Whilst in Malaysia Trump seems to have found time to tweet that childhood vaccines are a disaster unless you split them in weird ways and paracetamol is very very bad.
Bonkers.
Mad as a box of frogs.
And yet 40% of US voters - give or take - still support.
And Reform UK are aping him all the way.
Brexit and Reform is our version of Peronism.
Trump has far more in common with Peron than Milei too.
That's fng rich from a supporter of the party that tried to take £5bn off the future growth of the welfare bill and ended up adding to it.
When and why did the right wing decide self professed medical expertise was the way to go?
Only a matter of time before Reform go that route (if not already) and the Tories follow suit. My most Trumpian acquaintance is all over it already.
It's long bubbling on the American right but Covid sent them mad.
I think it's simpler than that. They're not mad: they "did the research". For any given medical condition there is a multiplicity of opinions as to cause and cures. If you have a pre-existing idea as to cause/cure and distrust of experts, then the combination of algorithmic feeds, Google and AI will give you sources to support that idea, and bolstered by what the Internet is telling you is unimpeachable truth, you will provide what you think is best advice but is actually bullshit. We have a real ontological problem now, and it's going to get people killed. Witness the dramatic fall in vaccine takeup in the UK.
I remind you of my existing stance that algorithmic feeds should be banned, AI in search engine searches should be banned, and search engines providers forced to provide search results in order of relevance. Until we do that, we are genuinely fucked.
This looks like bad news, then;
The 𝕏 recommendation system is evolving very rapidly. We are aiming for deletion of all heuristics within 4 to 6 weeks.
Grok will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day) to match users with content they’re most likely to find interesting.
This should address the new user or small account problem, where you post something great, but nobody sees it.
We will also be adding the ability for you to adjust your feed temporarily or permanently just by asking Grok.
In recent weeks, senior figures in Labour have been musing that perhaps the Rwanda plan wasn’t the worst idea after all. “Perhaps we should have tried to fix the legal problems with Rwanda, instead of just cancelling it,” says one government official. “We took the biggest deterrent off the table.”
But, sure, Moonshine, let’s be fair to Trump. Just because he has repeatedly assaulted women, hung out with Epstein and is covering up for him after his death, tried to overthrow democracy and encouraged attacks on his own Vice-President, has undermined the rule of law in the US, has repeatedly damaged the world economy with an erratic tariff policy, has slowed support for Ukraine and keeps cosying up to Putin, has threatened to attack Canada, Greenland and Panama, fiddled his taxes, supported racists, illegally deployed the National Guard against his own citizens, demolished the White House east wing without the usual permissions, is trying to extort his own government for $230 million, pardoned numerous sex offenders, made fun of the disabled, denies climate change, and believes exercise is bad for you, is no reason to treat his views on vaccines unfairly.
What’s any of that got to do with the chicken pox vaccine?
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
Was this really the limit of Sunak's ambition ? Why did he even bother.
Rishi Sunak to the Times: "Clearly, I miss the levers of power. I’m proud I brought in the smoking ban for the young. I miss playing cricket in the garden with the England cricket team and the staff. But not much else." https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1982114041196609600
It was a nice interview piece but I thought that too about that bit. I'd have thought he'd be proud of steadying the ship after Truss pointed it at the rocks.
I suspect history will turn out to look more favourably on Sunak than it will on Truss, Johnson, May and Cameron.
Sunak screwed up HS2 which is going to have long term economic impact.
I suspect he won't be looked as favourably as Brown, Blair or Major..
To be fair to Sunak (and I was angry with him too) it was Johnson and Shapps that doomed HS2 by scrapping the north eastern leg to Leeds and HS3 from Newcastle to Liverpool, without which HS2 couldn't function.
The Integrated Rail Plan was a deliberate forgery, as it was undeliverable, and unless he is as stupid as he comes across (which seems improbable) Shapps knew that when he presented it to the Commons. Sunak was left to clear up the mess, which he did badly.
Where he absolutely screwed up and can't be excused was in the highly illegal fire sale of the land that had been purchased to ensure that nobody else could ever build it - a move so dumb even Cummings would have blinked at it.
Edited for a muddle on the alphabet soup.
Cute that you think there was ever a snowball's chance in hell of the northern leg actually getting built.
It was doomed years ago, the writing was on the wall the second it was agreed to begin construction in the South and only start investing in the North once the London leg was complete.
The only chance there would have been for the northern leg of HS2 is for them to either be built concurrently or to do the northern leg first and the London one last.
Once the London leg was past the point of no return, the Treasury no longer had a reason to keep up the pretence of investing in the North.
Sunak just said the quiet part out loud.
Sigh.
It was not possible to build the northern leg first because without the southern leg, there would have been nowhere for the trains to actually go to. The northern section of the WCML is congested but the southern was ram packed.
I agree the Treasury are either crooks or morons, and I would like to see them relocated to Darlington or Carlisle at which point I think thing ps would radically alter. But engineering reasons made your proposed solution impossible.
Nowhere?
So you couldn't have trains going between say Preston, Manchester, Stoke, Leeds and Birmingham without the southern leg? Why on earth not?
The idea that London is the only place that isn't nowhere is precisely why the northern leg was doomed from the start.
Because you can't fill the northern leg without the traffic to the south.
For good or for ill (I'd argue principally for ill) most traffic in England and Wales flows to London. Not Stoke or Birmingham.
And you couldn't put the extra traffic to the south without more tracks.
That is not true. Most journeys within the North West remain within the North West, and if it were better connected then there would be even more.
And building the Northern leg first, or concurrently, is not the same as saying never build the London leg, whereas by building the London one first ...
Yes, poor connections in the north are just taken as a given.
Someone recently noted that Sheffield and Manchester are the two largest near neighbour cities in Europe without either decent road or rail connections.
Meanwhile, we're building a new line between Cambridge and Oxford.
Last time I was getting the train from Glasgow to Sheffield - it was cheaper and quicker to get the train down to London, then back up to Sheffield than to just book a 'direct' train that was more 'as the crow flies'.
Glasgow to Sheffield is Cross Country. They are the fare setter. They set high fares to discourage too many people from travelling on their inadequately short trains.
Exactly this - most U.K. train services are priced to discourage use and yet many lines are at historically high passenger levels albeit for leisure an no longer commuting
I once did the Penzance to Aberdeen train.
I didn't bother about split ticketing as work were paying for it.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
More likely, some poor sod working at 110% capacity screwed up because screwups happen exponentially when you are working at 110% capacity and the failsafe was cut due to efficiency savings in 2014 or so.
Nothing works because we have never in my lifetime been willing to pay to do things properly. And that includes governments I have voted for.
They sound like checks that ought to have been happening all along, but clearly haven't been because it costs to do them.
Though I bet the ensuing manhunts don't come in cheap, either.
When and why did the right wing decide self professed medical expertise was the way to go?
Only a matter of time before Reform go that route (if not already) and the Tories follow suit. My most Trumpian acquaintance is all over it already.
It's long bubbling on the American right but Covid sent them mad.
Plus they've been conditioned to accept every lie Trump utters.
It predates him, but he has demonstrated he can change their minds, he does not simply follow on all issues, so on this one he's playing to the gallery.
And we're a long time past anyone on his side questioning anything he says, even inconsequential stuff.
It’s actually quite difficult to obtain the chicken pox vaccine for your child in this country. Until 2017 Hepatitis B was a private vaccine given upon request if you were travelling to high risk areas. Breaking the mmr into separate shots is an inconvenience the Blairs reportedly put upon themselves. I’ve not a doctor but I’ve not heard of anyone dying because of paracetamol avoidance. But yeah we hate Trump! Boooo to Trump!
The really dangerous political intervention of recent years into the vaccine debate was forcing the Covid vaccine onto the young, for very unclear net health benefit, even when it was known it did not provide effective herd immunity either.
Breaking the MMR into separate shots is well demonstrated to reduce how many kids are fully vaccinated because parents are more likely not to get around to having all the shots. That increases the chance of those diseases spreading. 2025 has already seen more measles cases in the US than any prior year this millennium. There have been more cases than all of 2000-2013 put together. There have been 3 deaths so far this year.
If you’re not using paracetamol for pain, you might turn to other painkillers, like opioids. About 80,000 people a year in the US are already dying because of opioid overdoses. It’s a huge problem. You don’t want to be putting people off an effective and safer analgesic.
And, really, are you going to go yay to Trump?
I think it's just the familiar impulse to normalise his severely abnormal behaviour.
Trump is not a normal dude and behaves extraordinarily atypically. But all the same I would not be in the least surprised if this US admin ends up as a net beneficiary to long term US health, even if in the short term politics around Obamacare are a net detriment. I just find the unflinching hyperbolic criticism quite tedious.
I'll be honest: vaccines is one of those things that has such an impact it shows up in things like infant mortality. Unlike the Americans we had two baby booms in the UK: one in the 1940s when the troops came back and had sex with their wives (more babies!), and another one in the 1950s when the NHS started rolling out childhood vaccinations (less dead babies!). Because we all think we're Americans we overlook this.
In recent weeks, senior figures in Labour have been musing that perhaps the Rwanda plan wasn’t the worst idea after all. “Perhaps we should have tried to fix the legal problems with Rwanda, instead of just cancelling it,” says one government official. “We took the biggest deterrent off the table.”
Food assistance used by more than 40 million Americans will not be distributed from November due to the ongoing US government shutdown, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap) is used by one in every eight Americans, and plays a vital role in many grocery budgets.
As much as 40% of grocery spending comes from SNAP in some deprived and rural areas. It's not just people getting the benefit who will suffer, stores in those areas will go out of business if the shutdown lasts.
When and why did the right wing decide self professed medical expertise was the way to go?
Only a matter of time before Reform go that route (if not already) and the Tories follow suit. My most Trumpian acquaintance is all over it already.
It's long bubbling on the American right but Covid sent them mad.
I think it's simpler than that. They're not mad: they "did the research". For any given medical condition there is a multiplicity of opinions as to cause and cures. If you have a pre-existing idea as to cause/cure and distrust of experts, then the combination of algorithmic feeds, Google and AI will give you sources to support that idea, and bolstered by what the Internet is telling you is unimpeachable truth, you will provide what you think is best advice but is actually bullshit. We have a real ontological problem now, and it's going to get people killed. Witness the dramatic fall in vaccine takeup in the UK.
I remind you of my existing stance that algorithmic feeds should be banned, AI in search engine searches should be banned, and search engines providers forced to provide search results in order of relevance. Until we do that, we are genuinely fucked.
This looks like bad news, then;
The 𝕏 recommendation system is evolving very rapidly. We are aiming for deletion of all heuristics within 4 to 6 weeks.
Grok will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day) to match users with content they’re most likely to find interesting.
This should address the new user or small account problem, where you post something great, but nobody sees it.
We will also be adding the ability for you to adjust your feed temporarily or permanently just by asking Grok.
In recent weeks, senior figures in Labour have been musing that perhaps the Rwanda plan wasn’t the worst idea after all. “Perhaps we should have tried to fix the legal problems with Rwanda, instead of just cancelling it,” says one government official. “We took the biggest deterrent off the table.”
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
More likely, some poor sod working at 110% capacity screwed up because screwups happen exponentially when you are working at 110% capacity and the failsafe was cut due to efficiency savings in 2014 or so.
Nothing works because we have never in my lifetime been willing to pay to do things properly. And that includes governments I have voted for.
They sound like checks that ought to have been happening all along, but clearly haven't been because it costs to do them.
Though I bet the ensuing manhunts don't come in cheap, either.
The costs of recapture should be charged to HMP Chelmsford. Attempting to save money by not carrying out their duties shouldn’t be seen as a cost free option.
In recent weeks, senior figures in Labour have been musing that perhaps the Rwanda plan wasn’t the worst idea after all. “Perhaps we should have tried to fix the legal problems with Rwanda, instead of just cancelling it,” says one government official. “We took the biggest deterrent off the table.”
Ha ha. So at some point in the not too distant future the Labour government will be proposing to send people to Burundi, or somewhere similar, and claiming it's completely different from what the Tories did.
Most people vote for a preferred party, and it's reasonable that the result should reflect that.
No it is not. Whatever the voters think they are voting for, they want to be able to dump their MP if they turn out to be worse than expected. Something that is very difficult to do with D'hondt if the MP is liked by the party.
Moreover in the D'hondt system the seat belongs to the party not the candidate. What price rebellion under such circumstances. That may not be a problem for a 'my party right or wrong' MP like yourself but it is something we should be fighting against all the way.
I'm not really a "party right or wrong" person, and voted against the party several times in Parliament. But I was aware that most people vote for a party more than an individual, and our system gives an unfair impression when it consequently delivers huge majorities for one party, then huge majorities for another, even when in reality the difference in support is a few percentage points. I of course understand that you'd like voters to be different, but on the whole they aren't, and that's not something you can fix fairly by the electoral system.
I had a premonition about a year ago of the Kremlin in flames.
I put it down to eating Extra Mature Cheddar too close to bedtime But maybe...
I don't think they would (although it's arguably a legitimate target, contains government offices and one of Putin's official residences). However, if they burn the Kremlin, Pechersk Lavra will be next
At 8.03am, as the 41-year-old fugitive loitered at a bus stop in Finsbury Park, a member of the public rang police after driving past and recognising the face that had been splashed across newspapers and TV channels for two days.
Sixteen minutes later, Kebatu was spotted by officers who pursued him on foot. By 8.35am he was in handcuffs.
Footage of Kebatu’s eventual arrest shows the sex offender near a bench, where he was apprehended by four officers yards from a children’s play area.
As predicted last night the MET didnt have a scooby where he was.
At 8.03am, as the 41-year-old fugitive loitered at a bus stop in Finsbury Park, a member of the public rang police after driving past and recognising the face that had been splashed across newspapers and TV channels for two days.
Sixteen minutes later, Kebatu was spotted by officers who pursued him on foot. By 8.35am he was in handcuffs.
Footage of Kebatu’s eventual arrest shows the sex offender near a bench, where he was apprehended by four officers yards from a children’s play area.
As predicted last night the MET didnt have a scooby where he was.
When and why did the right wing decide self professed medical expertise was the way to go?
Only a matter of time before Reform go that route (if not already) and the Tories follow suit. My most Trumpian acquaintance is all over it already.
It's long bubbling on the American right but Covid sent them mad.
Plus they've been conditioned to accept every lie Trump utters.
It predates him, but he has demonstrated he can change their minds, he does not simply follow on all issues, so on this one he's playing to the gallery.
And we're a long time past anyone on his side questioning anything he says, even inconsequential stuff.
It’s actually quite difficult to obtain the chicken pox vaccine for your child in this country. Until 2017 Hepatitis B was a private vaccine given upon request if you were travelling to high risk areas. Breaking the mmr into separate shots is an inconvenience the Blairs reportedly put upon themselves. I’ve not a doctor but I’ve not heard of anyone dying because of paracetamol avoidance. But yeah we hate Trump! Boooo to Trump!
The really dangerous political intervention of recent years into the vaccine debate was forcing the Covid vaccine onto the young, for very unclear net health benefit, even when it was known it did not provide effective herd immunity either.
Breaking the MMR into separate shots is well demonstrated to reduce how many kids are fully vaccinated because parents are more likely not to get around to having all the shots. That increases the chance of those diseases spreading. 2025 has already seen more measles cases in the US than any prior year this millennium. There have been more cases than all of 2000-2013 put together. There have been 3 deaths so far this year.
If you’re not using paracetamol for pain, you might turn to other painkillers, like opioids. About 80,000 people a year in the US are already dying because of opioid overdoses. It’s a huge problem. You don’t want to be putting people off an effective and safer analgesic.
And, really, are you going to go yay to Trump?
I think it's just the familiar impulse to normalise his severely abnormal behaviour.
Trump is not a normal dude and behaves extraordinarily atypically. But all the same I would not be in the least surprised if this US admin ends up as a net beneficiary to long term US health, even if in the short term politics around Obamacare are a net detriment. I just find the unflinching hyperbolic criticism quite tedious.
I'll be honest: vaccines is one of those things that has such an impact it shows up in things like infant mortality. Unlike the Americans we had two baby booms in the UK: one in the 1940s when the troops came back and had sex with their wives (more babies!), and another one in the 1950s when the NHS started rolling out childhood vaccinations (less dead babies!). Because we all think we're Americans we overlook this.
Personally I love vaccines. They make me feel like Steve Rogers. But anytime political and media discourse focuses on them either in favour or against, it tends to reduce adherence rates. The Covid thing was such a monumental own goal for vaccine policy and it’s frustrating it’s still not more broadly recognised. That programme changes views for life.
At 8.03am, as the 41-year-old fugitive loitered at a bus stop in Finsbury Park, a member of the public rang police after driving past and recognising the face that had been splashed across newspapers and TV channels for two days.
Sixteen minutes later, Kebatu was spotted by officers who pursued him on foot. By 8.35am he was in handcuffs.
Footage of Kebatu’s eventual arrest shows the sex offender near a bench, where he was apprehended by four officers yards from a children’s play area.
As predicted last night the MET didnt have a scooby where he was.
Definitely only at the play area for bantz
A few years ago I had to do jury duty for a case involving a guy who was kicked out of Sudan for kiddy-fiddling. And was now in the UK for some reason and, surprisingly, had been accused of kiddy-fiddling.
Apart from the overwhelming evidence - I was sat thinking "How bad must the kiddy-fiddling have been to get kicked out of Sudan?".
In recent weeks, senior figures in Labour have been musing that perhaps the Rwanda plan wasn’t the worst idea after all. “Perhaps we should have tried to fix the legal problems with Rwanda, instead of just cancelling it,” says one government official. “We took the biggest deterrent off the table.”
Rachel Reeves will lead a delegation of senior business leaders to Saudi Arabia on Monday as she hopes to deepen the UK’s relationship with a state that has been widely criticised for human rights abuses.
She is the first UK chancellor to visit the Gulf in six years and is expected to meet senior Saudi royals, US administration representatives and global business figures.
The visit comes as the UK continues its efforts to secure a trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which also includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
The BBC are utterly obsessed with this sex pest migrant who seems to have been set free very much against his will. No doubt they’ll be reporting shortly on pitchfork wielding vigilantes inspired by their hysteria. Anyone on the darker side of the racist colour chart should avoid carrying a shopping bag decorated with avocados.
It's totally ridiculous.
"The Etheopian"
An Etheopian English teacher decides to migrate to the UK. He arrives in a small boat and is put in a detention centre
Bored he sits on a wall outside the centre and makes small talk with a couple of bored local school girls.
He makes a lewd joke
The police are called
Word gets out and a far right mob mob mobilise and threaten the centre
The man is charged with an attemted grope and is jailed for 12 months
The prison authorities mistakenly release him after two
He asks if he can serve the rest of his sentence as he has no place to go
The prison authorities say no.
They drop him protesting at a local railway station with no money.
All ports and airports are alerted. A dangerous criminal is on the loose
A terrified population lock up their daughters........
What do you think Mr De Milne? Will it fly......
He tried to kiss the 14 year old. Read her testimony.
I notice your the Tory justice secretary has now raised the Ethiopian fugitive to 'Dangerous Paedophile'. Thank goodness his attempted kiss didn't land or he'd have run out of adjectives
He told the girl that he wanted to have sex with her
I know that you think she should be grateful for the attention, but you’re permanently in the wrong un column
Imagine someone coming from Ethiopia and after an horrendous journey arriving in detention in Epping
He's greeted by flag waving racists chanting 'GO HOME'outside the hotel where he is detained.
A woman befriends him and says she'll help him with his asylum application.
A few days later he's sitting on a bench and a couple of school girls sit with him. He misinterprets some banter as affection and asks the girl for a kiss. She laughs with her friend and he makes some inappropriate sexual remarks. They walk away.
The older lady who was going to help with his application reports the incident to the police.
The police arrest him.
He becomes a cause celebre with the racists and in custody he tries to kill himself.
Is he a 'dangerous paedophile' as Chris Philip describes him or an unfortunate in a foreign land knowing little of our norms or customs? Who knows.... but It certainly looks like the Daily Mail branch of PB have made up their minds
Totally off topic, but I went to an Evensong service at an Oxford college this evening and it was very lovely in a timelessly English kind of way. Stunning surroundings, beautiful singing and a thought provoking sermon. It made me feel guilty that I didn't set foot in my college's chapel once the three years I was at Cambridge.
Milei’s Party on Track to Win 41% of Votes in Argentina’s Midterm Elections
With 91% of the polling stations counted, Javier Milei's La Libertad Avanza leads with 40.84% of the votes, while the left behind with 24.50%, according to official data.
NHS bosses are seeking an emergency injection of £3bn to cover unexpected costs and have warned ministers that without it patients will wait longer for treatment and hospitals will start rationing care. The £3bn demand is needed to cover the cost of NHS staff redundancies, strike action by doctors and higher drug prices, and is likely to cause consternation inside a government that is desperately short of cash. The NHS is already due to receive £196bn of the £211bn health budget for England this year.
NHS bosses are seeking an emergency injection of £3bn to cover unexpected costs and have warned ministers that without it patients will wait longer for treatment and hospitals will start rationing care. The £3bn demand is needed to cover the cost of NHS staff redundancies, strike action by doctors and higher drug prices, and is likely to cause consternation inside a government that is desperately short of cash. The NHS is already due to receive £196bn of the £211bn health budget for England this year.
NHS bosses are seeking an emergency injection of £3bn to cover unexpected costs and have warned ministers that without it patients will wait longer for treatment and hospitals will start rationing care. The £3bn demand is needed to cover the cost of NHS staff redundancies, strike action by doctors and higher drug prices, and is likely to cause consternation inside a government that is desperately short of cash. The NHS is already due to receive £196bn of the £211bn health budget for England this year.
Totally off topic, but I went to an Evensong service at an Oxford college this evening and it was very lovely in a timelessly English kind of way. Stunning surroundings, beautiful singing and a thought provoking sermon. It made me feel guilty that I didn't set foot in my college's chapel once the three years I was at Cambridge.
Don't beat yourself up over it. The world is very big. Your lifespan, in comparison, is very small. You will miss a lot...
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Milei’s Party on Track to Win 41% of Votes in Argentina’s Midterm Elections
With 91% of the polling stations counted, Javier Milei's La Libertad Avanza leads with 40.84% of the votes, while the left behind with 24.50%, according to official data.
Giant polling failure.
I am not sure where you got that Peronist figure. From the Guardian Website:
"With more than 95% of ballots counted, Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, won 40.84% of the nationwide vote in an election widely seen as a de facto referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s nearly two years in power.
The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.67%."
This does mean that Milei's LLA party has achieved his obective as he now has enough votes in the Legislature to block the Peronists from over-riding his veto, as forecast in my penultimate paragraph.
Incidentally, at 67% turnout it is a new low for Argentinian elections since the restoration of democracy in 1983, despite voting being compilsory.
NHS bosses are seeking an emergency injection of £3bn to cover unexpected costs and have warned ministers that without it patients will wait longer for treatment and hospitals will start rationing care. The £3bn demand is needed to cover the cost of NHS staff redundancies, strike action by doctors and higher drug prices, and is likely to cause consternation inside a government that is desperately short of cash. The NHS is already due to receive £196bn of the £211bn health budget for England this year.
£1.3 billion for the redundancies at the ICBs (successors to the PCGs, and 50% of staff there are facing redundancy) and up to £2.5 billion on increased drug costs courtesy of President Trump. £500 million to cover the cost of the resident doctors strike in the summer, with a further one in November for 5 days.
Incidentally, its looking like a bad start to flu season:
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Rachel Reeves will lead a delegation of senior business leaders to Saudi Arabia on Monday as she hopes to deepen the UK’s relationship with a state that has been widely criticised for human rights abuses.
She is the first UK chancellor to visit the Gulf in six years and is expected to meet senior Saudi royals, US administration representatives and global business figures.
The visit comes as the UK continues its efforts to secure a trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which also includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
Totally off topic, but I went to an Evensong service at an Oxford college this evening and it was very lovely in a timelessly English kind of way. Stunning surroundings, beautiful singing and a thought provoking sermon. It made me feel guilty that I didn't set foot in my college's chapel once the three years I was at Cambridge.
Speaking as a non-Anglican, Choral Evensong is one of those specifically Anglican rituals that are both beautiful and numinous.
Milei’s Party on Track to Win 41% of Votes in Argentina’s Midterm Elections
The important question for this country is, does Argentina show that our political class's cynical but economically disastrous strategy of never offering the electorate any hard choices and repeatedly coddling parasitic interest groups with taxpayer's money is maybe not as smart as they think, even in the short term?
Or do we have to decline as much as Argentina did over the last century before we get an economically literate government again?
When and why did the right wing decide self professed medical expertise was the way to go?
Only a matter of time before Reform go that route (if not already) and the Tories follow suit. My most Trumpian acquaintance is all over it already.
It's long bubbling on the American right but Covid sent them mad.
Plus they've been conditioned to accept every lie Trump utters.
It predates him, but he has demonstrated he can change their minds, he does not simply follow on all issues, so on this one he's playing to the gallery.
And we're a long time past anyone on his side questioning anything he says, even inconsequential stuff.
It’s actually quite difficult to obtain the chicken pox vaccine for your child in this country. Until 2017 Hepatitis B was a private vaccine given upon request if you were travelling to high risk areas. Breaking the mmr into separate shots is an inconvenience the Blairs reportedly put upon themselves. I’ve not a doctor but I’ve not heard of anyone dying because of paracetamol avoidance. But yeah we hate Trump! Boooo to Trump!
The really dangerous political intervention of recent years into the vaccine debate was forcing the Covid vaccine onto the young, for very unclear net health benefit, even when it was known it did not provide effective herd immunity either.
Breaking the MMR into separate shots is well demonstrated to reduce how many kids are fully vaccinated because parents are more likely not to get around to having all the shots. That increases the chance of those diseases spreading. 2025 has already seen more measles cases in the US than any prior year this millennium. There have been more cases than all of 2000-2013 put together. There have been 3 deaths so far this year.
If you’re not using paracetamol for pain, you might turn to other painkillers, like opioids. About 80,000 people a year in the US are already dying because of opioid overdoses. It’s a huge problem. You don’t want to be putting people off an effective and safer analgesic.
And, really, are you going to go yay to Trump?
I think it's just the familiar impulse to normalise his severely abnormal behaviour.
Trump is not a normal dude and behaves extraordinarily atypically. But all the same I would not be in the least surprised if this US admin ends up as a net beneficiary to long term US health, even if in the short term politics around Obamacare are a net detriment. I just find the unflinching hyperbolic criticism quite tedious.
I'll be honest: vaccines is one of those things that has such an impact it shows up in things like infant mortality. Unlike the Americans we had two baby booms in the UK: one in the 1940s when the troops came back and had sex with their wives (more babies!), and another one in the 1950s when the NHS started rolling out childhood vaccinations (less dead babies!). Because we all think we're Americans we overlook this.
Personally I love vaccines. They make me feel like Steve Rogers. But anytime political and media discourse focuses on them either in favour or against, it tends to reduce adherence rates. The Covid thing was such a monumental own goal for vaccine policy and it’s frustrating it’s still not more broadly recognised. That programme changes views for life.
The debate about both Covid vaccines and childhood vaccines is also very different between the UK and the US.
On Covid vaccines, hundreds of thousands of people in the US were fired from their jobs for not wanting to take them, and they were also forced on young children for whom the benefit was seen as minimal at best.
The childhood vaccine programme looks very different in the UK and US too, with American kids receiving twice as many as British kids.
As with everything in US healthcare, the key issue is that decisions were made in the interests of Big Pharma, which collectively donates billions both to the politicans making the decisions, and the media that reports on them. Many pharma scandals over the years have been ignored by the media afraid of upsetting their sponsors. When the Six O’Clock News is “Brought to you by Pfizer” it’s easy to see the conflict of interest!
The BBC are utterly obsessed with this sex pest migrant who seems to have been set free very much against his will. No doubt they’ll be reporting shortly on pitchfork wielding vigilantes inspired by their hysteria. Anyone on the darker side of the racist colour chart should avoid carrying a shopping bag decorated with avocados.
It's totally ridiculous.
"The Etheopian"
An Etheopian English teacher decides to migrate to the UK. He arrives in a small boat and is put in a detention centre
Bored he sits on a wall outside the centre and makes small talk with a couple of bored local school girls.
He makes a lewd joke
The police are called
Word gets out and a far right mob mob mobilise and threaten the centre
The man is charged with an attemted grope and is jailed for 12 months
The prison authorities mistakenly release him after two
He asks if he can serve the rest of his sentence as he has no place to go
The prison authorities say no.
They drop him protesting at a local railway station with no money.
All ports and airports are alerted. A dangerous criminal is on the loose
A terrified population lock up their daughters........
What do you think Mr De Milne? Will it fly......
He tried to kiss the 14 year old. Read her testimony.
I notice your the Tory justice secretary has now raised the Ethiopian fugitive to 'Dangerous Paedophile'. Thank goodness his attempted kiss didn't land or he'd have run out of adjectives
He told the girl that he wanted to have sex with her
I know that you think she should be grateful for the attention, but you’re permanently in the wrong un column
Imagine someone coming from Ethiopia and after an horrendous journey arriving in detention in Epping
He's greeted by flag waving racists chanting 'GO HOME'outside the hotel where he is detained.
A woman befriends him and says she'll help him with his asylum application.
A few days later he's sitting on a bench and a couple of school girls sit with him. He misinterprets some banter as affection and asks the girl for a kiss. She laughs with her friend and he makes some inappropriate sexual remarks. They walk away.
The older lady who was going to help with his application reports the incident to the police.
The police arrest him.
He becomes a cause celebre with the racists and in custody he tries to kill himself.
Is he a 'dangerous paedophile' as Chris Philip describes him or an unfortunate in a foreign land knowing little of our norms or customs? Who knows.... but It certainly looks like the Daily Mail branch of PB have made up their minds
Every word of that post is untrue. And moreover, you know it is untrue because the correct information has not only been posted to but the reports concerned linked to on this thread, with you notified of them.
Which means you are lying. Or alternatively, you are Trumpian in your belief that your theories Trump (no pun intended) reality.
Either way, you are a coming across as a disgusting idiot and an apologist for child sexual abuse.
You once complained crossly that I described you as 'a lying moron.' I would suggest if you don't want to be viewed as a lying moron, don't tell moronic lies.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Whilst in Malaysia Trump seems to have found time to tweet that childhood vaccines are a disaster unless you split them in weird ways and paracetamol is very very bad.
Bonkers.
Mad as a box of frogs.
And yet 40% of US voters - give or take - still support.
And Reform UK are aping him all the way.
Brexit and Reform is our version of Peronism.
Trump has far more in common with Peron than Milei too.
That's fng rich from a supporter of the party that tried to take £5bn off the future growth of the welfare bill and ended up adding to it.
F1: huge title divergence between Ladbrokes and Betfair. Both agree Norris is the 1.8 favourite. But Ladbrokes has Verstappen 3 and Piastri 4.5, whereas Betfair has Piastri 3.55, Verstappen 5.9.
You can back Piastri at 4.5 (boosted even longer) on Ladbrokes and then lay at 3.65 on Betfair. Small window but guaranteed green.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Government procurement is an expensive mess that turns out to be really poor value for money, whoever would have thought that?
They really need to employ a central team of contracts negotiators and analysts, pay them each £1m salary. It would turn out to be worth every penny.
You'd need to look at performance clauses - monitored by the public accounts committee - this is, after all, the civil service...
The same story has been around for three decades since PFI started.
The supplier underbids for the main contract, but then the government discovers that the scope is much tighter than they thought it was, with all sorts of ways for the supplier to make money on out-of-scope work on an exclusive basis with little oversight. The suppliers run rings around the government in the contract stage, because the government simply don’t have the skills and won’t offer salaries to those that do. It’s like some provincial solicitor being up against a Jason Beer KC.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the first wave of Brown’s Skools’n’Ospitals 30-year PFI deals coming to an end, with a load of horrific use clauses and rent increases on their way for the public sector, on buildings that were designed from the outset to have only a 30-year life.
F1: huge title divergence between Ladbrokes and Betfair. Both agree Norris is the 1.8 favourite. But Ladbrokes has Verstappen 3 and Piastri 4.5, whereas Betfair has Piastri 3.55, Verstappen 5.9.
You can back Piastri at 4.5 (boosted even longer) on Ladbrokes and then lay at 3.65 on Betfair. Small window but guaranteed green.
Lando is around 6/1 with bookmakers for BBC SPotY behind Chloe Kelly and Rory McIlroy but 10/1 with BetMGM and Virginbet according to Oddschecker. Good luck getting more than two bob on. Oh, and according to TwiX, one chap got banned by AK Bets for having £20 on Oddschecker standout prices.
The big drifter in SPotY is Ellie Kildunne who went out from 12 to 36 after the Red Roses won the Rugby World Cup.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
Was this really the limit of Sunak's ambition ? Why did he even bother.
Rishi Sunak to the Times: "Clearly, I miss the levers of power. I’m proud I brought in the smoking ban for the young. I miss playing cricket in the garden with the England cricket team and the staff. But not much else." https://x.com/JAHeale/status/1982114041196609600
It was a nice interview piece but I thought that too about that bit. I'd have thought he'd be proud of steadying the ship after Truss pointed it at the rocks.
I suspect history will turn out to look more favourably on Sunak than it will on Truss, Johnson, May and Cameron.
Sunak screwed up HS2 which is going to have long term economic impact.
I suspect he won't be looked as favourably as Brown, Blair or Major..
To be fair to Sunak (and I was angry with him too) it was Johnson and Shapps that doomed HS2 by scrapping the north eastern leg to Leeds and HS3 from Newcastle to Liverpool, without which HS2 couldn't function.
The Integrated Rail Plan was a deliberate forgery, as it was undeliverable, and unless he is as stupid as he comes across (which seems improbable) Shapps knew that when he presented it to the Commons. Sunak was left to clear up the mess, which he did badly.
Where he absolutely screwed up and can't be excused was in the highly illegal fire sale of the land that had been purchased to ensure that nobody else could ever build it - a move so dumb even Cummings would have blinked at it.
Edited for a muddle on the alphabet soup.
Cute that you think there was ever a snowball's chance in hell of the northern leg actually getting built.
It was doomed years ago, the writing was on the wall the second it was agreed to begin construction in the South and only start investing in the North once the London leg was complete.
The only chance there would have been for the northern leg of HS2 is for them to either be built concurrently or to do the northern leg first and the London one last.
Once the London leg was past the point of no return, the Treasury no longer had a reason to keep up the pretence of investing in the North.
Sunak just said the quiet part out loud.
Sigh.
It was not possible to build the northern leg first because without the southern leg, there would have been nowhere for the trains to actually go to. The northern section of the WCML is congested but the southern was ram packed.
I agree the Treasury are either crooks or morons, and I would like to see them relocated to Darlington or Carlisle at which point I think thing ps would radically alter. But engineering reasons made your proposed solution impossible.
Nowhere?
So you couldn't have trains going between say Preston, Manchester, Stoke, Leeds and Birmingham without the southern leg? Why on earth not?
The idea that London is the only place that isn't nowhere is precisely why the northern leg was doomed from the start.
Because you can't fill the northern leg without the traffic to the south.
For good or for ill (I'd argue principally for ill) most traffic in England and Wales flows to London. Not Stoke or Birmingham.
And you couldn't put the extra traffic to the south without more tracks.
That is not true. Most journeys within the North West remain within the North West, and if it were better connected then there would be even more.
And building the Northern leg first, or concurrently, is not the same as saying never build the London leg, whereas by building the London one first ...
Yes, poor connections in the north are just taken as a given.
Someone recently noted that Sheffield and Manchester are the two largest near neighbour cities in Europe without either decent road or rail connections.
Meanwhile, we're building a new line between Cambridge and Oxford.
There was an electrified main line between Manchester and Sheffield (the Woodhead route), which was closed as a through route to passengers in 1970 and to freight in 1981.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
That’s what you expect from the Guardian, where anyone who is more conservative than themselves gets labelled “far-right”.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
Along with the Economist and FT, because he has the Trumpian "character" it seems to have ensured that people who should know better have lost their mind. Yes lots of stunts on the campaign trail, but he is a serious figure when it comes to economics. Now will his plan work out, well he started from a horrendous position of decades of mismanagement, but he isn't doing a Trump. He isn't a moron and thought behind what he is attempting to do for the long term, but makes the UK starting situation for Labour look like a piece of piss in comparison.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
That’s what you expect from the Guardian, where anyone who is more conservative than themselves gets labelled “far-right”.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
Along with the Economist and FT, because he has the Trumpian "character" it seems to have ensured that people who should know better have lost their mind. Yes lots of stunts on the campaign trail, but he is a serious figure when it comes to economics. Now will his plan work out, well he started from a horrendous position of decades of mismanagement, but he isn't doing a Trump. He isn't a moron and thought behind what he is doing, but makes the UK starting situation for Labour look like a piece of piss in comparison.
That’s an interesting analogy, they think he sounds a bit like Trump so he’s automatically bad. You’re right that he has clear ideas and is implementing them, as opposed to the US President who wakes up thinking something different every day, who’s deliberately chaotic to keep everyone on their toes.
He reminds me a bit of Thatcher, who had a plan and executed, knowing that it would be difficult but necessary, and bringing enough of the people with her to be able to serve for 11 years.
Argentina is definitely going to be a case study in how to avoid your country being completely taken over by the IMF.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
45 minutes doesn’t seem long to ensure the public are safe, and to carry out checks that seem common-sense and that I would expect prison staff to already be routinely carrying out.
I’d argue that 30 mandatory checks that have to be personally overseen by the deputy governor is pretty bureaucratic.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
That’s what you expect from the Guardian, where anyone who is more conservative than themselves gets labelled “far-right”.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
Along with the Economist and FT, because he has the Trumpian "character" it seems to have ensured that people who should know better have lost their mind. Yes lots of stunts on the campaign trail, but he is a serious figure when it comes to economics. Now will his plan work out, well he started from a horrendous position of decades of mismanagement, but he isn't doing a Trump. He isn't a moron and thought behind what he is doing, but makes the UK starting situation for Labour look like a piece of piss in comparison.
That’s an interesting analogy, they think he sounds a bit like Trump so he’s automatically bad. You’re right that he has clear ideas and is implementing them, as opposed to the US President who wakes up thinking something different every day, who’s deliberately chaotic to keep everyone on their toes.
He reminds me a bit of Thatcher, who had a plan and executed, knowing that it would be difficult but necessary, and bringing enough of the people with her to be able to serve for 11 years.
What is interesting on the few occasions he has done long form interviews, he doesn't sound anything like Trump. He comes across very much like the economics professor that he was, explaining in detail the economic theory behind lots of different approaches that have been tried for national economies. Yes he gets a bit excitable about the evils of socialism / communism, but it still isn't Trump.
The situation is still very dicey. Trying to unwind the way the government has artificially manipulated their currency could well blow everything up, particularly with uncertain world economic conditions (from Trump tariffs, to China, to AI bubble).
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Government procurement is an expensive mess that turns out to be really poor value for money, whoever would have thought that?
They really need to employ a central team of contracts negotiators and analysts, pay them each £1m salary. It would turn out to be worth every penny.
You'd need to look at performance clauses - monitored by the public accounts committee - this is, after all, the civil service...
The same story has been around for three decades since PFI started.
The supplier underbids for the main contract, but then the government discovers that the scope is much tighter than they thought it was, with all sorts of ways for the supplier to make money on out-of-scope work on an exclusive basis with little oversight. The suppliers run rings around the government in the contract stage, because the government simply don’t have the skills and won’t offer salaries to those that do. It’s like some provincial solicitor being up against a Jason Beer KC.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the first wave of Brown’s Skools’n’Ospitals 30-year PFI deals coming to an end, with a load of horrific use clauses and rent increases on their way for the public sector, on buildings that were designed from the outset to have only a 30-year life.
My last company (large infrastructure projects) had an in-joke that the first items onto site were Portacabins, kettles and a computer to keep track of the variances to contract they were going to charge. The Portacabin was to keep the computer dry. Indecisive customers are profitable customers. We had a large in-house legal team too as they'd often complain and lose.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Dunno, is taking massive handouts from the orange Yanquis emperor far right or libertarian? At least the second tranche is now guaranteed (or as guaranteed as anything can be with Trump).
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
45 minutes doesn’t seem long to ensure the public are safe, and to carry out checks that seem common-sense and that I would expect prison staff to already be routinely carrying out.
I’d argue that 30 mandatory checks that have to be personally overseen by the deputy governor is pretty bureaucratic.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
The checklist approach sounds bureaucratic, but it's proved pretty powerful in terms of stopping human error- see aviation. Does depend on what is in the checklist, of course.
See also reducing the blame/punishment if something does go wrong. One of the reasons for the cover-up culture is the sense that even a small error will get you or your team thrown to the wolves. Cathartic for the public, but overall negative.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
That’s what you expect from the Guardian, where anyone who is more conservative than themselves gets labelled “far-right”.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
Along with the Economist and FT, because he has the Trumpian "character" it seems to have ensured that people who should know better have lost their mind. Yes lots of stunts on the campaign trail, but he is a serious figure when it comes to economics. Now will his plan work out, well he started from a horrendous position of decades of mismanagement, but he isn't doing a Trump. He isn't a moron and thought behind what he is doing, but makes the UK starting situation for Labour look like a piece of piss in comparison.
That’s an interesting analogy, they think he sounds a bit like Trump so he’s automatically bad. You’re right that he has clear ideas and is implementing them, as opposed to the US President who wakes up thinking something different every day, who’s deliberately chaotic to keep everyone on their toes.
He reminds me a bit of Thatcher, who had a plan and executed, knowing that it would be difficult but necessary, and bringing enough of the people with her to be able to serve for 11 years.
What is interesting on the few occasions he has done long form interviews, he doesn't sound anything like Trump. He comes across very much like the economics professor that he was, explaining in detail the economic theory behind lots of different approaches that have been tried for national economies. Yes he gets a bit excitable about the evils of socialism / communism, but it still isn't Trump.
The situation is still very dicey. Trying to unwind the way the government has artificially manipulated their currency could well blow everything up, particularly with uncertain world economic conditions (from Trump tariffs, to China, to AI bubble).
He gets a bit excitable about the evils of socialism/communism *and* dog reincarnation.
Unexpectedly the Royalists are raging at…..the Mail. According to one of them Andy wouldn’t have turned out to be a raging perv and friend of paedos if he’d been allowed to marry Koo Stark.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
45 minutes doesn’t seem long to ensure the public are safe, and to carry out checks that seem common-sense and that I would expect prison staff to already be routinely carrying out.
I’d argue that 30 mandatory checks that have to be personally overseen by the deputy governor is pretty bureaucratic.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
It was the correct prisoner being released. The error was freeing him rather than handing him over to the immigration authorities. 45 minutes of checks might not seem excessive, but there may be dozens being released or transferred each day.
Not that long ago Leicester Prison failed an inspection. Amongst many other issues the governor didnt know how many prisoners he was supposed to have that day, something that you would anticipate being a core metric!
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
That’s what you expect from the Guardian, where anyone who is more conservative than themselves gets labelled “far-right”.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
Along with the Economist and FT, because he has the Trumpian "character" it seems to have ensured that people who should know better have lost their mind. Yes lots of stunts on the campaign trail, but he is a serious figure when it comes to economics. Now will his plan work out, well he started from a horrendous position of decades of mismanagement, but he isn't doing a Trump. He isn't a moron and thought behind what he is doing, but makes the UK starting situation for Labour look like a piece of piss in comparison.
That’s an interesting analogy, they think he sounds a bit like Trump so he’s automatically bad. You’re right that he has clear ideas and is implementing them, as opposed to the US President who wakes up thinking something different every day, who’s deliberately chaotic to keep everyone on their toes.
He reminds me a bit of Thatcher, who had a plan and executed, knowing that it would be difficult but necessary, and bringing enough of the people with her to be able to serve for 11 years.
What is interesting on the few occasions he has done long form interviews, he doesn't sound anything like Trump. He comes across very much like the economics professor that he was, explaining in detail the economic theory behind lots of different approaches that have been tried for national economies. Yes he gets a bit excitable about the evils of socialism / communism, but it still isn't Trump.
The situation is still very dicey. Trying to unwind the way the government has artificially manipulated their currency could well blow everything up, particularly with uncertain world economic conditions (from Trump tariffs, to China, to AI bubble).
It’s about trying to fit him into a template.
If you want to do that, he is actually the Post Trump.
Argentina’s had its Trump (Peron) many years ago.
The fallout from the Spend-Yourselves-Rich dogma of both left and right, in Argentina, is what he is trying to deal with.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
45 minutes doesn’t seem long to ensure the public are safe, and to carry out checks that seem common-sense and that I would expect prison staff to already be routinely carrying out.
I’d argue that 30 mandatory checks that have to be personally overseen by the deputy governor is pretty bureaucratic.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
The checklist approach sounds bureaucratic, but it's proved pretty powerful in terms of stopping human error- see aviation. Does depend on what is in the checklist, of course.
See also reducing the blame/punishment if something does go wrong. One of the reasons for the cover-up culture is the sense that even a small error will get you or your team thrown to the wolves. Cathartic for the public, but overall negative.
Yes, a combination of “Just Culture” and independent investigations that seek to learn lessons (actual lessons, not political lessons) rather than to punish individuals.
The likes of the AAIB can and do study things like shift patterns and fatigue, knowing that tired people are likely to make otherwise inexplicable mistakes.
They also record everything that happens on a plane, so there’s often little doubt over basic facts of a case. In a prison, you need to have every decision and approval recorded in a database, up to the governor who makes the final call on a release.
But, sure, Moonshine, let’s be fair to Trump. Just because he has repeatedly assaulted women, hung out with Epstein and is covering up for him after his death, tried to overthrow democracy and encouraged attacks on his own Vice-President, has undermined the rule of law in the US, has repeatedly damaged the world economy with an erratic tariff policy, has slowed support for Ukraine and keeps cosying up to Putin, has threatened to attack Canada, Greenland and Panama, fiddled his taxes, supported racists, illegally deployed the National Guard against his own citizens, demolished the White House east wing without the usual permissions, is trying to extort his own government for $230 million, pardoned numerous sex offenders, made fun of the disabled, denies climate change, and believes exercise is bad for you, is no reason to treat his views on vaccines unfairly.
What’s any of that got to do with the chicken pox vaccine?
That was exactly my point @moonshine Just because Trump defrauded his customers, stiffed his suppliers, cheated on his wives, personally enriched himself from a charity, stored confidential documents in his loo, used the justice system to go after his personal enemies, promoted false cures for COVID-19 and dismissed effective public health measures, said wind turbines cause cancer, said he “fell in love” with Kim Jong-un, accepted a massive bribe from Qatar, mocked a woman for menstruating, walked in unannounced on teenagers undressing at beauty pageants, and handed out pardons to his political allies has nothing to do with the chickenpox vaccine.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Government procurement is an expensive mess that turns out to be really poor value for money, whoever would have thought that?
They really need to employ a central team of contracts negotiators and analysts, pay them each £1m salary. It would turn out to be worth every penny.
You'd need to look at performance clauses - monitored by the public accounts committee - this is, after all, the civil service...
The same story has been around for three decades since PFI started.
The supplier underbids for the main contract, but then the government discovers that the scope is much tighter than they thought it was, with all sorts of ways for the supplier to make money on out-of-scope work on an exclusive basis with little oversight. The suppliers run rings around the government in the contract stage, because the government simply don’t have the skills and won’t offer salaries to those that do. It’s like some provincial solicitor being up against a Jason Beer KC.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the first wave of Brown’s Skools’n’Ospitals 30-year PFI deals coming to an end, with a load of horrific use clauses and rent increases on their way for the public sector, on buildings that were designed from the outset to have only a 30-year life.
Yes, we've discussed this before. I'd legislate to set the most egregious of these contracts aside, and renegotiate them with prejudice.
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
45 minutes doesn’t seem long to ensure the public are safe, and to carry out checks that seem common-sense and that I would expect prison staff to already be routinely carrying out.
I’d argue that 30 mandatory checks that have to be personally overseen by the deputy governor is pretty bureaucratic.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
It was the correct prisoner being released. The error was freeing him rather than handing him over to the immigration authorities. 45 minutes of checks might not seem excessive, but there may be dozens being released or transferred each day.
Not that long ago Leicester Prison failed an inspection. Amongst many other issues the governor didnt know how many prisoners he was supposed to have that day, something that you would anticipate being a core metric!
45 minutes a prisoner is 45 minutes that was previously spent doing something else which now won't get done - because I bet no budget has been given for the extra work required.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
I don't think the political spectrum is particularly helpful in classifying an eccentric like Milei. He's as much an authoritarian as he is a libertarian, for example.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
I don't think the political spectrum is particularly helpful in classifying an eccentric like Milei. He's as much an authoritarian as he is a libertarian, for example.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
I don't really see that materially Trump's baillout is a bribe. Any Government giving a baillout would want measures in place to ensure it came with a programme of reforms and cutbacks. Those are Millei's reforms and cutbacks. It was just expressed in a Trumpy way.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
That’s what you expect from the Guardian, where anyone who is more conservative than themselves gets labelled “far-right”.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
Along with the Economist and FT, because he has the Trumpian "character" it seems to have ensured that people who should know better have lost their mind. Yes lots of stunts on the campaign trail, but he is a serious figure when it comes to economics. Now will his plan work out, well he started from a horrendous position of decades of mismanagement, but he isn't doing a Trump. He isn't a moron and thought behind what he is doing, but makes the UK starting situation for Labour look like a piece of piss in comparison.
That’s an interesting analogy, they think he sounds a bit like Trump so he’s automatically bad. You’re right that he has clear ideas and is implementing them, as opposed to the US President who wakes up thinking something different every day, who’s deliberately chaotic to keep everyone on their toes.
He reminds me a bit of Thatcher, who had a plan and executed, knowing that it would be difficult but necessary, and bringing enough of the people with her to be able to serve for 11 years.
Argentina is definitely going to be a case study in how to avoid your country being completely taken over by the IMF.
I’d say that a further critical difference to Trump is - He isn’t trying to collapse democratic norms and use the state as a weapon against his opponents.
It's a different world living in a country like Argentina on an economic scale.
Its currency has weakened 50% versus the USD in the last 12 months. By almost 1,000% in the last 5 years.
Whereas GBP is roughly where it was against the USD 5 years ago. Longer-term depreciations of 50% or more happened over decades.
I hope the reforms are given the time needed to succeed. Countries need stability before they can start to thrive.
Serial devaluation is an addiction rather than a solution to economic difficulties. Its noteworthy that sticking with the Euro has forced a sound money approach to government in Greece, which is now consistently growing well.
Dollarisation is now 25 years old in Ecuador and is generally seen as a success, with 90% support amongst Ecuadorians, despite the loss of sovereignty. Argentina may well go the same way.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Attention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I'm not sure I'd call any electoral outcome there good, given the circumstances and contenders, but this seems like the least bad one possible ?
What would be the least bad result for our next election ?
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
I don't think the political spectrum is particularly helpful in classifying an eccentric like Milei. He's as much an authoritarian as he is a libertarian, for example.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
I don't really see that materially Trump's baillout is a bribe. Any Government giving a baillout would want measures in place to ensure it came with a programme of reforms and cutbacks. Those are Millei's reforms and cutbacks. It was just expressed in a Trumpy way.
Trump stating that aid was contingent on the electorate backing Milei was precisely that.
At 8.03am, as the 41-year-old fugitive loitered at a bus stop in Finsbury Park, a member of the public rang police after driving past and recognising the face that had been splashed across newspapers and TV channels for two days.
Sixteen minutes later, Kebatu was spotted by officers who pursued him on foot. By 8.35am he was in handcuffs.
Footage of Kebatu’s eventual arrest shows the sex offender near a bench, where he was apprehended by four officers yards from a children’s play area.
As predicted last night the MET didnt have a scooby where he was.
Definitely only at the play area for bantz
I think that’s a little unfair. Lots of people will have made the assumption that you did. However there are lots of play areas that are located close to bus stops… parents with children use the bus to get there…
It's a different world living in a country like Argentina on an economic scale.
Its currency has weakened 50% versus the USD in the last 12 months. By almost 1,000% in the last 5 years.
Whereas GBP is roughly where it was against the USD 5 years ago. Longer-term depreciations of 50% or more happened over decades.
I hope the reforms are given the time needed to succeed. Countries need stability before they can start to thrive.
Serial devaluation is an addiction rather than a solution to economic difficulties. Its noteworthy that sticking with the Euro has forced a sound money approach to government in Greece, which is now consistently growing well.
Dollarisation is now 25 years old in Ecuador and is generally seen as a success, with 90% support amongst Ecuadorians, despite the loss of sovereignty. Argentina may well go the same way.
Are you saying we should join the euro after all ?
Mr Lammy issued all prison chiefs with a new three-page mandatory list of as many as 30 checks that governors will have to personally oversee before any prisoner can be released.
These include identifying “high-profile” prisoners, about whom governors will consult a new special support unit in the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) before they are freed or deported.
Prisons must also check all warrants, including for deportation, are in order; ensure staff who oversee releases are trained to the right grade; and conduct checks with other agencies
However, governors warned it would add to the workloads of already-overstretched staff and questioned whether it would solve a problem that has yet to be identified by any investigation. The new checks could take as long as 45 minutes per prisoner, one source said.
45 minutes doesn’t seem long to ensure the public are safe, and to carry out checks that seem common-sense and that I would expect prison staff to already be routinely carrying out.
I’d argue that 30 mandatory checks that have to be personally overseen by the deputy governor is pretty bureaucratic.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
It was the correct prisoner being released. The error was freeing him rather than handing him over to the immigration authorities. 45 minutes of checks might not seem excessive, but there may be dozens being released or transferred each day.
Not that long ago Leicester Prison failed an inspection. Amongst many other issues the governor didnt know how many prisoners he was supposed to have that day, something that you would anticipate being a core metric!
45 minutes a prisoner is 45 minutes that was previously spent doing something else which now won't get done - because I bet no budget has been given for the extra work required.
One of the downsides of atomising an organisation, state or community is that it encourages behaviours that are seem positive locally, but are harmful globally. In extreme cases, the localised but of the global harm outweighs the local benefit.
It depends on the exact numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of formalising checks is less than the cost of chasing people released in error. But as long as they sit in different accounts, it's very hard to look at the big picture.
(See health/social care for the biggest example of this. See also the amount schools and colleges spend on marketing, which is mostly poaching from each other.)
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Attention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I'm not sure I'd call any electoral outcome there good, given the circumstances and contenders, but this seems like the least bad one possible ?
What would be the least bad result for our next election ?
Careful- it really upsets some people if you frame the question that way.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
I don't think the political spectrum is particularly helpful in classifying an eccentric like Milei. He's as much an authoritarian as he is a libertarian, for example.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
I don't really see that materially Trump's baillout is a bribe. Any Government giving a baillout would want measures in place to ensure it came with a programme of reforms and cutbacks. Those are Millei's reforms and cutbacks. It was just expressed in a Trumpy way.
Trump stating that aid was contingent on the electorate backing Milei was precisely that.
Why would any Government commit to bailing out a Peronist Government that was going to splash the cash? A no-strings bailout like that would be completely irresponsible. The bailout depended, quite understandably, on the Millei programme being carried out.
Billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money were squandered on asylum hotels because of a “failed, chaotic and expensive” system imposed by the Home Office, a committee of MPs has found.
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
Government procurement is an expensive mess that turns out to be really poor value for money, whoever would have thought that?
They really need to employ a central team of contracts negotiators and analysts, pay them each £1m salary. It would turn out to be worth every penny.
You'd need to look at performance clauses - monitored by the public accounts committee - this is, after all, the civil service...
The same story has been around for three decades since PFI started.
The supplier underbids for the main contract, but then the government discovers that the scope is much tighter than they thought it was, with all sorts of ways for the supplier to make money on out-of-scope work on an exclusive basis with little oversight. The suppliers run rings around the government in the contract stage, because the government simply don’t have the skills and won’t offer salaries to those that do. It’s like some provincial solicitor being up against a Jason Beer KC.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the first wave of Brown’s Skools’n’Ospitals 30-year PFI deals coming to an end, with a load of horrific use clauses and rent increases on their way for the public sector, on buildings that were designed from the outset to have only a 30-year life.
Yes, we've discussed this before. I'd legislate to set the most egregious of these contracts aside, and renegotiate them with prejudice.
It has been going on since the Pyramids. You'd bankrupt Slaughter and May if you legislate (assuming they don't find a wizard way around the legislation). Also there is no protection in law from being an idiot. You sign. You own it.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
I don't think the political spectrum is particularly helpful in classifying an eccentric like Milei. He's as much an authoritarian as he is a libertarian, for example.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
I don't really see that materially Trump's baillout is a bribe. Any Government giving a baillout would want measures in place to ensure it came with a programme of reforms and cutbacks. Those are Millei's reforms and cutbacks. It was just expressed in a Trumpy way.
Trump stating that aid was contingent on the electorate backing Milei was precisely that.
Why would any Government commit to bailing out a Peronist Government that was going to splash the cash? A no-strings bailout like that would be completely irresponsible. The bailout depended, quite understandably, on the Millei programme being carried out.
I am aware that I said bailout far too many times in the post above, and mispelled it.
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
Landslide is rather overdoing it!
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Atrention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
I think "far-right" is somewhat overdoing it as well.
Indeed in some ways the Peronists are more right wing. Argentinian politics dont map very well to the UK.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
I don't think the political spectrum is particularly helpful in classifying an eccentric like Milei. He's as much an authoritarian as he is a libertarian, for example.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
I don't really see that materially Trump's baillout is a bribe. Any Government giving a baillout would want measures in place to ensure it came with a programme of reforms and cutbacks. Those are Millei's reforms and cutbacks. It was just expressed in a Trumpy way.
Trump stating that aid was contingent on the electorate backing Milei was precisely that.
Why would any Government commit to bailing out a Peronist Government that was going to splash the cash? A no-strings bailout like that would be completely irresponsible. The bailout depended, quite understandably, on the Millei programme being carried out.
It’s Trump, get with the ‘orang man always bad’ PB vibe.
Comments
This is quite the picture.
A Russian mobile air defence team deployed outside of the Kremlin as Ukrainian drones hit targets in and around Moscow.
https://x.com/JimmySecUK/status/1982548403843412028
The 𝕏 recommendation system is evolving very rapidly. We are aiming for deletion of all heuristics within 4 to 6 weeks.
Grok will literally read every post and watch every video (100M+ per day) to match users with content they’re most likely to find interesting.
This should address the new user or small account problem, where you post something great, but nobody sees it.
We will also be adding the ability for you to adjust your feed temporarily or permanently just by asking Grok.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1979217645854511402
Does highlight the difference between users who go to SM to speak and those who mainly go to listen.
In recent weeks, senior figures in Labour have been musing that perhaps the Rwanda plan wasn’t the worst idea after all. “Perhaps we should have tried to fix the legal problems with Rwanda, instead of just cancelling it,” says one government official. “We took the biggest deterrent off the table.”
https://www.thetimes.com/article/a885b10e-6b52-4a6c-8a27-1eebb2d79997?shareToken=540997e7294324b07b4eaae6bd75f145
Although to be fair this is down to Grayling.
Has this government been in office but not in power since July 2024? Quite the admission...
More likely, some poor sod working at 110% capacity screwed up because screwups happen exponentially when you are working at 110% capacity and the failsafe was cut due to efficiency savings in 2014 or so.
Nothing works because we have never in my lifetime been willing to pay to do things properly. And that includes governments I have voted for.
They sound like checks that ought to have been happening all along, but clearly haven't been because it costs to do them.
Though I bet the ensuing manhunts don't come in cheap, either.
Edit first link I found https://www.vice.com/en/article/constant-scrolling-is-giving-ai-brain-rot/
I put it down to eating Extra Mature Cheddar too close to bedtime But maybe...
Sixteen minutes later, Kebatu was spotted by officers who pursued him on foot. By 8.35am he was in handcuffs.
Footage of Kebatu’s eventual arrest shows the sex offender near a bench, where he was apprehended by four officers yards from a children’s play area.
As predicted last night the MET didnt have a scooby where he was.
Surely this is the best version of the song referred to in the header title?
https://youtu.be/BnwR37DG4CI?si=eHouBh2MXBQzBsbv
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVh44lG_2fQ (8 mins)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oS6VzBVixwo
With my favourite YT comment being "That's a lovely Jumper."
Apart from the overwhelming evidence - I was sat thinking "How bad must the kiddy-fiddling have been to get kicked out of Sudan?".
It isn't even a proper Toyota.
[I always wonder what Toyota make of it when their pick-ups are used in this fashion. Surely good advertising.]
She is the first UK chancellor to visit the Gulf in six years and is expected to meet senior Saudi royals, US administration representatives and global business figures.
The visit comes as the UK continues its efforts to secure a trade agreement with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which also includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/26/rachel-reeves-saudi-arabia-trade-mission-human-rights
He's greeted by flag waving racists chanting 'GO HOME'outside the hotel where he is detained.
A woman befriends him and says she'll help him with his asylum application.
A few days later he's sitting on a bench and a couple of school girls sit with him. He misinterprets some banter as affection and asks the girl for a kiss. She laughs with her friend and he makes some inappropriate sexual remarks. They walk away.
The older lady who was going to help with his application reports the incident to the police.
The police arrest him.
He becomes a cause celebre with the racists and in custody he tries to kill himself.
Is he a 'dangerous paedophile' as Chris Philip describes him or an unfortunate in a foreign land knowing little of our norms or customs? Who knows.... but It certainly looks like the Daily Mail branch of PB have made up their minds
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/live-blog/2025-10-26/argentina-midterm-elections
Milei’s Party on Track to Win 41% of Votes in Argentina’s Midterm Elections
Giant polling failure.
What do Woody from Toy Story and Hadush Kebatu have in common?
They both go stiff when a child walks into the room.
[End inappropriate joke]
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/27/nhs-leaders-demand-extra-funding-waiting-times
Ministers and officials “neglected” day-to-day management of their asylum accommodation providers even as the cost of the 10-year contracts tripled from £4.5bn to £15.3bn, according to the all-party home affairs committee.
As a result contractors made “excessive” profits at taxpayers’ expense without the Home Office imposing effective penalty clauses or clawbacks.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/10/27/asylum-hotels-migrants-costs-home-office-hadush-kebatu/
"With more than 95% of ballots counted, Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, won 40.84% of the nationwide vote in an election widely seen as a de facto referendum on the self-styled anarcho-capitalist’s nearly two years in power.
The Peronist opposition, Fuerza Patria, secured 31.67%."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/27/javier-milei-president-far-right-party-wins-argentina-midterm-elections?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
This does mean that Milei's LLA party has achieved his obective as he now has enough votes in the Legislature to block the Peronists from over-riding his veto, as forecast in my penultimate paragraph.
Incidentally, at 67% turnout it is a new low for Argentinian elections since the restoration of democracy in 1983, despite voting being compilsory.
Incidentally, its looking like a bad start to flu season:
They really need to employ a central team of contracts negotiators and analysts, pay them each £1m salary. It would turn out to be worth every penny.
It’s a massive intergovernmental conference in Saudi this week, not just Rachel from accounts flying solo.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/crunch-time-saudi-arabia-financial-elite-descend-riyadh-2025-10-24/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/27/argentinas-midterm-election-hands-landslide-win-to-mileis-libertarian-overhaul.html
Other countries will be no doubt be looking at how they can enact similar reforms.
Or do we have to decline as much as Argentina did over the last century before we get an economically literate government again?
On Covid vaccines, hundreds of thousands of people in the US were fired from their jobs for not wanting to take them, and they were also forced on young children for whom the benefit was seen as minimal at best.
The childhood vaccine programme looks very different in the UK and US too, with American kids receiving twice as many as British kids.
As with everything in US healthcare, the key issue is that decisions were made in the interests of Big Pharma, which collectively donates billions both to the politicans making the decisions, and the media that reports on them. Many pharma scandals over the years have been ignored by the media afraid of upsetting their sponsors. When the Six O’Clock News is “Brought to you by Pfizer” it’s easy to see the conflict of interest!
Which means you are lying. Or alternatively, you are Trumpian in your belief that your theories Trump (no pun intended) reality.
Either way, you are a coming across as a disgusting idiot and an apologist for child sexual abuse.
You once complained crossly that I described you as 'a lying moron.' I would suggest if you don't want to be viewed as a lying moron, don't tell moronic lies.
F1: huge title divergence between Ladbrokes and Betfair. Both agree Norris is the 1.8 favourite. But Ladbrokes has Verstappen 3 and Piastri 4.5, whereas Betfair has Piastri 3.55, Verstappen 5.9.
You can back Piastri at 4.5 (boosted even longer) on Ladbrokes and then lay at 3.65 on Betfair. Small window but guaranteed green.
But obviously a French team!
Javier Milei’s far-right party wins Argentina’s midterm elections
The libertarian party won a landslide victory with voters backing Milei’s free-market reforms and deep austerity measures
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/10/27/javier-mileis-wins-argentinas-midterm-election/
So is he far-right or libertarian? They are quite different things.
The supplier underbids for the main contract, but then the government discovers that the scope is much tighter than they thought it was, with all sorts of ways for the supplier to make money on out-of-scope work on an exclusive basis with little oversight. The suppliers run rings around the government in the contract stage, because the government simply don’t have the skills and won’t offer salaries to those that do. It’s like some provincial solicitor being up against a Jason Beer KC.
Speaking of PFI, we’re only a couple of years away from the first wave of Brown’s Skools’n’Ospitals 30-year PFI deals coming to an end, with a load of horrific use clauses and rent increases on their way for the public sector, on buildings that were designed from the outset to have only a 30-year life.
The big drifter in SPotY is Ellie Kildunne who went out from 12 to 36 after the Red Roses won the Rugby World Cup.
But from the Torygraph? They should be cheering him on!
He reminds me a bit of Thatcher, who had a plan and executed, knowing that it would be difficult but necessary, and bringing enough of the people with her to be able to serve for 11 years.
Argentina is definitely going to be a case study in how to avoid your country being completely taken over by the IMF.
Just make it mandatory for the deputy governor to have satisfied him/herself that it’s the correct prisoner being released and make it a sackable offence if they are wrong…
The situation is still very dicey. Trying to unwind the way the government has artificially manipulated their currency could well blow everything up, particularly with uncertain world economic conditions (from Trump tariffs, to China, to AI bubble).
LLA have exceeded their target of stopping veto overrides, but do fall short of 50% so will need to rely on the Conservative PRO party in order to pass legislation.
At 41% of the vote for LLA it was at the top end of polling predictions, though not as good as the 55% that Milei got in the second round Presidential election in 2023.
So Milei is in a stronger position for his reforms to go though, but still needs to build allies and relationships outside his party.
Attention now goes to the Peso/USD rate band.
See also reducing the blame/punishment if something does go wrong. One of the reasons for the cover-up culture is the sense that even a small error will get you or your team thrown to the wolves. Cathartic for the public, but overall negative.
Milei has no truck with protection of pensions or for tariffs for example. He is happy to trade with China, where 2/3 of exported beef goes, and now soybeans too.
https://x.com/dailymailuk/status/1981713251588026390?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Its currency has weakened 50% versus the USD in the last 12 months. By almost 1,000% in the last 5 years.
Whereas GBP is roughly where it was against the USD 5 years ago. Longer-term depreciations of 50% or more happened over decades.
I hope the reforms are given the time needed to succeed. Countries need stability before they can start to thrive.
Not that long ago Leicester Prison failed an inspection. Amongst many other issues the governor didnt know how many prisoners he was supposed to have that day, something that you would anticipate being a core metric!
If you want to do that, he is actually the Post Trump.
Argentina’s had its Trump (Peron) many years ago.
The fallout from the Spend-Yourselves-Rich dogma of both left and right, in Argentina, is what he is trying to deal with.
The likes of the AAIB can and do study things like shift patterns and fatigue, knowing that tired people are likely to make otherwise inexplicable mistakes.
They also record everything that happens on a plane, so there’s often little doubt over basic facts of a case. In a prison, you need to have every decision and approval recorded in a database, up to the governor who makes the final call on a release.
I'd legislate to set the most egregious of these contracts aside, and renegotiate them with prejudice.
Also "landslide" is a slightly inaccurate description of getting 41% of the vote (though not as ridiculous as Starmer's "landslide").
And do we have any real indication of how great an effect Trump's $40bn bribe/blackmail might have had on the vote ?
Probably the best result for Argentina's economy - Milei becoming a lame duck, and Trump pulling financial aid would have meant chaos - but harder to say what it means for the future of democracy there.
Let's see how the markets react today
Dollarisation is now 25 years old in Ecuador and is generally seen as a success, with 90% support amongst Ecuadorians, despite the loss of sovereignty. Argentina may well go the same way.
What would be the least bad result for our next election ?
It depends on the exact numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if the cost of formalising checks is less than the cost of chasing people released in error. But as long as they sit in different accounts, it's very hard to look at the big picture.
(See health/social care for the biggest example of this. See also the amount schools and colleges spend on marketing, which is mostly poaching from each other.)
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