general view - but can potentially be useful, as the chap suggests, for people with some movement limitations. I think the thinking around walking/wheeling-cycling have changed even in the last 3 or 4 years so that the conversation would now appreciate it more even in cycling circles - there is a recognition of common needs around pedestrians and cyclists. That's the junction I try to sit at.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
As someone new to cycling as a 'sport', it seems extremely faddy. For years narrow tyres at high pressures were seen as being the best for speed; now, wider tyres at less pressure are seen as being faster. Rim brakes were overtaken by the now-dominant disc brakes; but I've seen people recently claim rim brakes are generally better for everything but very hilly rides. Tubeless are best! No! Tubes are best, but only TPU tubes (*)! Things sold at massive cost to save you a few watts and make you go half a km/h faster turn out not to be quite as good as promised, or even have negative benefit.
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
Wider tyres at lower pressure would have more contact area with the road service, and therefore a higher coefficient of friction - requiring more energy to push the bike.
That said, they may be practically better because very narrow tyres at very high pressure may not be as safe at high speed or in rain or in corners, leading cyclists to bleed off some speed to avoid crashes, whereas fatter tyres do not, so it all depends on how they're used.
There is some (potentially pseudo-) science about this, that states that fatter, lower-pressure tyres are faster due to the way they handle the road and things like reduced sidewall deformation. And the article below states that the move towards much stiffer carbon frames has been a significant driver, along with other info. Worth a read if you want more info, as it is slightly counter-intuitive.
Having said that, I daresay the trend in a decade will be towards narrower, higher-pressure tyres...
Incidentally, here's a piccie of my rear tyre after hitting a pothole on a main road a few weeks back:
The front tyre was slightly better. I'm still amazed I managed to make it back without the tyre bursting. When I took the tyres off later, the internal metal banding was shattered.
"it has not worked out well. The few water companies that have remained publicly listed enterprises haven’t fared too badly, but the ones subsequently bought by private equity – including Thames Water – have been pillaged to destruction. Stripped down to the last lightbulb by rapacious financiers, they increasingly cut corners and are today in all kinds of trouble."
Worth noting that the recruitment contract winner in Kent is “Connect2Kent” which is owned by Kent County Council.
This is accounting, not scandal.
I'm still interested in seeing the full story when it comes out.
If it is purely for recruitment, that is a very large number. Kent staff turnover (according to their website) is somewhere around 10-15% annually. Recruitment costs are around 10-15% of first year salary.
Yusuf says the total number amounts to "22% of their annual payroll". It's a four year contract, so the annualised cost is actually 5.5% of annual payroll.
If it is purely recruitment, then the cost shouldn't be much more than 1.5% ?
I think its all contract work going through a marketplace - at which point 22% is about right.
Whether it's true or not, I've heard that Trump meant to ban travel from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but accidently put the Republic of the Congo instead and now can't row back without looking foolish.
No travel ban for Russia either, just like no tariffs and an attempt by Trump to stop further sanctions.
Trump really needs to learn that whilst Putin has leverage over him regarding those tapes, it's a prisoners dilemma. If Putin releases the tapes, he loses all leverage too over Trump so he can't do it anymore than Trump doesn't want them released.
Existing shareholders have already written their shares to zero value. Senior bondholders are negotiating in relation to what size loss they take on existing positions and who objects new equity capital, which is needed.
That is a company going bust. But that doesn't mean it ceases to operate while negotiations happen.
Worth noting that the recruitment contract winner in Kent is “Connect2Kent” which is owned by Kent County Council.
This is accounting, not scandal.
I'm still interested in seeing the full story when it comes out.
If it is purely for recruitment, that is a very large number. Kent staff turnover (according to their website) is somewhere around 10-15% annually. Recruitment costs are around 10-15% of first year salary.
Yusuf says the total number amounts to "22% of their annual payroll". It's a four year contract, so the annualised cost is actually 5.5% of annual payroll.
If it is purely recruitment, then the cost shouldn't be much more than 1.5% ?
I think its all contract work going through a marketplace - at which point 22% is about right.
I am not sure the value of a public tender equals the value of the contract, more it’s theoretical value. Without seeing the actual contract, not the tender notice, it’s impossible to tell.
It’s not my area but I would assume it’s high so as to avoid any procurement challenges if the spend passed an arbitrary level.
Worth noting that the recruitment contract winner in Kent is “Connect2Kent” which is owned by Kent County Council.
This is accounting, not scandal.
I'm still interested in seeing the full story when it comes out.
If it is purely for recruitment, that is a very large number. Kent staff turnover (according to their website) is somewhere around 10-15% annually. Recruitment costs are around 10-15% of first year salary.
Yusuf says the total number amounts to "22% of their annual payroll". It's a four year contract, so the annualised cost is actually 5.5% of annual payroll.
If it is purely recruitment, then the cost shouldn't be much more than 1.5% ?
The Twitter thread is interesting. Reform quote £375m whilst linking to a tender worth £500m. Those are theoretical capped maximums of course - you pay per job not a fixed fee.
And what is the contract? Paying a recruitment agency to take all of the operational decisions about staffing temp contracts off the council - an arms length shield against jobs for the boys claims.
But let’s not pay out £lots to the private sector. We’re such a massive employer that we create our own agency solely to recruit for our needs.
So what is this scandal? Let’s assume for a second that the sum actually was £375m. Paid by Kent County Council to Connect2Kent - which is Commercial Services Kent Ltd which is owned by Global Commercial Services Group Ltd which is owned by Kent County Council.
So KCC would be paying £375m to KCC. The money never leaves the building.
There is considerable scope for some truly egregious--> corrupt contracts to now see the light of day with all these council changes.
Labour can see these council changes come down the pike withi a year. They'd be very wise to start cleaning house. Might even help them keep some seats.
Except I think this is a full marketplace where the £350m is mainly being spent on paying the workers supplied via the contract.
The fact it's Mr Yusuf is not being 100% clear tells me that I don't think he's understands what he has found...
My guess he understands all too well, but is happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth. Yusuf used to run an upscale staffing agency so he should have a good idea how this stuff works. The question is what the new Kent Council is going to do about it. Presumably these staff are doing a required job.
By claiming to have found vast amounts of money that could be saved they're then obliging themselves to either spend it on something else or cut taxes.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
Either way, it comes to around 3% of their total annual revenue budget.
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
Not doing something because it is “only 3%” is part of the reason why there is chronic overspending in government
Did I suggest that ?
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Can you provide evidence that the figure includes wage costs please?
the truth will out in the next few days: my money is on the sum including agency staff costs, because (simply) councils and councilors aren't completely stupid
Furthermore, suppose something bad has happened.
If it's actual fraud, go to the police.
If it's incompetence, move on to finding how to unwind the contract to save the money.
Either way, you don't do a breathless post on social media. Trouble is that DOGE-UK, like its stateside friend, is based on the theory that everyone who isn't DOGE is relatively completely stupid.
When, in reality, the supporters of DOGE / DOGE UK seem completely stupid.
Or in the US, take the gullible along for a ride; enriching their friends whilst impoverishing their supporters.
It goes beyond that. Look at the politicians - MTG as an example. Or Matt Vickers having his arse handed to him by Victoria Derbyshire on Newsnight.
It isn’t just that the voters are kept dumb - the politicians are morons. They don’t even understand what they are being told to say, so how do we expect the low-information voters they are trying to manipulate to know any better?
It's not quite that. Even the dumbest elected politician will be smarter than the dumbest voter. And some of these people, JD Vance or Dom Cummings, say, are clearly bright and well-educated.
I reckon the trouble is a kind of unwisdom that all people are prone to; having a worldview as a pair of spectacles that define the way that you interpret everything you see. Intelligent, knowledgeable people are more at risk, because they can better do the necessary mental contortions. Doublethink requires a lot of mental effort.
A lot of people of the Cummings/Musk worldview hero-worship Richard Feynman, and in many ways, fair enough. But as the great man said,
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
Surely it is more that people can be very intelligent in one aspect of life, and completely stupid in others? This is the nature of being human.
We see this all the time when people step outside their zone of knowledge and comment on things that they have no understanding of.
(Something that neither myself or any other PBer ever does, of course)
"it has not worked out well. The few water companies that have remained publicly listed enterprises haven’t fared too badly, but the ones subsequently bought by private equity – including Thames Water – have been pillaged to destruction. Stripped down to the last lightbulb by rapacious financiers, they increasingly cut corners and are today in all kinds of trouble."
Comments
Trump’s New Jersey golf club earned a whopping 18 health code violations and the lowest grade in the county.
https://x.com/thedailybeast/status/1930360755536183768
Still, the tweet is successful on its own terms already.
Either that or Kent CC has the most expensive headhunters in history.
But it comes at a long term cost: less continuity in care or other essential services, far lower individual productivity and less motivated employees, quite possibly lower quality and less qualified staff. In the long run the evidence from health, social care and education seems to be that it increases costs overall.
Note that Kent CC was Tory controlled, not Labour.
But then it often seems in politics that parties ignore what might be perfectly good attack lines by overreaching, or even outright inventing things - that was often the case with attacks against Boris as I recall.
Mrs Foxy worked purely bank (effectively a ZHC) but is now transferring to a permanent contract for the same hours. She is now eligible for overtime, holiday and sick pay so gets a pay rise, albeit with a loss of flexibility. Bank work was already pensionable.
* I don't expect it to last, as it never does. Too many critical teams have key vacancies that can only be kept going with agency and bank staff.
And could probably exchange his prisoners for the ones in El Salvador
As for employing permanent staff the council won’t be paying enough so those who want more cash today work via agencies
Of course the government will likely tell the court to eff off, or make token moves to 'facilitate' but say it's a done deal now and cannot be undone, but that's a different issue.
But the 'professional' management brought in to bring 'professional' techniques to our processes just landed me with a new retro-tastic PRINCE2 process which will add a 30-40% admin overhead to everything we do. Roughly 1/2 to 1/3rd of the teams time will be filling in forms (quite literally) to justify doing work users have asked for.
No 'these are the metrics we want' or 'we need insight into XYZ' discussions. Just 'for every request - fill in eight forms'. (I do mean that - not 'tick a box that tells a computer to update X' - I really mean 'fill in a form with up to 15 required fields for... everything. Every change, every update to a change, every change to a change).
So that's about £100+ grand on the professional management salary, about a 30% reduction in productivity. Top work all round.
I'm almost tempted to go work for the central team who get paid better, and spend their time wasting taxpayer money arranging consultants to spend more taxpayer money on half-baked projects that never meet their goals.
Does anyone expect that to happen ?
(I have read his book, and thought enough of it to buy copies for two men in my family.)
I am not aware of any evidence that Burka-bans improve race relations in a society, or that the UK has poorer communal relations than the three countries she mentioned - was it Fr, NL and Be. If our race relations are better, then it implies if anything that they should get rid of their bans (though I suspect it is perhaps correlation not causation).
Politically, it's just another shit-stirring dog whistle imo. Up there with Philp and Lam's stuff about how Afghans are an existential sex crime risk to our society because they are responsible for 59 sec crime convictions out of a total 12104. Of course, they adopt the dishonest framing of 'Afghan 22 times more likely to commit a sex crime than an average white Brit' - without pointing out that the impact is less than a rounding error.
It's aimed at frightening gullibles - if they can't make an honest argument to support their case, then it suggests that the protagonists are bullshit artists.
Kent CC has 30k staff. There is no way they are paying them an average of £13,333.
He's making the Musk mistake - rushing to social media with cocked up bollocks.
Unless I have cocked up myself, that will bite him hard; an accounting panjandrum who can't do sums, or even order of magnitude sanity checks on a calculation.
This is perhaps the first thing I would welcome Carol Vorderman diving into on Twitter
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/25169406.tories-fail-find-candidates-norfolk-by-elections/
https://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/19383/local-council-elections-june-2025
"Get rid of all the Afghans and reduce sex crime convictions from 12104 to 12045" does not have the same ring.
Even the Telegraph, where I think the numbers came from in March *, did not go that far - though they did pull a couple of tricks in their peace back in March.
(* I have been asked not to post archive.today links, as apparently newspapers are intending to crack down on this practice. I previously took it as a deliberate hole they left in their firewalls to get links, as that used to be the practice in various places. I can link the article page if anyone wants.)
So she did the last bit in a French accent today.
They are apparently going to introduce her to Allo Allo.
https://youtu.be/3TuyH4mUF0g?t=2603
Q: "How many London Underground tube stations are in zones 1 and 2?"
A: "There are a total of approximately 83 London Underground tube stations in zones 1 and 2, including major and smaller stations. Zone 1 has 63 smaller tube stations, and approximately 8 major stations, totaling around 71. Zone 2 includes the remaining 12 stations."
The answer is actually 137.
Are the US Courts just supposed to shrug their shoulders and say they can't do anything because "an American judge has no jurisdiction with regard to El Salvador" ?
The judge is asserting jurisdiction on the US government and not the El Salvador government.
Boasberg is using the exact words that SCOTUS used, that is, that the US government is required to "facilitate" the return of the people sent to El Salvador.
If the US government fails to do good faith efforts to facilitate their return, then the judiciary will hold the US government in contempt.
"There is no escaping the fierce political tradition of the Glasgow suburbs. Here, nationalism brushes up against some of the staunchest unionism in the country. In Hamilton, but especially in nearby Larkhall, sectarianism remains a way of life. Union Jacks flutter and many Orange walks start from here in the summer. The traditionally Protestant football team, Rangers, is sacrosanct, and anything green is associated with “Old Firm” rivals Celtic. The Subway sandwich shop is painted black and even green traffic lights have been vandalised."
https://unherd.com/2025/06/is-scotland-ready-for-reform/
If someone had answered this exact question somewhere on the Internet, then it might have picked the correct number, but if it's a brand new question that (almost) no one has answered before then the AI, by itself, can't analyse the London Underground map & answer it correctly.
My guess is that it picked the specific number "83" based on this specific text from an answer on Quora:
What proportion of Afghani immigrants are men in their 20s?
It's entirely possible for two things to be true: that Afghan immigrants are more likely to commit sex offences, and for them to be less likely to commit then than (say) White British men in their 20s. (I don't know that to be the case, but if you don't control for age and gender, you can get highly misleading statistics.)
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
If he's basically misleading everyone as the figure includes wage costs, then whatever difference they make on this alone will be close to imperceptible.
None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up.
If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story.
The Trump administration has brought back to the United States a Guatemalan man who was wrongfully deported to Mexico, albeit to an uncertain future, his lawyers said on Wednesday.
Last week, the Justice Department said it would comply with a federal judge’s order to “facilitate” the return of O.C.G., a gay man who was sent to Mexico this year despite having told American authorities that he had experienced violence there and was afraid to go back.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/us/politics/guatemalan-deported-mexico-trump.html?smid=url-share
“Cultural sensitivity” should not extend to ignoring fundamental principles of British society
Which led university lecturers and staff to have moral quandaries: did they report women wearing headscarves in class and get them thrown out, depriving them of a uni education, or did they ignore it, and potentially get in trouble? Many women continued wearing headscarves and still graduated...
(Ataturk himself banned man from wearing 'traditional' clothes, forcing them into western-style clothing, but did not ban headscarves.)
Be very careful of us reverting down the road of telling grown women what they can, and can not, wear.
But girls under 18? They should not be wearing the niqab or burka. But if we ban that, there's a good chance that the parents will remove them out of education...
https://x.com/azealiaslacewig/status/1930372280174961025?s=61
"None of that is an argument against better management - but you don't start to manage things better by making stuff up."
Evidently not.
The point was that it's very likely that most of this money is spent on wages. Managing it better might save 0.3% - which would be a decent amount of money, but not any kind yf magic bullet, which is what Reform seemed to suggest.
Lee Jae-myung, factory worker-turned-reformer, to lead Korea
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/politics/20250604/lee-jae-myung-factory-worker-turned-reformer-to-lead-korea
..Lee's journey from a teenage factory worker who overcame hardship and physical injury to become a prominent human rights lawyer and political leader has become central to his story, positioning him as a symbol of resilience and inspiration for many.
Born in 1964 in a remote village in Andong, North Gyeongsang Province, Lee grew up in extreme poverty. After completing elementary school, financial hardship forced him to work as a teenage factory laborer in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, earning just 200 won (about $0.15) a day at a clock factory. A workplace accident left him with a permanent disability in his left arm, but Lee refused to let hardship define his future.
Determined to change his circumstances, Lee passed the high school qualification exam and earned a scholarship to Chung-Ang University’s law school. During his university years, the 1980 Gwangju Uprising inspired him to dedicate his career to social justice and advocacy for the underprivileged...
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5332843-trump-calls-for-scrapping-debt-limit/
So if even if it's all fraud (which seems implausible), it won't massively shift the dial.
While that is true on a standalone basis it is symptomatic of the government disease to look for one big solution. Small steps make for great journeys.
A partly similar thing is that there are things around like adult balance bikes as a mobility aid, which is the same principle as kids balance bikes', or the Dandy Horse from early 19C times (German@ Laufmaschine).
There is a three wheeled one called the Alinker, which is like a 3 wheeled rollator with a seat, or a 3-wheeled sit down scooter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRieNPiR18
My photo a Swedish treadle bicycle form 1925:
I'm currently looking for a time-trial / triathlon bike, and above (say) £2000 the gains really seem ultra-marginal for the increased prices. I've deliberately lost weight this year, as losing weight seems a more efficient way of improving speed...
(*) One guy at a recent gravel race had both tubeless and tubes; he had a tubeless setup with a tube within, so if he got a puncture the tubeless sealant could not deal with, he would just inflate the tube...
If it's actual fraud, go to the police.
If it's incompetence, move on to finding how to unwind the contract to save the money.
Either way, you don't do a breathless post on social media. Trouble is that DOGE-UK, like its stateside friend, is based on the theory that everyone who isn't DOGE is relatively completely stupid.
So it seems like it might be Nigel who is 'misleading people' and FF43 who is 'happy to score a point and is not particularly concerned with the truth'. But I am sure if that turns out to be the outcome, they'll be along to offer their unequivocal apologies in their usual gracious style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCSlNrI4nhY
Populism, Aristotle and Hope - Rory Stewart
Or in the US, take the gullible along for a ride; enriching their friends whilst impoverishing their supporters.
This is a good piece by the Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/05/labour-defence-keir-starmer-polls-liberal-democratic-governments?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
it as something that his I see the market as driven by technology, fashion and deep discounts. The initial pitch of the company Sport Pursuit the deep discounter, who started out by email with a non-widely visible website, was that "Brands" sold 10-15% of a product at full price, 50-60% at normal retail discount, and wanted to clear out the last fraction at deep discount without damaging the next range.
I think the fashion is also an internalisation of Brit Cycling type "marginal gains". But utility cycling is adding another strand, as is the slow recognition (it's always been there) of cycles as perhaps the most common mobility aid.
Personally I try to ignore brands, and to never pay more than about half the full price for anything, unless I an see the immediate benefit for me - so I have had an (expensive) Gruber Assist (an e-motor inside the seat tube) since 2015, a Hornit which is loud enough to penetrate buses, and various other useful bits and pieces including a deeply unfashionable touring triple chainset.
It isn’t just that the voters are kept dumb - the politicians are morons. They don’t even understand what they are being told to say, so how do we expect the low-information voters they are trying to manipulate to know any better?
"If it is fraud on that scale, I'll be quite surprised. And it will be a huge story."
I gave my opinion, and laid out the two possibilities.
Your assessment might differ, but please don't say I'm misleading people when I'm not.
https://bsky.app/profile/newsagents.bsky.social/post/3lqs7oi2l522f
This is accounting, not scandal.
That said, they may be practically better because very narrow tyres at very high pressure may not be as safe at high speed or in rain or in corners, leading cyclists to bleed off some speed to avoid crashes, whereas fatter tyres do not, so it all depends on how they're used.
It's mainly sold as eg a training aid for runners.
https://road.cc/content/news/130823-british-adventurer-takes-elliptical-route-down-australia
I'm not sure what sort of electric-assist you are after, but the Axxon Rides e-folder I bought in spring last year to get back in the saddle after serious illness are still on half price sale at £899, and are very well built and comfortable. A very good local utility bike, which you can just bung in the shopping trolley if you need. Range is not that huge for the sale model (15-20 miles), very comfortable due to big tyres, and has lights and a horn built in. Not really for peeps far over 100kg or 5'10".
https://www.e-bikesdirect.co.uk/brands/axon-rides-folding-electric-bikes/
Otherwise things with big tyres and largish batteries seem to be the thing. This is a local Youtuber in Derby within the PB demographic who films his recreational rides of 10-40 miles - "Brooksey The Emtb Explorer".
https://www.youtube.com/@brooksey234
My main gripe with tubeless is that most tyres are tubeless ready, making them extremely difficult to get on and off if you're running tubes and get a puncture.
If/when I get promoted, and we move to a bigger place, I'll splash out on a fancy bike with all the stuff you mention. I did a tour of the Cairngorms on a top-spec trail bike and it was amazing, and my old carbon road bike was much better for zipping out to North Berwick than what I have now.
I’m just after a bike to replace the current one. Hybrid. And pedal assist. I tend to do 10 mile trips maximum.
I did look at a Brompton after RCS mentioned it, I quite liked it but they are pricey.
I swapped my hybrid's tyres for as-large-as-would fit when I got the bike back in 2014, because I have used it for everything from touring to shopping.
Watch out for the N+1 demon ("What is the ideal number of bicycles to own?")
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/high-iq-intelligence-myth/683023/?gift=Q2xxhS27Csx4yHsp7QhJgWCLqN2b8vTGCzLkK20h5c4&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
I reckon the trouble is a kind of unwisdom that all people are prone to; having a worldview as a pair of spectacles that define the way that you interpret everything you see. Intelligent, knowledgeable people are more at risk, because they can better do the necessary mental contortions. Doublethink requires a lot of mental effort.
A lot of people of the Cummings/Musk worldview hero-worship Richard Feynman, and in many ways, fair enough. But as the great man said,
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.
One such is Thames Water
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/06/04/enough-is-enough-let-thames-water-go-bust
If it is purely for recruitment, that is a very large number. Kent staff turnover (according to their website) is somewhere around 10-15% annually. Recruitment costs are around 10-15% of first year salary.
Yusuf says the total number amounts to "22% of their annual payroll". It's a four year contract, so the annualised cost is actually 5.5% of annual payroll.
If it is purely recruitment, then the cost shouldn't be much more than 1.5% ?
Doesn’t seem particularly troughy to me
Loads of councils have a commercial services arm
How to increase tax revenue
Having said that, I daresay the trend in a decade will be towards narrower, higher-pressure tyres...
https://road.cc/content/feature/why-wider-tyres-road-bikes-are-here-stay-307245
Incidentally, here's a piccie of my rear tyre after hitting a pothole on a main road a few weeks back:
The front tyre was slightly better. I'm still amazed I managed to make it back without the tyre bursting. When I took the tyres off later, the internal metal banding was shattered.
"it has not worked out well. The few water companies that have remained publicly listed enterprises haven’t fared too badly, but the ones subsequently bought by private equity – including Thames Water – have been pillaged to destruction. Stripped down to the last lightbulb by rapacious financiers, they increasingly cut corners and are today in all kinds of trouble."
Warner, Telegraph
https://csg.delta-esourcing.com/delta/respondToList.html?accessCode=P4699BQF2A
No travel ban for Russia either, just like no tariffs and an attempt by Trump to stop further sanctions.
Trump really needs to learn that whilst Putin has leverage over him regarding those tapes, it's a prisoners dilemma. If Putin releases the tapes, he loses all leverage too over Trump so he can't do it anymore than Trump doesn't want them released.
Existing shareholders have already written their shares to zero value. Senior bondholders are negotiating in relation to what size loss they take on existing positions and who objects new equity capital, which is needed.
That is a company going bust. But that doesn't mean it ceases to operate while negotiations happen.
It’s not my area but I would assume it’s high so as to avoid any procurement challenges if the spend passed an arbitrary level.
And what is the contract? Paying a recruitment agency to take all of the operational decisions about staffing temp contracts off the council - an arms length shield against jobs for the boys claims.
But let’s not pay out £lots to the private sector. We’re such a massive employer that we create our own agency solely to recruit for our needs.
So what is this scandal? Let’s assume for a second that the sum actually was £375m. Paid by Kent County Council to Connect2Kent - which is Commercial Services Kent Ltd which is owned by Global Commercial Services Group Ltd which is owned by Kent County Council.
So KCC would be paying £375m to KCC. The money never leaves the building.
We see this all the time when people step outside their zone of knowledge and comment on things that they have no understanding of.
(Something that neither myself or any other PBer ever does, of course)