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A tempest is coming – politicalbetting.com
A tempest is coming – politicalbetting.com
It’s usually about the economy, and the latest herald from the IMF is bad news for Labour as the screenshot from The Guardian shows. If Reeves follows the IMF’s suggestions then Labour’s popularity will sink lower.
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Mind you, Hunt and Sunak didn’t have the balls to do the right thing either, despite having a big majority and knowing they were about to be swept away. I suspect it will be left as a deliberate time for whatever ragtag bunch is running things in 2029 to defuse.
Meanwhile, out in the actual wilderness, we had a thunderstorm yesterday evening but it’s now warm and sunny yet again - 19C already at 7 am - and during the middle of the night it’s almost dark, as the sun is now setting at half eleven and not rising until after three. Today I am leaving Akaslompolo and heading south to drop by the spot where Santa lives and receives all those flights of children in the winter….
Ending the triple lock and charging for the NHS is inevitable, together with some form of means testing the pension
Of course it is the antithesis of Labour's DNA but ultimately someone will have to address it and maybe sooner than most think
Starmer and Reeves have had a terrible first year making so many unenforced errors and creating the space for Farage and now Corbyn to exploit
The problem is there are no solutions that the public will accept until the markets make it inevitable
The rules state that a local diocesan committee (the Vacancy in See Committee, or VISC) elects three people to send to the CNC from among its own members.
After Welby announced his resignation in December, the Canterbury VISC swung into action. Their three-year term of office elapsed at the end of 2024, so plans were already underway to handover to the new VISC elected to serve 2025-28.
However, in January 2025, somebody realised the original VISC committee had been selected illegitimately due to a misunderstanding way back in 2022, so it had to be junked. To add to the confusion, the second VISC had been elected on the explicit understanding that it would not be involved in the Welby succession, which everyone then assumed was being handled by the old VISC.
So, unbelievably, the Diocese of Canterbury decided to elect a third VISC. In February, officials in Canterbury re-opened nominations. However, in the middle of these elections, the General Synod met and changed the rules. Despite the election already being underway, the diocese decided to implement the new criteria immediately.
There were a dizzying array of restrictions, trying to balance the VISC membership to include a certain number of women, lay people, and members of each district in the Diocese of Canterbury. As a result, some people were guaranteed to be elected while others could never win. To compound the chaos, they botched the counting of the votes.
The CofE then failed to explain any of the problems publicly for many weeks, allowing conspiracy theories to flourish. Conservatives and evangelicals worried that progressives were trying to fiddle the results to get more of their supporters onto the VISC - and eventually onto the CNC.
In one infamous example, an evangelical vicar who got ten votes lost out to a liberal who only got one. This was possible because of the complicated new rules but it appeared from the outside that conservatives were being disenfranchised unfairly.
Eventually, several weeks later, the diocese quietly admitted it had bungled the elections and scrapped the committee entirely. Now it has begun the process of electing yet another VISC, the fourth in just a few months.
https://www.premierchristianity.com/news-analysis/explained-why-its-taking-so-long-to-choose-the-next-archbishop-of-canterbury/19453.article
(They have now elected members, by the way, but the whole thing has been delayed by around three months.)
Jack Hobbs and Joe Root are England’s greatest – and both should be knighted
Despite batting in entirely different eras, the pair share many traits: soft hands, quick footwork and a self-effacing personality
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cricket/2025/07/25/joe-root-england-greatest-batsman-jack-hobbs-record-runs/
I love Scyld Berry but he is wrong, Root doesn't deserve a knighthood, he deserve a Dukedom.
Sports schedulers need to liaise better.
*Technically 3 if you include Sangakkara who averaged 66 in the 86 Tests where he didn't keep wicket.
Microsoft is now investigating the possibility that its own early warning to cybersecurity companies was what tipped off the hackers there was a weakness to exploit.
Stay safe everyone, and stay patched.
Useful advice for the Prime Minister and, dare I say, for all of us, courtesy of the Daily Telegraph email.
The Guardian tops itself here, ending a review of a cartoon film with a quote from Guy Debord::
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jul/25/how-smurfs-communist-roots-betrayed-film-movie?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
I don't think the Telegraph will be running the same story then.
The risk of course is accidentally winning that election.
https://x.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1948664065217253454
they may still end up in government\coalition and have to clear up their own mess
leaving a huge mess will just make it easier for a new government to justify slash and burnof all the things they dont like
What a catastrophe.
It was the remainer Truss that trashed it, not Boris.
Just because you WANT something to be true, doesn't mean it actually IS.
Crime is massively down from its peak 30 years ago.
https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-the-public-think-its-increased/
I tell the truth about our problems,
You talk the country down.
Labour have handled a poor hand very badly but Hunt cutting NI twice was a shambles.
Do you think red wall chavs are worried about wearing a Kermit Sub while walking through Russell Square? That's not their reality, so the truth or otherwise is irrelevant. It's just a vivid way to illustrate, to the simple minded, how completely fucked the country is with the implicit message that only Nigel can unfuck it.
How can people not see this.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/jul/25/ex-sun-editor-david-dinsmore-to-take-up-new-government-communications-role
#10 getting their own Andy Coulson. Not sure how well it goes down with the wing of the Labour Party who like to rip up copies of the Currant Bun on stage.
In my office, I go with ultrawide main monitor, 2 vertical monitors either side and a big telly above.
However, it is Starmer and Reeves with their idiotic anti business budget who have contributed enormously to today's crisis where by the way, bond prices are higher now than under Truss
Santa Claus village swelters in heatwave
Lapland experiences unseasonably warm weather, with highs of 31C and fears over wildfire risk
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/07/25/santa-claus-village-melting-heatwave-lapland/ (£££)
We can't raise taxes because they are already too high and Britain already is losing the most Millionaires of any country.
So it has to be state pensions, which have been protected for far too long.
I don’t own a Rolex. Just an Apple Watch. I doubt many people own a Rolex
We have got ourselves in the position where our politicians dare not do what is right for fear of the electorate. If the Labour Government felt it had to backtrack on a simple modest and sensible policy like the abolition of the WFA, what chance it will end the Triple Lock? What chance other sacred cows will be butchered?
This is a fix of our own making. We won't get out of it untilthe electorate grows up a bit. A change in the voting system might help, but I'm afraid we have to live with it until there is no alternative.
Putting Johnson into the top job was a catastrophic mistake, done for short-term self-interested party political reasons that were clearly spelled out to us at the time by our HY, but leading to disastrous consequences for both the party and our country as was also spelled out very clearly at the time by many others including me.
(Not stirring, at all.)
These problems have been brewing for decades- I'd say at least since Lawson, if others want to put it earlier I wouldn't argue. Whenever we had temporary favourable circumstances as a nation, we spent them as if they would be permanent. And now they seem to have definitively run out.
That's not to say that the current government have handled things well. But their inheritance was terrible, and deliberately made worse by Sunak and Hunt in their last twelve months.
I just expect PB to be more intelligent than that.
But Farage's latest intervention is hilarious. The right-wingers on here were screeching about tax increases causing the REALLY IMPORTANT millionaires to flee the country.
Now, these REALLY IMPORTANT millionaires are the sorts of people who will wear Rolexes, and Farage is telling them they are not safe in this country. Which is hardly going to attract them to stay, or even come, here.
If they were, we would not have seen the Kemi trying to turn the Defence Review into a political football.
They still have not had the courage to look in the mirror since the General Election.
The fact you haven't picked up it's been implemented should tell you the changes are less significant than were originally announced.
I suspect the single status review (coming in October) will be more important. It definitely will be for Deliveroo and co.
Separately - agencies running their own payroll became a lot more risky for end clients last week - so expect all agency workers to be being paid via umbrellas going forward...
As for why we deny it... We like to think of politics as rationally talking through what's best for the country. The extent to which it's all vibes and lying in a way that sounds plausible is to depressing to want to contemplate.
How Psychedelics Changed (and Destroyed) My Life https://medium.com/@dominiquetsamuels/how-psychedelics-changed-and-destroyed-my-life-768f10b7640d
An example of how inner sadness drives a desire for fame, and harshens views.
The elite wear Breitlings and Hublots, and potentially Patek Philippe.
My watch of choice is a Breitling as it fits my understated personality.
Apparently you can see my Breitling from the moon.
PS I'm not his audience and don't own a watch ( just to complicate the overlapping and not overlapping sets)
It’s not remotely inconsistent to point out a crime issue and also bemoan wealthy people leaving the UK.
You still clearly have an issue with “ REALLY IMPORTANT millionaires” which is really a “you” problem and is the same with many people in the UK, and it’s cool, you can watch your country stagnate and see entrepreneurs and wealthy investors swerve living in London and surrounds for countries actively trying to attract them. It’s very sad as I love the UK but you are a bit fucked but at least you will be able to buy a house in Mayfair when all the horrid wealthy people have moved on.
There are of course Rolex's and there are Rolex's (and I don't mean the Chinese fakes).
I’m off to the pub, where they have enough screens to show all three events at the same time.
In Tiananmen Square we took a liking to the kites flying there and negotiated the purchase again for a dollar.
As we were walking away the vendor asked if we wanted string with the kite - for a dollar.
People see virtue in their own side and vice in the other side.
I suppose that it is as simple as my mother puts it "There's always been folk with more money than sense"
There are no easy solutions that politicians can make but ultimately they will have no choice
Jennifer Williams
@jenwilliamsft.bsky.social
Can’t comment on the tel article as I’ve not read it. But the “tinder box” thing (also “powder keg”) has been said to me by so many MPs, charities and council people over the last week I don’t think it can be dismissed as some kind of alt right/McSweeney/Faragist fever dream
https://bsky.app/profile/jenwilliamsft.bsky.social/post/3luu2qbdxes2d
Having said that, it was a good purchase. It's his wittling knife; one he generally keeps on him if he needs to scrape some paint off, cut a piece of string or take a chunk out of some wood. The main blade is now very concave from wear.
I have heard of people buying the $1000 clones to wear in public while they store their genuine one away in a vault, so if they do get robbed they lose the clone.
F1: just a reminder the pre-race tosh will be up tomorrow morning. Normally, sprints are a great guide to race pace but as the sprint may be dry and the race wet things might diverge substantially. I'll be checking the forecast tomorrow, right before I bet.
Consider if we swapped Starmer for Blair and Badenoch for Cameron. Yes, both made significant errors, but I'd take that change in a heartbeat.
Can the NHS continue as a soley funded from tax institution? Looking increasing unreal.
Don’t tell me you don’t learn anything useful on PB.
I knew a sound recordist who wore a Rolex every day. He wasn't a very wealthy guy but he had done a job in the Middle East and the Sultan gave every member of the crew one as a gift