Nominally. It was a testing flight to stress-test components. Bottom bit went up, came back down, splashed down, success. Top bit went up, launched boilerplate satellites, came back down, bits caught on fire, splashed down, success.
It's going well, but it's going slowly. Incrementally only works if the increments are big enough. The obvious gaping hole is the fact that they haven't achieved orbit yet, and there's only so long you can delay that before people start querying. I still don't think they'll hit the late-2026 window for a Mars launch, and God knows when they'll make the Moon launch they are contracted to do.
Nominally. It was a testing flight to stress-test components. Bottom bit went up, came back down, splashed down, success. Top bit went up, launched boilerplate satellites, came back down, bits caught on fire, splashed down, success.
It's going well, but it's going slowly. Incrementally only works if the increments are big enough. The obvious gaping hole is the fact that they haven't achieved orbit yet, and there's only so long you can delay that before people start querying. I still don't think they'll hit the late-2026 window for a Mars launch, and God knows when they'll make the Moon launch they are contracted to do.
After the other Starship launches this year, there will be enormous sighs of relief.
At the same time, none of the fundamental issues with Starship have been solved. The added weight to deal with structural integrity means it is by no means clear it will ever deliver the promised cargoes into orbit.
There are a lot of iterations needed to get from here to something commercially viable. Something that was simply never true of Falcon at a similar stage.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
I think it's more that whenever an election comes up a strong plurality of regular posters on here prefer to campaign against Trump, and seize on anything they can find that helps them in this, rather than soberly assess the electoral evidence from a betting perspective.
Because those voices drown out the two or three who don't it can appear like a consensus, and throw people off.
“Despite a hectic start to his second term, President Donald Trump's current approval rating and popularity remain higher than his first term, which averaged 42.8% approval, according to RealClearPolling numbers, and higher than former president Joe Biden, who's first term average was a 43.2% approval rating.”
He’s roughly on par with the same point in his first term, and 9 points lower than Biden at the same stage.
The article you linked is quoting only the gross approval number.
Also Biden was an unpopular president, who lost control of the House in the midterms. So @Leon is pointing out that so far Trump is tracking several % less popular than the historically unpopular dementia case Biden!
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
“Despite a hectic start to his second term, President Donald Trump's current approval rating and popularity remain higher than his first term, which averaged 42.8% approval, according to RealClearPolling numbers, and higher than former president Joe Biden, who's first term average was a 43.2% approval rating.”
He’s roughly on par with the same point in his first term, and 9 points lower than Biden at the same stage.
The article you linked is quoting only the gross approval number.
Also Biden was an unpopular president, who lost control of the House in the midterms. So @Leon is pointing out that so far Trump is tracking several % less popular than the historically unpopular dementia case Biden!
Leon drew our attention recently to increased social media murmurings about a decline in Trump's health (although social media also forecast Putin's imminent demise at least two years ago). Where President Vance would leave the mid-terms needs to be factored in.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
I have no idea what you mean by "the left", there, @Casino_Royale .
On a parallel, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is mainly a feature of Trump himself.
But "racism" is a major underlying ideological feature of politics in the USA, and increasingly so here. It's a fantastical view, and essentially a baseless myth, but it's real and we have to address it.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
I have no idea what you mean by "the left", there, @Casino_Royale .
On a parallel, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is mainly a feature of Trump himself, though cause and effect are blurred, which others react to. And it's actually a tool that Trump tries to use to divert and distract. One antidote is to treat him as a black box, rather then figure out the white box.
But "racism" is a major underlying ideological feature of politics in the USA, and increasingly so here. It's a fantastical view, and essentially a baseless myth, but it's real and we have to address it.
Sorry - thinking on my feet too much. (The Right Rev David Jenkins has much to answer for !).
IMO Farage & Co - the "national populists" as Goodwin and Ford called them in 2018 - deal in rhetoric and emotion, more than reason and policy. They are political marketing types, interested in outcomes - the means or what they need to say to get there means nothing.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
The Trump deranged "left" would seem to be a very broad church indeed, featuring fans of Liz Chaney and Chris Christie to fans of AOC and Bernie Sanders.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
I have no idea what you mean by "the left", there, @Casino_Royale .
On a parallel, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is mainly a feature of Trump himself.
But "racism" is a major underlying ideological feature of politics in the USA, and increasingly so here. It's a fantastical view, and essentially a baseless myth, but it's real and we have to address it.
Sorry - thinking on my feet too much. (The Right Rev David Jenkins has much to answer for !).
IMO Farage & Co - the "national populists" as Goodwin and Ford called them in 2018 - deal in rhetoric and emotion, more than reason and policy. They are political marketing types, interested in outcomes - the means or what they need to say to get there means nothing.
Thing is, if all you want to do is win the next election, political marketing types are just the job. If all you have is the marketing, your problems will start the second you have won, but who cares about that?
Corollary: one of our collective political problems is the rise of the travelling marketing guru who makes a point of vanishing the moment the election is won or lost. There isn't an incentive for them to constrain the offer to something that is likely to work on government.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
He could hint or say anything. Whether he could achieve Reform's aims is another matter. But like all politicians it's about getting into power and then complaining while the blob, the deep state, your favourite bogyman gets in your way. Four/five years in power while achieving nothing (but personal gain) would be heaven to most of these populists.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
I've only listened to part of the Farage speech. His £10bn costings seem way off, and his "we'll pay them £2500" does not seem very innovative when we have had 'payments to help you leave' schemes in place since 1999, and more explicitly since 2016 - with payments of £3000 at present *. There are adjustments at the edges, but nothing game-changing afaics.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
If people dismiss trolls on the basis that "no more argument is needed" with them, the site does indeed become unusable - for the trolls.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
He could hint or say anything. Whether he could achieve Reform's aims is another matter. But like all politicians it's about getting into power and then complaining while the blob, the deep state, your favourite bogyman gets in your way. Four/five years in power while achieving nothing (but personal gain) would be heaven to most of these populists.
Farage is a strange animal. Politically he would not look out of place in a Thatcher Cabinet or as one of John Major’s bar-stewards. And indeed he could have had a very comfortable life indeed in a safe Tory seat, almost certainly smart and savvy enough to have been give a job. But he didn’t do that and is only gunning for the top job late in life.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
Then you should be able to make lots of money....
If those posting contrary analysis, insights and tips aren't shouted down or chased away, yes.
There are others far better placed than me to do this in the US market, and I usually make my assessments based on evidence in the round.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
Yeah, doesn't work like that, though, does it?
What you (and others) are looking for is an excuse to continue to behave as you currently are.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
What's the Matter with Kansas?
Thomas Frank
With guitarist Rich Williams stepping back from most touring, I think the problem for Kansas is that they're now touring with zero original or classic band members. At what point do they become indistinguishable from a tribute band?
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
Yeah, doesn't work like that, though, does it?
What you (and others) are looking for is an excuse to continue to behave as you currently are.
Most of Reform policies aren't based on reality. So suggesting the nation follows the Pied Piper down the rabbit hole (to mix my metaphors) is not an excuse to behave in a way. It's following your own reasoned assessment of the policies and voting accordingly. I may bet in another way for profit but vote for reality (as I see it) as I have no need for others approval of my behaviour.
For those castigating the anti - Trumpers, there is a whole YouTube industry of Trump bashing and I watch it copiously. The Trump takedowns predominantly do so using his own words and deeds.
Surely even @Casino_Royale and @scampi25 would have to agree the dysfunction is difficult to avoid.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
I've only listened to part of the Farage speech. His £10bn costings seem way off, and his "we'll pay them £2500" does not seem very innovative when we have had 'payments to help you leave' schemes in place since 1999, and more explicitly since 2016 - with payments of £3000 at present *. There are adjustments at the edges, but nothing game-changing afaics.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
A huge amount of policy was presented, including which laws would be repealed, which treaties and conventions would be suspended, and how much it would all cost. You can dispute the policy and the costings, but it's simply moronic to claim 'there's no policy it's all rhetoric' when they just spent the whole press conference telling us about the policy.
I thought he costed the scheme at £17bn, I mustn't have been listening.
The financial incentive to leave is combined with a powerful system of detention and deportation. One is informed that one will be detained and deported, and offered the opportunity to leave with goodwill and £2500 in pocket. Many will take that, and save the state a lot of money, as the cost of deporting someone against their will is something like £9000.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
I've only listened to part of the Farage speech. His £10bn costings seem way off, and his "we'll pay them £2500" does not seem very innovative when we have had 'payments to help you leave' schemes in place since 1999, and more explicitly since 2016 - with payments of £3000 at present *. There are adjustments at the edges, but nothing game-changing afaics.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
A huge amount of policy was presented, including which laws would be repealed, which treaties and conventions would be suspended, and how much it would all cost. You can dispute the policy and the costings, but it's simply moronic to claim 'there's no policy it's all rhetoric' when they just spent the whole press conference telling us about the policy.
I thought he costed the scheme at £17bn, I mustn't have been listening.
The financial incentive to leave is combined with a powerful system of detention and deportation. One is informed that one will be detained and deported, and offered the opportunity to leave with goodwill and £2500 in pocket. Many will take that, and save the state a lot of money, as the cost of deporting someone against their will is something like £9000.
I doubt the immigration crisis will still be ongoing by the time he comes in, Starmer will have to fix it by then or give way to someone who will. What Farage has done is spell out a way of achieving it. Where he’s a lot more muddled is fiscally. He hasn’t levelled at all with his big tent on that thorny subject yet.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
I've only listened to part of the Farage speech. His £10bn costings seem way off, and his "we'll pay them £2500" does not seem very innovative when we have had 'payments to help you leave' schemes in place since 1999, and more explicitly since 2016 - with payments of £3000 at present *. There are adjustments at the edges, but nothing game-changing afaics.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
A huge amount of policy was presented, including which laws would be repealed, which treaties and conventions would be suspended, and how much it would all cost. You can dispute the policy and the costings, but it's simply moronic to claim 'there's no policy it's all rhetoric' when they just spent the whole press conference telling us about the policy.
I thought he costed the scheme at £17bn, I mustn't have been listening.
The financial incentive to leave is combined with a powerful system of detention and deportation. One is informed that one will be detained and deported, and offered the opportunity to leave with goodwill and £2500 in pocket. Many will take that, and save the state a lot of money, as the cost of deporting someone against their will is something like £9000.
The Taliban supported numerous terrorist attacks on the West and killed 457 British troops in Afghanistan. As I understand it, Farage is proposing giving them lots of money?
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
I have no idea what you mean by "the left", there, @Casino_Royale .
On a parallel, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is mainly a feature of Trump himself.
But "racism" is a major underlying ideological feature of politics in the USA, and increasingly so here. It's a fantastical view, and essentially a baseless myth, but it's real and we have to address it.
Sorry - thinking on my feet too much. (The Right Rev David Jenkins has much to answer for !).
IMO Farage & Co - the "national populists" as Goodwin and Ford called them in 2018 - deal in rhetoric and emotion, more than reason and policy. They are political marketing types, interested in outcomes - the means or what they need to say to get there means nothing.
Thing is, if all you want to do is win the next election, political marketing types are just the job. If all you have is the marketing, your problems will start the second you have won, but who cares about that?
Corollary: one of our collective political problems is the rise of the travelling marketing guru who makes a point of vanishing the moment the election is won or lost. There isn't an incentive for them to constrain the offer to something that is likely to work on government.
That asks an interesting question around what are the long-term supports for stability in our system, which is one of the ways of keeping the short-termists nailed down?
The Monarchy, The Lords. What else?
Such long-termist by custom setups can be surprised or wrenched off their axis - see Pope John XXIII and the 2nd Vatican Council after Pope Pope Pius XII', or Donald Trump's assault on the Rule of Law and journey towards a Monarchical Presidency.
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
I've only listened to part of the Farage speech. His £10bn costings seem way off, and his "we'll pay them £2500" does not seem very innovative when we have had 'payments to help you leave' schemes in place since 1999, and more explicitly since 2016 - with payments of £3000 at present *. There are adjustments at the edges, but nothing game-changing afaics.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
A huge amount of policy was presented, including which laws would be repealed, which treaties and conventions would be suspended, and how much it would all cost. You can dispute the policy and the costings, but it's simply moronic to claim 'there's no policy it's all rhetoric' when they just spent the whole press conference telling us about the policy.
I thought he costed the scheme at £17bn, I mustn't have been listening.
The financial incentive to leave is combined with a powerful system of detention and deportation. One is informed that one will be detained and deported, and offered the opportunity to leave with goodwill and £2500 in pocket. Many will take that, and save the state a lot of money, as the cost of deporting someone against their will is something like £9000.
There was definitely policy announced - indisputable. The challenge they have is operational - the NI "oh we'll just leave them in" piece is impossible unless the Fukkers want to spend their time dealing with riots and chaos in NI instead of making it in England. And then the "build a camp" as if nobody has thought of that. And "5 flights a day" which would all have to be military because airlines / lease companies can't do ut.
Not impossible - nothing in today's politics is impossible. But they are selling simple solutions to people who don't understand how things work. Governments have to understand how things work or they get nothing done. And I suspect "nothing" would be close to the deliverable which will enrage their voters.
We may not get there. Will talk about it more on the new thread, but the threat to Reform is now Advance UK, Tommeh UK, Lowe UK etc - the hard hard right splinters funded by Muskybaby.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
Yeah, doesn't work like that, though, does it?
What you (and others) are looking for is an excuse to continue to behave as you currently are.
You seem quite fond of policing others' behaviour yourself, by the bye.
In any event the concern with Trump isn't so much the racism - undoubtedly racist that he is, that's been part and parcel of US politics forever.
What you call derangement is a concern that a powerful democracy is on the road to authoritarianism. That's also a very different thing from saying that the GOP are going to lose the next election.
You're free to disagree with that assessment. Calling it deranged is just rude.
Nominally. It was a testing flight to stress-test components. Bottom bit went up, came back down, splashed down, success. Top bit went up, launched boilerplate satellites, came back down, bits caught on fire, splashed down, success.
It's going well, but it's going slowly. Incrementally only works if the increments are big enough. The obvious gaping hole is the fact that they haven't achieved orbit yet, and there's only so long you can delay that before people start querying. I still don't think they'll hit the late-2026 window for a Mars launch, and God knows when they'll make the Moon launch they are contracted to do.
After the other Starship launches this year, there will be enormous sighs of relief.
At the same time, none of the fundamental issues with Starship have been solved. The added weight to deal with structural integrity means it is by no means clear it will ever deliver the promised cargoes into orbit.
There are a lot of iterations needed to get from here to something commercially viable. Something that was simply never true of Falcon at a similar stage.
What were the large bits of debris falling off it ? Was that part of the test, or something less optimal ?
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
I have no idea what you mean by "the left", there, @Casino_Royale .
On a parallel, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is mainly a feature of Trump himself.
But "racism" is a major underlying ideological feature of politics in the USA, and increasingly so here. It's a fantastical view, and essentially a baseless myth, but it's real and we have to address it.
Sorry - thinking on my feet too much. (The Right Rev David Jenkins has much to answer for !).
IMO Farage & Co - the "national populists" as Goodwin and Ford called them in 2018 - deal in rhetoric and emotion, more than reason and policy. They are political marketing types, interested in outcomes - the means or what they need to say to get there means nothing.
Thing is, if all you want to do is win the next election, political marketing types are just the job. If all you have is the marketing, your problems will start the second you have won, but who cares about that?
Corollary: one of our collective political problems is the rise of the travelling marketing guru who makes a point of vanishing the moment the election is won or lost. There isn't an incentive for them to constrain the offer to something that is likely to work on government.
That asks an interesting question around what are the long-term supports for stability in our system, which is one of the ways of keeping the short-termists nailed down?
The Monarchy, The Lords. What else?
Such long-termist by custom setups can be surprised or wrenched off their axis - see Pope John XXIII and the 2nd Vatican Council after Pope Pope Pius XII', or Donald Trump's assault on the Rule of Law and journey towards a Monarchical Presidency.
The Lords normally won’t block a manifesto commitment , the monarchy I can’t see any pushback there unless something really outrageous was put forward . At the moment looking at the polling we have PR levels of party polling with a FPTP system . When you look at the 2017 election Tory and Labour got a combined 83% of the vote , we’re now at 40% and under in some polls .
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
Yeah, doesn't work like that, though, does it?
What you (and others) are looking for is an excuse to continue to behave as you currently are.
Most of Reform policies aren't based on reality. So suggesting the nation follows the Pied Piper down the rabbit hole (to mix my metaphors) is not an excuse to behave in a way. It's following your own reasoned assessment of the policies and voting accordingly. I may bet in another way for profit but vote for reality (as I see it) as I have no need for others approval of my behaviour.
That's a total dead squirrel.
I'm talking about Trump and the mid-terms, not Reform.
And "5 flights a day" which would all have to be military because airlines / lease companies can't do ut.
We got civil operators to fly into Basra, Baghdad and Mosul on behalf of the UK government during the height of festivities there when there were SAMs and drones flying around. Shonky African operator + Russian crew + lots of money = nobody gives a fuck.
It's a lot simpler to do it with military aircraft and crews because they can be more easily coerced but the civil option isn't impossible even at the 5 flights/day scale.
And "5 flights a day" which would all have to be military because airlines / lease companies can't do ut.
We got civil operators to fly into Basra, Baghdad and Mosul on behalf of the UK government during the height of festivities there when there were SAMs and drones flying around. Shonky African operator + Russian crew + lots of money = nobody gives a fuck.
It's a lot simpler to do it with military aircraft and crews because they can be more easily coerced but the civil option isn't impossible even at the 5 flights/day scale.
Sure - flying authorised flights into UK bases. Legal. Insured. Now stick a load of prisoners onto a plane and send them to a country refusing to accept them...
I don’t see anyway that a civilian airline will get involved in deportations. Not good for their brand and they won’t want to alienate a section of customers .
For those castigating the anti - Trumpers, there is a whole YouTube industry of Trump bashing and I watch it copiously. The Trump takedowns predominantly do so using his own words and deeds.
Surely even @Casino_Royale and @scampi25 would have to agree the dysfunction is difficult to avoid.
I hold no candle for Trump or Farage - to me it's the "that's racist" refrain which is irritating. For many leftwingers it's sufficient to dismiss whole swathes of people who are simply concerned by numbers and loss of identity. Both these concerns are worthy of more serious analysis
Do we know if Starmer has "tested the water" with regards to an amendment to the ECHR?
Protocols amending it have been ratified before, most recently in 2021. What I don't know is if all 47 signatories need to agree before it enters into force. Because, if they do, that means Russia has a power of veto.
It doesn't affect them because they just do what they want but we have a strong Rule of Law so it feels like checkmate to me: we can't change it, Russia will block; we can't ignore it, because we have Rule of Law; we can't easily withdraw, because GFA and the TCA; and we can't leave things as they are either.
I caught up with Farage's speech yesterday evening. As I suspected, he was not saying that he couldn’t pull us out of the ECHR due to NI, he was saying he couldn't easily pull NI out, but that it would happen. The implication was of NI having to stay in, not of the rest of it being delayed.
I've only listened to part of the Farage speech. His £10bn costings seem way off, and his "we'll pay them £2500" does not seem very innovative when we have had 'payments to help you leave' schemes in place since 1999, and more explicitly since 2016 - with payments of £3000 at present *. There are adjustments at the edges, but nothing game-changing afaics.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
A huge amount of policy was presented, including which laws would be repealed, which treaties and conventions would be suspended, and how much it would all cost. You can dispute the policy and the costings, but it's simply moronic to claim 'there's no policy it's all rhetoric' when they just spent the whole press conference telling us about the policy.
I thought he costed the scheme at £17bn, I mustn't have been listening.
The financial incentive to leave is combined with a powerful system of detention and deportation. One is informed that one will be detained and deported, and offered the opportunity to leave with goodwill and £2500 in pocket. Many will take that, and save the state a lot of money, as the cost of deporting someone against their will is something like £9000.
That is one reason why I need to take the time to listen again, to get a clear handle on the numbers !
The BBC reported Reform stating a number of £10bn:
Reform said the plans would cost about £10bn over five years, but would save the government money it spends on asylum hotels and other costs over the long term. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yk4r5e514o
Reform's briefing has £10bn as the "gross implementation cost", allegedly to be paid for by savings. But even their £2500 * 500-600k people could be £12bn to £15bn by simple maths. So some arithmetic checking is needed.
The mystery is how the GOP tell the public we’re going to give huge tax cuts to the richest paid for by screwing the less well off , at the same time millions will lose their healthcare and the clapping seals keep clapping .
It’s very hard to understand the mindset of a section of US voters .
It is hard, if you instantly dismiss them all as horrible thick racists, whose opinions are loathsome and meaningless. Which of course is what you do. Then you are surprised by election defeats
We are seeing the exact same process in Europe
I think this board is in real danger of repeating exactly the same mistake in the 2026 midterms as it did in 2024.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
The left is trapped by its obsession with "racism" - again and again it is the stock response and once deployed no more argument is needed. It is why the site is becoming increasingly unusable.
Unusable? If as Casino says the site is suffering from TDS then you place your bets accordingly. Having "delusional" people disagreeing with you just increases the potential profits.
Yeah, doesn't work like that, though, does it?
What you (and others) are looking for is an excuse to continue to behave as you currently are.
Most of Reform policies aren't based on reality. So suggesting the nation follows the Pied Piper down the rabbit hole (to mix my metaphors) is not an excuse to behave in a way. It's following your own reasoned assessment of the policies and voting accordingly. I may bet in another way for profit but vote for reality (as I see it) as I have no need for others approval of my behaviour.
That's a total dead squirrel.
I'm talking about Trump and the mid-terms, not Reform.
I agree with you about Trump and the mid-terms. Someone suggested his 'derangement' or 'owning the libs' was a method of identifying micro-wedge issues where they might get a percentage advantage within marginal groups. The tactics being to appeal to the micro-groups as margins are so tight in these elections.
Anyway I'm off to walk the battlefields of the Somme and some of the war graves there. A gross failure of politics in dealing with issues before they became the issue.
Here’s your daily reminder that the USA experienced 3% growth (annualised) in 2Q25
It is predicted to grow at 1-2% in 2025 overall, the same in 2026. Not stellar, but a lot of stagnant European countries would love this growth. And of course the USA often surprises on the upside, economically
Where is this apocalypse you’re all predicting?!
Do we need to remind you that it grew at a lick under Biden, and that mattered not a jot ?
What's happening with middle class wages, and inflation ?
Yes there is economic pain for some, but also economic pleasure for others
Economically, America is doing better than almost every other western country (esp big ones like Germany, UK, France)
Trump has kept the USA out of any wars.
He bombed the Houthis and Iran, overriding his own cabinet, you moron.
Here’s your daily reminder that the USA experienced 3% growth (annualised) in 2Q25
It is predicted to grow at 1-2% in 2025 overall, the same in 2026. Not stellar, but a lot of stagnant European countries would love this growth. And of course the USA often surprises on the upside, economically
Where is this apocalypse you’re all predicting?!
And in any event, what is this strawmanning ?
Who is predicting economic apocalypse now ? Virtually no one. (Possibly Cicero earlier today.)
The damage Trump is doing is fairly obvious, but much of it will take years to play out.
“They'll fucking believe it when their boss says they are out of a job and then they find there's a massive queue just to get into the local job centre. And then their mortgage is foreclosed.
Aw-shucks Joe Sixpack maybe you should have spent one actual minute thinking through the snake oil shit you heard from Trump during the debates?
You can't buck the markets or the economics in the end.”
To be fair, the Trump energy policies are genuinely demented, and will clearly drive prices higher. It's one thing to remove subsidies from alternatives (generally a good idea); it's another thing altogether to try and remove low marginal cost generation from the grid. And to effectively ban people from adding renewables, even when they're the cheapest option.
All Trump's policies are demented.
Because his understanding of politics is that he won an election, he is president, he is the one leader of all that he sees, and so every single decision is what he wants and none of these decisions should be troubled by facts from independent bodies because his gut feelings are far more important.
America's nightmare is that the entire GOP apart from Pence and Cheney's daughter choose to agree with him.
Trump has been spectacularly successful at closing the border with Mexico. Is that “demented”?
“Illegal border crossings hit decades low under Trump crackdown”
This is the equivalent of a new prime minister ending all the small boat crossings, in his first six months
Are you actually unaware that he has ordered the figures to be aggregated by the week for previous years and compared to crossings by the day for him? The overall trend remains down as it has been for two years (and it would have been going down much faster if he and Greg Abbott hadn't constantly thwarted the Biden administration's attempts to get a grip on the situation so low IQ individuals would think there was a crisis).
I don’t see anyway that a civilian airline will get involved in deportations. Not good for their brand and they won’t want to alienate a section of customers .
Would it not be the same companies that charter Battery Cage planes to Thomas Cook?
I don’t see anyway that a civilian airline will get involved in deportations. Not good for their brand and they won’t want to alienate a section of customers .
I would imagine virtually all of their customers would be in the UK legally.
The problem for Nigel Farage is that his instincts are more right wing than Tebbit, and he did left the Tories because of this. From the point of view of personality, we note that when we look at his career, even as a party leader, sooner or later he ends up being unable to work with his colleagues and they fall apart. He left UKIP to create Reform, but his current Parliamentary party has also ended up a bit Judean People's front and he is now down to only 3 MPs. Getting to the 326 seats required for a majority is an incredibly big ask. It has *never* happened that any party goes from such small numbers to government in a single Parliament. The UK is not a Presidential system.
Now I get it that the Tory party is flirting with total wipe-out, and Labour after barely a year is extremely unpopular. I get that those who believe "Nigel is our next PM" expect a collapse of both left and right that brings their man in.
Yet there are international issues- the large majority of British voters have a strongly negative view of Trump, and Farage is closely associated with him and gets support from him as well as from other American figures like Theviel, Bannon and Musk. Farage worked with Russia Today, and Putin is even more unpopular. While RefUk supporters are equivocal about Ukraine, the majority of British voters strongly support Zelensky.
So Farage may not have the policies nor the personality to win in a single parliament and he may well simply be too old to be able to do it in a longer timeline. He has been dilettante political figure, and his attention span is notoriously short. The "flag surge" is very much a double edged sword for him too, at one level its could be argued to be simple patriotism, but the reality is that even if the few hundred flag vandals are not all NF retreads, the fact is that some of them are, and Nigel has already had some uncomfortable pictures with the Combat-18 types. he needs to look Tory, not BNP.
Of course, a credible Tory leadership, possibly under Hunt or someone like Laura Trott, would deny them the surge in seats that RefUK needs. History suggests that the Tories will come back from the dead.
I think that the best that RefUK can hope for is maybe 100 seats, and that would itself be a remarkable result. With that number and the clear chance that the Lib Dems also make gains, then the chances of any party holding a majority become pretty low. It almost certainly forces the issue on PR, and after that the UK political rules get rewritten. Yet in the face of an important constitutional upheaval the chances that the Tories put Farage into number 10, even if they had the means to do so, are also pretty low.
I think that therefore the early years of the reign of King William V are likely to see considerable political change, and at the end of the day, that is now what the majority of voters are asking for. However that change will not come at the initiative of Farage, but despite him.
I don’t see anyway that a civilian airline will get involved in deportations. Not good for their brand and they won’t want to alienate a section of customers .
I would imagine virtually all of their customers would be in the UK legally.
Not sure BA want the “ worlds favourite deportation airline “ .
Comments
It's going well, but it's going slowly. Incrementally only works if the increments are big enough. The obvious gaping hole is the fact that they haven't achieved orbit yet, and there's only so long you can delay that before people start querying. I still don't think they'll hit the late-2026 window for a Mars launch, and God knows when they'll make the Moon launch they are contracted to do.
At the same time, none of the fundamental issues with Starship have been solved. The added weight to deal with structural integrity means it is by no means clear it will ever deliver the promised cargoes into orbit.
There are a lot of iterations needed to get from here to something commercially viable. Something that was simply never true of Falcon at a similar stage.
Trump Derangement Syndrome is live and well.
I find all the whooping and jeering somewhat juvenile, and borderline unprofessional.
Doubtless they'd think our measured approach cold and reserved, and overly stiff.
Because those voices drown out the two or three who don't it can appear like a consensus, and throw people off.
Also Biden was an unpopular president, who lost control of the House in the midterms. So @Leon is pointing out that so far Trump is tracking several % less popular than the historically unpopular dementia case Biden!
On a parallel, "Trump Derangement Syndrome" is mainly a feature of Trump himself.
But "racism" is a major underlying ideological feature of politics in the USA, and increasingly so here. It's a fantastical view, and essentially a baseless myth, but it's real and we have to address it.
I mean @scampi25 not @Casino_Royale . To add a bit more thinking on my feet:
IMO Farage & Co - the "national populists" as Goodwin and Ford called them in 2018 - deal in rhetoric and emotion, more than reason and policy. They are political marketing types, interested in outcomes - the means or what they need to say to get there means nothing.
Corollary: one of our collective political problems is the rise of the travelling marketing guru who makes a point of vanishing the moment the election is won or lost. There isn't an incentive for them to constrain the offer to something that is likely to work on government.
To me there is a similarity to the last Government flailing around with their £500-700m Rwanda PR stunt, whilst they stopped operating the usual system effectively.
Politically, the system stopped when we left the Dublin agreement, which we could have stayed in had we done a more sensible Brexit. Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein are in it, but our Government burnt that down as well.
I'll have a listen to the rest to pick up whatever detail Farage presents.
* https://www.gov.uk/return-home-voluntarily/who
There are others far better placed than me to do this in the US market, and I usually make my assessments based on evidence in the round.
What you (and others) are looking for is an excuse to continue to behave as you currently are.
Surely even @Casino_Royale and @scampi25 would have to agree the dysfunction is difficult to avoid.
I thought he costed the scheme at £17bn, I mustn't have been listening.
The financial incentive to leave is combined with a powerful system of detention and deportation. One is informed that one will be detained and deported, and offered the opportunity to leave with goodwill and £2500 in pocket. Many will take that, and save the state a lot of money, as the cost of deporting someone against their will is something like £9000.
The Monarchy, The Lords. What else?
Such long-termist by custom setups can be surprised or wrenched off their axis - see Pope John XXIII and the 2nd Vatican Council after Pope Pope Pius XII', or Donald Trump's assault on the Rule of Law and journey towards a Monarchical Presidency.
F1: as expertly (ahem) predicted by me, Bottas is joined by Perez at Cadillac:
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/perez-and-bottas-to-make-f1-returns-in-2026-with-cadillac.6sqKNbUEoFjveym9YfGkxQ
With around 500 races between them, that's a lot of experience. Approximately 1.2 Alonsos.
Not impossible - nothing in today's politics is impossible. But they are selling simple solutions to people who don't understand how things work. Governments have to understand how things work or they get nothing done. And I suspect "nothing" would be close to the deliverable which will enrage their voters.
We may not get there. Will talk about it more on the new thread, but the threat to Reform is now Advance UK, Tommeh UK, Lowe UK etc - the hard hard right splinters funded by Muskybaby.
https://x.com/dudespostingws/status/1960328814564716858?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
In any event the concern with Trump isn't so much the racism - undoubtedly racist that he is, that's been part and parcel of US politics forever.
What you call derangement is a concern that a powerful democracy is on the road to authoritarianism. That's also a very different thing from saying that the GOP are going to lose the next election.
You're free to disagree with that assessment. Calling it deranged is just rude.
Was that part of the test, or something less optimal ?
NEW THREAD
I'm talking about Trump and the mid-terms, not Reform.
It's a lot simpler to do it with military aircraft and crews because they can be more easily coerced but the civil option isn't impossible even at the 5 flights/day scale.
The BBC reported Reform stating a number of £10bn:
Reform said the plans would cost about £10bn over five years, but would save the government money it spends on asylum hotels and other costs over the long term.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yk4r5e514o
Reform's briefing has £10bn as the "gross implementation cost", allegedly to be paid for by savings.
But even their £2500 * 500-600k people could be £12bn to £15bn by simple maths. So some arithmetic checking is needed.
https://assets.nationbuilder.com/reformuk/pages/253/attachments/original/1756202533/REFORM_Immigration_Enforcement.pdf?1756202533
Anyway I'm off to walk the battlefields of the Somme and some of the war graves there. A gross failure of politics in dealing with issues before they became the issue.
Now I get it that the Tory party is flirting with total wipe-out, and Labour after barely a year is extremely unpopular. I get that those who believe "Nigel is our next PM" expect a collapse of both left and right that brings their man in.
Yet there are international issues- the large majority of British voters have a strongly negative view of Trump, and Farage is closely associated with him and gets support from him as well as from other American figures like Theviel, Bannon and Musk. Farage worked with Russia Today, and Putin is even more unpopular. While RefUk supporters are equivocal about Ukraine, the majority of British voters strongly support Zelensky.
So Farage may not have the policies nor the personality to win in a single parliament and he may well simply be too old to be able to do it in a longer timeline. He has been dilettante political figure, and his attention span is notoriously short. The "flag surge" is very much a double edged sword for him too, at one level its could be argued to be simple patriotism, but the reality is that even if the few hundred flag vandals are not all NF retreads, the fact is that some of them are, and Nigel has already had some uncomfortable pictures with the Combat-18 types. he needs to look Tory, not BNP.
Of course, a credible Tory leadership, possibly under Hunt or someone like Laura Trott, would deny them the surge in seats that RefUK needs. History suggests that the Tories will come back from the dead.
I think that the best that RefUK can hope for is maybe 100 seats, and that would itself be a remarkable result. With that number and the clear chance that the Lib Dems also make gains, then the chances of any party holding a majority become pretty low. It almost certainly forces the issue on PR, and after that the UK political rules get rewritten. Yet in the face of an important constitutional upheaval the chances that the Tories put Farage into number 10, even if they had the means to do so, are also pretty low.
I think that therefore the early years of the reign of King William V are likely to see considerable political change, and at the end of the day, that is now what the majority of voters are asking for. However that change will not come at the initiative of Farage, but despite him.