I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
I happen to be quite optimistic that the next election is going to be Tory V Labour with the Lib Dems and Reform doing what they do in their pockets. It's difficult to see how we get there at the moment but when the rubber boats stop being a thing and immigration is sorted that's probably what'll happen.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Deferring all the fiscal pain to the next parliament was the Sunak/Hunt strategy, so perfectly fair game to return the favour.
The risk is that Labour might win that election, unlikely as that seems. More likely Reform collapses in true "Your Party" style.
The really weird thing (well, one of them,) is that Reeves has not postponed the tax raising to the next Parliament but she has end loaded the tax into the latter part of this Parliament. The traditional approach was to squeeze the pips in the early years and then hand out some sweeties as the election approaches. Reeves is doing the reverse which has the attraction of novelty but is poor politics.
There are 3 possibles.
1) planning an early election in 2028 2) she is gambling that growth will be above the predictions so will not have to implement the changes, or can do a cut in the IT rate. 3) she doesnt expect to be CoE by then, going with Starmer.
The really dangerous thing is that everything hinges on 5 years of economic calm. The OBR doesn't seem to take into account the possibility of a stock market crash for example, despite markets looking very peaky, and pretty much everyone expecting the AI bubble to pop.
One way for Reeves to keep pensioners out of tax would be to increase the basic and higher personal allowances by £500, but reduce the amount of untaxable interest a person could have at the basic rate to £500 and at the higher rate to £0.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Deferring all the fiscal pain to the next parliament was the Sunak/Hunt strategy, so perfectly fair game to return the favour.
The risk is that Labour might win that election, unlikely as that seems. More likely Reform collapses in true "Your Party" style.
The really weird thing (well, one of them,) is that Reeves has not postponed the tax raising to the next Parliament but she has end loaded the tax into the latter part of this Parliament. The traditional approach was to squeeze the pips in the early years and then hand out some sweeties as the election approaches. Reeves is doing the reverse which has the attraction of novelty but is poor politics.
There are 3 possibles.
1) planning an early election in 2028 2) she is gambling that growth will be above the predictions so will not have to implement the changes, or can do a cut in the IT rate. 3) she doesnt expect to be CoE by then, going with Starmer.
The really dangerous thing is that everything hinges on 5 years of economic calm. The OBR doesn't seem to take into account the possibility of a stock market crash for example, despite markets looking very peaky, and pretty much everyone expecting the AI bubble to pop.
The AI bubble is an interesting one. It’s definitely going to burst at some point, but the big question is when.
There’s one school of thought that says it could continue for another decade, because there’s so much money around in the tech sector, meanwhile the cost of computer memory has tripled since early summer as the demand is off the charts.
The President is almost 80 so some decline is unsurprising. Notwithstanding occasional brain freezes and speculation about everything from cancer to dementia, my own worthless amateur diagnosis is congestive heart disease, which goes with his obesity, swollen legs, the disguised hand-bruising that might be from insertion of stents. And has he switched from Coke to Diet Coke? The MRI could be for anything.
He should be telling the American public what the MRI was for. He's clearly in denial about what it was for. (Or just plain bonkrs....)
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Would Vance be worse? He seems to have a bizarre hatred of Ukraine.
Which is worse?
Vance having direct power, or Vance having power behind the throne of a blob of orange jelly with a massive ego?
Not a cheerful thought for a Friday morning, but there you are.
Vance doesn't have power now and the cult of Trump dies with him
The cult is dead, long live the cult.
Whoever is GOP nominee will have an almost cult-like following because so many Americans hate the Democrats/liberals/woke that they will set aside whatever views they have to unquestioningly vote for anyone with an (R) next to their name.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Deferring all the fiscal pain to the next parliament was the Sunak/Hunt strategy, so perfectly fair game to return the favour.
The risk is that Labour might win that election, unlikely as that seems. More likely Reform collapses in true "Your Party" style.
I think you'll find that Brown and Darling did that as well.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Deferring all the fiscal pain to the next parliament was the Sunak/Hunt strategy, so perfectly fair game to return the favour.
The risk is that Labour might win that election, unlikely as that seems. More likely Reform collapses in true "Your Party" style.
The really weird thing (well, one of them,) is that Reeves has not postponed the tax raising to the next Parliament but she has end loaded the tax into the latter part of this Parliament. The traditional approach was to squeeze the pips in the early years and then hand out some sweeties as the election approaches. Reeves is doing the reverse which has the attraction of novelty but is poor politics.
There are 3 possibles.
1) planning an early election in 2028 2) she is gambling that growth will be above the predictions so will not have to implement the changes, or can do a cut in the IT rate. 3) she doesnt expect to be CoE by then, going with Starmer.
The really dangerous thing is that everything hinges on 5 years of economic calm. The OBR doesn't seem to take into account the possibility of a stock market crash for example, despite markets looking very peaky, and pretty much everyone expecting the AI bubble to pop.
I completely agree. We are teetering along the edge of a precipice and the Chancellor's response, rather than battening down the hatches, was to increase borrowing for the next 3 years. Utterly reckless. She might get away with it if, for example, peace broke out in Ukraine and energy prices fall but we have increased our vulnerability in uncertain times with that lunatic in the White House and Vance waiting to replace him and Putin in charge of a potentially failed state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.
5 years of economic calm would be very helpful. It's not at all likely.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
"They're eating cats and dogs."
It just shows you how twisted the US legal system has become, you can publish deliberate falsehoods and not face legal consequences* but have to pay enormous damages for publishing the truth. UK is going the same way, SYL declared bankruptcy and hasn't paid damages or costs to the teenager he repeatedly libelled. A question for the CELs, would SYL have paid his own legal fees? If not, why would anyone act for him in future and is this not a "collegiate issue" if the losing legal team get paid but the other side's costs award is not paid?
*even when a court finds against them, they wriggle out e.g Giuliani has kept everything, so clearly settled for a tiny percentage of the court award.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Coincidentally, I am currently re-reading Andrew Gimson's biography of the great man. If I type Boris into my Kindle's search bar, it brings up seven books – two by him, five about him – including Sebastian Payne's The Fall of Boris Johnson which you mention. I'd be rich if I could stop spending on Conservative politicians.
they seem to be turning business away in the prosperous parts of Kent, took 5 attempts to find a place willing to take take a booking to do food for a dozen people on a thursday night yesterday.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
A moment to be controversial which I try not to be but it's Friday morning....
It's been enlightening to see the turn in sentiment on Badenoch among some on here in the past few weeks. Not so long ago, she was widely derided and the expectation was she would be ousted and replaced by Jenrick, Lam or Cleverly but of late she seems to be gaining some favour among the, let's call them, "anti-Left" majority.
To pick up on a point made up thread, it's no good the "right" parties polling 50% if that's spread evenly between Reform and the Conservatives - one has to dominate and just as an earlier incarnation of Reform wilted in the face of Boris Johnson so perhaps the "dream" is the current version will fall to Badenoch and the Conservatives will have a route back to a majority.
Reform polling 35% and the Conservatives 15% ends poorly for the latter but turn the numbers round and the Conservatives look like players again and any and every attempt to weaken Farage by implication, innuendo or just the plain truth works to Badenoch's advantage as she offers a home for disaffected Reform supporters (well, some of them, I'd argue with Polanski and the Greens the other refuge).
Local council by-elections have shown there remain islands of Conservative strength but that's all they are and, even with the Savanta London poll showing the party back it was at the last GE, there's a possibility the decline of Labour may allow the Tories to win back enough seats and council to produce a decent result (for all that might be offset by losses to Reform elsewhere) and avert any challenge to Badenoch's leadership.
Given we are probably three and a half years from an election, a lot can and will happen. As she gains experience as LOTO, it will shape how she will be as Prime Minister. The one thing you have to do is offer hope and a positive vision for the country not just settle old scores and demonising groups you don't like. At the moment, Badenoch is, for me, doing too little of the former and too much of the latter - compare with Reform's two page "letter" yesterday which read more positive and it was nice to see the old phrase "alarm clock Britain" re-hashed (a nod to Nick Clegg with whom Farage had more than one run-in).
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Truss came into office after the Conservatives had been in power for more than a decade - it wasn't as though she won a General Election and became Prime Minister with a mandate - the only one she had was from Conservative Party members.
To conflate her circumstances with those of Starmer and Reeves is ridiculous.
If anything, the "slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence" could, if I were callous, be described as Continuity Sunak and Hunt and I agree that's the problem. There is the same timidity among this Labour Government as there was with Blair after 1997 but he inherited (thanks to Ken Clarke) as strong an economy as you could wish and Brown followed Clarke's spending until 1999 when, to general agreement, spending started to rise.
Reeves has an understand of the enormity of the problem, no doubt, but she is as bereft of solutions as most other western Governments at this time who are likewise struggling with the post-pandemic inheritance of demographic, technological, socio-economic and geopolitical changes, all of which combine to negate economic growth.
Truss and Kwarteng failed, in part, because their proposals bumped up against people's notion of "fairness" which is not what it was. The perception of encouraging economic growth by making the very wealthy even wealthier and making the poorest and those dependent on Government largesse even poorer might be economically "sound" for growth but it doesn't work politically as all the polling suggests.
Reeves also faces the economic and political conundrum which, simply put, is you can increase everyone's taxes but not mine and you can cut everyone else's services but not the ones I and my family use. Magnify that by 50-60 million and you have the current Gordian Knot which is strangling politics and economics alike.
Blair wasn't timid, so much as trying to build a reputation for competence and financial sense*, while increasing spending on certain areas. Whatever you think of it, it was a joined up plan that was actually possible.
*Remember, that Labour had worked very hard for 15 years (at that point) to have a reputation as lunatic spenders.
An important story. I'm not well enough informed to make a comment beyond ... fuck. And to note that there is a theme here about the aftermath of domestic abuse.
Parents threatened and blamed by authorities as 1,000 adopted children returned to care
Verity and Ian are just two of 50 parents the BBC has spoken to during a six-month investigation into why adoptive families are being broken apart and their children returned to care.
It has uncovered a hidden world where parents are subjected to lies and blame by authorities across the UK, as they struggle with the needs of traumatised children who have often suffered abuse and neglect before they were removed from their birth families.
Parents speak of being threatened, harassed and pushed into mental health crisis, while one adopted teenager who returned to care says that with more support his family might still be together now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kdv1x83gko
The President is almost 80 so some decline is unsurprising. Notwithstanding occasional brain freezes and speculation about everything from cancer to dementia, my own worthless amateur diagnosis is congestive heart disease, which goes with his obesity, swollen legs, the disguised hand-bruising that might be from insertion of stents. And has he switched from Coke to Diet Coke? The MRI could be for anything.
He should be telling the American public what the MRI was for. He's clearly in denial about what it was for. (Or just plain bonkrs....)
It's possible he doesn't remember
They probably explained it to him but he didn't understand.
The notion that it's biased against him is utterly laughable.
Indeed. It is obvious that they are in some way constrained (I wonder what power can constrain a public service broadcaster?) in how they cover the story of this kleptocratic gangster. Compare, for example, Simon Marks at LBC.
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
The most striking thing in the USA is how nearly all states have flipped over the decades, with the Southern heartlands flipping Republican and the Republicans losing New England, California etc. In 1948 the Dems won nearly the entire of the Midwest and West, including Texas.
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
The notion that it's biased against him is utterly laughable.
Indeed. It is obvious that they are in some way constrained (I wonder what power can constrain a public service broadcaster?) in how they cover the story of this kleptocratic gangster. Compare, for example, Simon Marks at LBC.
They played a chunk of an interview with Kemi on Today (approx 6.50am) from a long form with Nick Robinson. She was very engaging, humorous and came across very well. I thought she dealt with his questioning about her budget response tone perfectly.
If the Tories can resist the idiocy of replacing with Jenrick if results in May aren’t perfect and she gets the chance to really build her profile with the electorate then I think she has a chance of beating reform.
I think by the next election people will like the no nonsense attitude and I think her attacks on Reform in the clip are the approach to take.
Other opinions are of course available.
I am minded to agree. Its taken time for her to find her feet but there have been positive signs recently. At the same time the gloss is coming off Farage more than a bit and he's not getting any younger. Hopefully, by the next election, the populists will have lost some ground back to the centre. I'd wish the same thing to happen between the Greens and Labour too but that is looking less likely right now. The polling for Reeves was truly awful (although no worse than she deserves).
The challenge for Badenoch (and Stride) is putting in the hard graft to build a really coherent alternative.
Kemi has just shown that, when on form, she can be a brilliant attack dog. She is good at arguing for and articulating ‘values’, but she’s less good at being clear and precise about what that looks like in practice.
“Reforming welfare” and “shrinking the state” is exactly right, but you need to have a serious conversation about how you build an economy and a growth agenda that works for people around that. And that includes serious Tory blind spots like property, NIMBYism, and pensions - things that I’m still far from convinced the Tories have the appetite to seriously look at (the stamp duty thing is a start to generate the conversation re downsizing; but needs more thought and it’s the easiest of easy wins to sell to the faithful).
The Tories are slowly moving into a space that I can get on board with; but much more work is needed, and Badenoch needs to really seize this moment and mature as a politician into someone who looks, talks and thinks like a serious reforming leader. What I will say, is that I think they’d be stupid to remove her as leader right now.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Happenstance, or enemy action? If the latter, you might imagine the Ukrainians would keep quiet about it, as it is in Kazakhstan
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Truss crashed the markets as she and Kwarteng cut tax but not spending.
Starmer and Reeves didn't as they funded their increased spending, especially on welfare, with higher taxes, especially on property, savings, shares and private pensions. Even if some of those taxes don't come in until 2029
The way I see that is that there is a reliance on measures which should cause benefits outside the narrow scope of OBR working first. Again ... time, time.
An important story. I'm not well enough informed to make a comment beyond ... fuck. And to note that there is a theme here about the aftermath of domestic abuse.
Parents threatened and blamed by authorities as 1,000 adopted children returned to care
Verity and Ian are just two of 50 parents the BBC has spoken to during a six-month investigation into why adoptive families are being broken apart and their children returned to care.
It has uncovered a hidden world where parents are subjected to lies and blame by authorities across the UK, as they struggle with the needs of traumatised children who have often suffered abuse and neglect before they were removed from their birth families.
Parents speak of being threatened, harassed and pushed into mental health crisis, while one adopted teenager who returned to care says that with more support his family might still be together now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kdv1x83gko
Its a little known fact but 10% or so of adoptions break down with the child back in care.
Sadly these are often very disturbed and damaged children and love does not conquer all.
Pubs on the brain at 7 in the morning. Danger sign.
On a serious note. This government is continuing to add to a core problem - increasing non-profit related taxes/costs on business.
If you want growth, you need to allow companies out of the struggling-to-survive mode. Especially smaller companies.
What we have at the moment is that it is easy to setup a one-man-band company. But when you grow to a dozen employees (or so) a whole raft of stuff goes crashing down on you.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Truss crashed the markets as she and Kwarteng cut tax but not spending.
Starmer and Reeves didn't as they funded their increased spending, especially on welfare, with higher taxes, especially on property, savings, shares and private pensions. Even if some of those taxes don't come in until 2029
The way I see that is that there is a reliance on measures which should cause benefits outside the narrow scope of OBR working first. Again ... time, time.
They played a chunk of an interview with Kemi on Today (approx 6.50am) from a long form with Nick Robinson. She was very engaging, humorous and came across very well. I thought she dealt with his questioning about her budget response tone perfectly.
If the Tories can resist the idiocy of replacing with Jenrick if results in May aren’t perfect and she gets the chance to really build her profile with the electorate then I think she has a chance of beating reform.
I think by the next election people will like the no nonsense attitude and I think her attacks on Reform in the clip are the approach to take.
Other opinions are of course available.
I am minded to agree. Its taken time for her to find her feet but there have been positive signs recently. At the same time the gloss is coming off Farage more than a bit and he's not getting any younger. Hopefully, by the next election, the populists will have lost some ground back to the centre. I'd wish the same thing to happen between the Greens and Labour too but that is looking less likely right now. The polling for Reeves was truly awful (although no worse than she deserves).
The challenge for Badenoch (and Stride) is putting in the hard graft to build a really coherent alternative.
Kemi has just shown that, when on form, she can be a brilliant attack dog. She is good at arguing for and articulating ‘values’, but she’s less good at being clear and precise about what that looks like in practice.
“Reforming welfare” and “shrinking the state” is exactly right, but you need to have a serious conversation about how you build an economy and a growth agenda that works for people around that. And that includes serious Tory blind spots like property, NIMBYism, and pensions - things that I’m still far from convinced the Tories have the appetite to seriously look at (the stamp duty thing is a start to generate the conversation re downsizing; but needs more thought and it’s the easiest of easy wins to sell to the faithful).
The Tories are slowly moving into a space that I can get on board with; but much more work is needed, and Badenoch needs to really seize this moment and mature as a politician into someone who looks, talks and thinks like a serious reforming leader. What I will say, is that I think they’d be stupid to remove her as leader right now.
Mel Stride comes across well too I think. I hadn’t heard him before this week, he looks like someone who’d play the Chancellor in a film
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Happenstance, or enemy action? If the latter, you might imagine the Ukrainians would keep quiet about it, as it is in Kazakhstan
The service structure sits below the rocket. Before launch it is slid, on rails, out of the way, behind a blast shield.
Looks like either the process of retraction failed and interlocks failed, or launch vibration broke the locks on the rails and the service structure slid back. It ultimately fell of the end of the rail into the flame trench...
If that was sabotage, it is extremely complex stuff.
More likely to be a combination of age, and corruption related poor maintenance.
The Russian space program has long been a mess and is in slow decay.
they seem to be turning business away in the prosperous parts of Kent, took 5 attempts to find a place willing to take take a booking to do food for a dozen people on a thursday night yesterday.
It's the post-Covid doom loop, cut staff because business has declined, then can't provide the service when there are customers, so customers stop bothering.
My local barbers is a prime example, usual busy, turn up and wait operation with over 10 barbers. COVID appointment only, post-COVID still appointments, turn up and be turned away for a couple of hours, now you're lucky if there are 2 barbers on and I've got my own clippers.
One way for Reeves to keep pensioners out of tax would be to increase the basic and higher personal allowances by £500, but reduce the amount of untaxable interest a person could have at the basic rate to £500 and at the higher rate to £0.
That works for one year - what do you do the following year ?
Adjusting people's tax code because they received over £1k in interest seems reasonable, adjusting it because they received £5 in interest would aggravate.
Alternatively tax could be deducted from interest at source, which would be a politically 'brave' thing to do.
They played a chunk of an interview with Kemi on Today (approx 6.50am) from a long form with Nick Robinson. She was very engaging, humorous and came across very well. I thought she dealt with his questioning about her budget response tone perfectly.
If the Tories can resist the idiocy of replacing with Jenrick if results in May aren’t perfect and she gets the chance to really build her profile with the electorate then I think she has a chance of beating reform.
I think by the next election people will like the no nonsense attitude and I think her attacks on Reform in the clip are the approach to take.
Other opinions are of course available.
I am minded to agree. Its taken time for her to find her feet but there have been positive signs recently. At the same time the gloss is coming off Farage more than a bit and he's not getting any younger. Hopefully, by the next election, the populists will have lost some ground back to the centre. I'd wish the same thing to happen between the Greens and Labour too but that is looking less likely right now. The polling for Reeves was truly awful (although no worse than she deserves).
The challenge for Badenoch (and Stride) is putting in the hard graft to build a really coherent alternative.
Kemi has just shown that, when on form, she can be a brilliant attack dog. She is good at arguing for and articulating ‘values’, but she’s less good at being clear and precise about what that looks like in practice.
“Reforming welfare” and “shrinking the state” is exactly right, but you need to have a serious conversation about how you build an economy and a growth agenda that works for people around that. And that includes serious Tory blind spots like property, NIMBYism, and pensions - things that I’m still far from convinced the Tories have the appetite to seriously look at (the stamp duty thing is a start to generate the conversation re downsizing; but needs more thought and it’s the easiest of easy wins to sell to the faithful).
The Tories are slowly moving into a space that I can get on board with; but much more work is needed, and Badenoch needs to really seize this moment and mature as a politician into someone who looks, talks and thinks like a serious reforming leader. What I will say, is that I think they’d be stupid to remove her as leader right now.
Mel Stride comes across well too I think. I hadn’t heard him before this week, he looks like someone who’d play the Chancellor in a film
It was right to let Kemi do the big bit and have him as supporting cast.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
"They're eating cats and dogs."
Wasn’t there something like a couple of cats had gone missing from a house that some immigrants lived next to?
Ie no evidence for the accusation but some sort of event that they could build on
There was a Facebook post where someone claimed their neighbour said that her daughter's friend's cat went missing and it was then discovered that the Haitians next door had eaten it. The neighbour was tracked down by the media and said that, no, it wasn't her daughter's friend, it was just a rumour she had heard from a friend of a friend. So, it was just people on social media repeating an "urban myth".
On the other hand, I think it is established that people take ducks, geese and fish from the municipal duck pond, and of course it is usually people from countries where you don't rely on getting your food from the supermarket
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Truss crashed the markets as she and Kwarteng cut tax but not spending.
Starmer and Reeves didn't as they funded their increased spending, especially on welfare, with higher taxes, especially on property, savings, shares and private pensions. Even if some of those taxes don't come in until 2029
The way I see that is that there is a reliance on measures which should cause benefits outside the narrow scope of OBR working first. Again ... time, time.
What benefits?
Mounting costs on employers, again, at a time when major sectors of the population have a significant and rising unemployment problem.
Where is the benefit, precisely, to the real world economy coming from?
they seem to be turning business away in the prosperous parts of Kent, took 5 attempts to find a place willing to take take a booking to do food for a dozen people on a thursday night yesterday.
It's the post-Covid doom loop, cut staff because business has declined, then can't provide the service when there are customers, so customers stop bothering.
My local barbers is a prime example, usual busy, turn up and wait operation with over 10 barbers. COVID appointment only, post-COVID still appointments, turn up and be turned away for a couple of hours, now you're lucky if there are 2 barbers on and I've got my own clippers.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
There are many things wrong with the US legal system.
But their definitions of libel and the resulting ability/inability to sue are vastly better than this country.
It is very noticeable that libel law in this country is often used by the rich and guilty to try to hide their behaviour.
It simply doesn't work like that in the US.
This is not surprising when you look at the history of libel in the UK - what it was invented for. And how, in the US, they shaped the laws at the founding, in response to that.
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Truss came into office after the Conservatives had been in power for more than a decade - it wasn't as though she won a General Election and became Prime Minister with a mandate - the only one she had was from Conservative Party members.
To conflate her circumstances with those of Starmer and Reeves is ridiculous.
If anything, the "slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence" could, if I were callous, be described as Continuity Sunak and Hunt and I agree that's the problem. There is the same timidity among this Labour Government as there was with Blair after 1997 but he inherited (thanks to Ken Clarke) as strong an economy as you could wish and Brown followed Clarke's spending until 1999 when, to general agreement, spending started to rise.
Reeves has an understand of the enormity of the problem, no doubt, but she is as bereft of solutions as most other western Governments at this time who are likewise struggling with the post-pandemic inheritance of demographic, technological, socio-economic and geopolitical changes, all of which combine to negate economic growth.
Truss and Kwarteng failed, in part, because their proposals bumped up against people's notion of "fairness" which is not what it was. The perception of encouraging economic growth by making the very wealthy even wealthier and making the poorest and those dependent on Government largesse even poorer might be economically "sound" for growth but it doesn't work politically as all the polling suggests.
Reeves also faces the economic and political conundrum which, simply put, is you can increase everyone's taxes but not mine and you can cut everyone else's services but not the ones I and my family use. Magnify that by 50-60 million and you have the current Gordian Knot which is strangling politics and economics alike.
Blair wasn't timid, so much as trying to build a reputation for competence and financial sense*, while increasing spending on certain areas. Whatever you think of it, it was a joined up plan that was actually possible.
*Remember, that Labour had worked very hard for 15 years (at that point) to have a reputation as lunatic spenders.
Set against a background of cheap food, cheap fuel, cheap money and endlessly rising asset values, yes it was and by 1999 moat agreed some additional public spending was not only justified but necessary.
The problem, as I said on here many times, was what Brown did was the equivalent of force feeding a starving man a banquet. So much money was thrown at the public sector, especially the NHS, and at infrastructures which couldn't properly use it and absorb it a lot was wasted. A more controlled drip-feed of money over a number of years would have been so much better and enabled the organisations to build up the structures which would have allowed the funds to be better used.
The irony was both the Conservatives at the time and the LDs also engaged in this dutch auction of seeing how much they could throw at the public sector. After the events of September 2001, the whole defence and security establishment came with their begging bowl wanting money to combat Islamic terrorism and to fund the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All this spending was fine while the economy was growing and the tax receipts were coming in but that all stopped in 2008 and that's when our problems really started and I think so much of what has happened since dates from that.
One way for Reeves to keep pensioners out of tax would be to increase the basic and higher personal allowances by £500, but reduce the amount of untaxable interest a person could have at the basic rate to £500 and at the higher rate to £0.
That works for one year - what do you do the following year ?
Adjusting people's tax code because they received over £1k in interest seems reasonable, adjusting it because they received £5 in interest would aggravate.
Alternatively tax could be deducted from interest at source, which would be a politically 'brave' thing to do.
Would it be that brave? I recall tax used to be deducted at the basic rate.
The obvious answer is to link the TFA to the State Pension, but they would have to stop the bullshit about not increasing rates. And in any case governments seem to like to help accountants out by making the tax system as complicated as possible
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
The President is almost 80 so some decline is unsurprising. Notwithstanding occasional brain freezes and speculation about everything from cancer to dementia, my own worthless amateur diagnosis is congestive heart disease, which goes with his obesity, swollen legs, the disguised hand-bruising that might be from insertion of stents. And has he switched from Coke to Diet Coke? The MRI could be for anything.
He should be telling the American public what the MRI was for. He's clearly in denial about what it was for. (Or just plain bonkrs....)
It's possible he doesn't remember
They probably explained it to him but he didn't understand.
An important story. I'm not well enough informed to make a comment beyond ... fuck. And to note that there is a theme here about the aftermath of domestic abuse.
Parents threatened and blamed by authorities as 1,000 adopted children returned to care
Verity and Ian are just two of 50 parents the BBC has spoken to during a six-month investigation into why adoptive families are being broken apart and their children returned to care.
It has uncovered a hidden world where parents are subjected to lies and blame by authorities across the UK, as they struggle with the needs of traumatised children who have often suffered abuse and neglect before they were removed from their birth families.
Parents speak of being threatened, harassed and pushed into mental health crisis, while one adopted teenager who returned to care says that with more support his family might still be together now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kdv1x83gko
Its a little known fact but 10% or so of adoptions break down with the child back in care.
Sadly these are often very disturbed and damaged children and love does not conquer all.
I'm alive to historic problems with the adoption system, comprising to my eye how it is run, support, and sometimes overreach. Which I speculate may have a similar component of local authorities being cut back as a secular trend as everything else to do with local authorities. There have been stories I noted in the past; one about the UKIP members not allowed to adopt, and also certain types of Christian adoptee *, but that's just anecdata and it's too important to try and jump to firm conclusions. At the time that felt like traditional "social worker" prejudice, but without real detail that assessment is also itself potentially a prejudice on my part, and I could be overegging a couple of media outrage bus stories.
OTOH funding was firmed up two (?) decades ago, and it became possible to treat "adoptive parent" as a side gig. When I was house-hunting around 2012 I noted at least one couple in a 6 bed house (4 bed detached with converted loft) with couple of adopted children in their big family. A viable model for some.
they seem to be turning business away in the prosperous parts of Kent, took 5 attempts to find a place willing to take take a booking to do food for a dozen people on a thursday night yesterday.
It's the post-Covid doom loop, cut staff because business has declined, then can't provide the service when there are customers, so customers stop bothering.
My local barbers is a prime example, usual busy, turn up and wait operation with over 10 barbers. COVID appointment only, post-COVID still appointments, turn up and be turned away for a couple of hours, now you're lucky if there are 2 barbers on and I've got my own clippers.
I'm surprised you don't have a street full of Turkish barbers to choose from.
Anyway, why not book. I never understood the attraction of "while you wait" I don't like waiting. Although my barber (who is a lady) says men won't book, they like to appear spontaneous even if in practice they always go out to do something at the same time and day
They played a chunk of an interview with Kemi on Today (approx 6.50am) from a long form with Nick Robinson. She was very engaging, humorous and came across very well. I thought she dealt with his questioning about her budget response tone perfectly.
If the Tories can resist the idiocy of replacing with Jenrick if results in May aren’t perfect and she gets the chance to really build her profile with the electorate then I think she has a chance of beating reform.
I think by the next election people will like the no nonsense attitude and I think her attacks on Reform in the clip are the approach to take.
Other opinions are of course available.
I am minded to agree. Its taken time for her to find her feet but there have been positive signs recently. At the same time the gloss is coming off Farage more than a bit and he's not getting any younger. Hopefully, by the next election, the populists will have lost some ground back to the centre. I'd wish the same thing to happen between the Greens and Labour too but that is looking less likely right now. The polling for Reeves was truly awful (although no worse than she deserves).
The challenge for Badenoch (and Stride) is putting in the hard graft to build a really coherent alternative.
Kemi has just shown that, when on form, she can be a brilliant attack dog. She is good at arguing for and articulating ‘values’, but she’s less good at being clear and precise about what that looks like in practice.
“Reforming welfare” and “shrinking the state” is exactly right, but you need to have a serious conversation about how you build an economy and a growth agenda that works for people around that. And that includes serious Tory blind spots like property, NIMBYism, and pensions - things that I’m still far from convinced the Tories have the appetite to seriously look at (the stamp duty thing is a start to generate the conversation re downsizing; but needs more thought and it’s the easiest of easy wins to sell to the faithful).
The Tories are slowly moving into a space that I can get on board with; but much more work is needed, and Badenoch needs to really seize this moment and mature as a politician into someone who looks, talks and thinks like a serious reforming leader. What I will say, is that I think they’d be stupid to remove her as leader right now.
Mel Stride comes across well too I think. I hadn’t heard him before this week, he looks like someone who’d play the Chancellor in a film
Mel Stride up to second in the new ConHome survey of Conservative Party members of net satisfaction with Shadow Cabinet ministers, Stride overtaking Kemi in the process and now just 2% behind first placed Jenrick with Kemi third
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
The most striking thing in the USA is how nearly all states have flipped over the decades, with the Southern heartlands flipping Republican and the Republicans losing New England, California etc. In 1948 the Dems won nearly the entire of the Midwest and West, including Texas.
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
In 1984, Walter Mondale won only Minnesota and Washington DC, with the other 49 States going to Reagan on nearly 60% of the vote.
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The story of Your Party imploding while the Greens enjoy a surge is pretty much identical to Change UK imploding while the Lib Dems surged in 2018-19. Much easier to build from an established foundation and voter brand than create something entirely new.
UKIP and its successors are the exception, because there wasn’t an established party the populist right could inhabit at the time they first surged (the Conservatives were still officially a pro-EU party).
Has anyone ever asked the Change UK lot what they thought would happen with the LibDems? Did they think LibDem MPs would flock to Change UK and the party just dissolve itself? Did they think there would just be two centrist parties competing for votes? Did they think they would merge with the LibDems at some later date?
Presumably the first. Change UK takes all the publicity and there are either defections or a formal merge (keeping in mind that the parliamentary Lib Dem party was about the same size as the Independent Group within a few days of the latter's formation - LDs had 12 elected in 2017, but I think they'd lost one, from whip at least, over Brexit and this was before the by election win, I think).
"The most recent match Maccabi Tel Aviv played in the UK was against West Ham United in the UEFA Europa Conference League group stage on 9th November 2023"
Only problem is that West Ham played Olympiacos that night.
The phrasing makes me think they reckon he’s guilty!
Speaking outside his chateau in France, former Brexit Party and UKIP MEP Coburn answered "no" when a BBC journalist asked him whether he had ever been paid to give a speech to promote pro-Russian campaigners.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
I'm quite surprised they have not yet started on big jets parked at passenger airports, which are arguably legitimate targets.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
Candace Owens is a nutcase, but she's just the tip of the iceberg. Owens is firmly entwined in the right-wing blogosphere pumping out nonsense. She was comms director at Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. She was on Joe Rogan. The law may slowly catch up with Owens, but the garbage will keep coming.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
Candace Owens is a nutcase, but she's just the tip of the iceberg. Owens is firmly entwined in the right-wing blogosphere pumping out nonsense. She was comms director at Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA. She was on Joe Rogan. The law may slowly catch up with Owens, but the garbage will keep coming.
It's worth a note that "Actual Malice" is a higher standard for public figures, which applies here.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
One way for Reeves to keep pensioners out of tax would be to increase the basic and higher personal allowances by £500, but reduce the amount of untaxable interest a person could have at the basic rate to £500 and at the higher rate to £0.
That works for one year - what do you do the following year ?
Adjusting people's tax code because they received over £1k in interest seems reasonable, adjusting it because they received £5 in interest would aggravate.
Alternatively tax could be deducted from interest at source, which would be a politically 'brave' thing to do.
I thought it was deducted at source at basic rate, until quite recently? There was a long period when I didn't have any interest-earning accounts outside an ISA so didn't have to worry about it, and I think the rules changed in between to save HMRC having to piddle about with lots of small adjustments for 40% tax payers.
They played a chunk of an interview with Kemi on Today (approx 6.50am) from a long form with Nick Robinson. She was very engaging, humorous and came across very well. I thought she dealt with his questioning about her budget response tone perfectly.
If the Tories can resist the idiocy of replacing with Jenrick if results in May aren’t perfect and she gets the chance to really build her profile with the electorate then I think she has a chance of beating reform.
I think by the next election people will like the no nonsense attitude and I think her attacks on Reform in the clip are the approach to take.
Other opinions are of course available.
I am minded to agree. Its taken time for her to find her feet but there have been positive signs recently. At the same time the gloss is coming off Farage more than a bit and he's not getting any younger. Hopefully, by the next election, the populists will have lost some ground back to the centre. I'd wish the same thing to happen between the Greens and Labour too but that is looking less likely right now. The polling for Reeves was truly awful (although no worse than she deserves).
The challenge for Badenoch (and Stride) is putting in the hard graft to build a really coherent alternative.
Kemi has just shown that, when on form, she can be a brilliant attack dog. She is good at arguing for and articulating ‘values’, but she’s less good at being clear and precise about what that looks like in practice.
“Reforming welfare” and “shrinking the state” is exactly right, but you need to have a serious conversation about how you build an economy and a growth agenda that works for people around that. And that includes serious Tory blind spots like property, NIMBYism, and pensions - things that I’m still far from convinced the Tories have the appetite to seriously look at (the stamp duty thing is a start to generate the conversation re downsizing; but needs more thought and it’s the easiest of easy wins to sell to the faithful).
The Tories are slowly moving into a space that I can get on board with; but much more work is needed, and Badenoch needs to really seize this moment and mature as a politician into someone who looks, talks and thinks like a serious reforming leader. What I will say, is that I think they’d be stupid to remove her as leader right now.
Mel Stride comes across well too I think. I hadn’t heard him before this week, he looks like someone who’d play the Chancellor in a film
Mel Stride up to second in the new ConHome survey of Conservative Party members of net satisfaction with Shadow Cabinet ministers, Stride overtaking Kemi in the process and now just 2% behind first placed Jenrick with Kemi third
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
People have accidents all the time! What makes you think it was sabotage?
An important story. I'm not well enough informed to make a comment beyond ... fuck. And to note that there is a theme here about the aftermath of domestic abuse.
Parents threatened and blamed by authorities as 1,000 adopted children returned to care
Verity and Ian are just two of 50 parents the BBC has spoken to during a six-month investigation into why adoptive families are being broken apart and their children returned to care.
It has uncovered a hidden world where parents are subjected to lies and blame by authorities across the UK, as they struggle with the needs of traumatised children who have often suffered abuse and neglect before they were removed from their birth families.
Parents speak of being threatened, harassed and pushed into mental health crisis, while one adopted teenager who returned to care says that with more support his family might still be together now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kdv1x83gko
Its a little known fact but 10% or so of adoptions break down with the child back in care.
Sadly these are often very disturbed and damaged children and love does not conquer all.
I'm alive to historic problems with the adoption system, comprising to my eye how it is run, support, and sometimes overreach. Which I speculate may have a similar component of local authorities being cut back as a secular trend as everything else to do with local authorities. There have been stories I noted in the past; one about the UKIP members not allowed to adopt, and also certain types of Christian adoptee *, but that's just anecdata and it's too important to try and jump to firm conclusions. At the time that felt like traditional "social worker" prejudice, but without real detail that assessment is also itself potentially a prejudice on my part, and I could be overegging a couple of media outrage bus stories.
OTOH funding was firmed up two (?) decades ago, and it became possible to treat "adoptive parent" as a side gig. When I was house-hunting around 2012 I noted at least one couple in a 6 bed house (4 bed detached with converted loft) with couple of adopted children in their big family. A viable model for some.
The current process for undertaking, for example, a core assessment requires the compilation of large amounts of detailed information. For many, hard pressed, social workers it is a dauntingly time consuming task. Indeed it is estimated that social workers spend between 12% and 20% of their time working directly with children and families, the remainder being spend on administrative tasks.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
True.
In this case, though, they could have gone with “sham marriage to obtain a green card” - inaccurate (especially since I don’t believe her ex husband applied for a green card) but plausible. But the whole brother thing? Just weird.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
People have accidents all the time! What makes you think it was sabotage?
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
"They're eating cats and dogs."
Wasn’t there something like a couple of cats had gone missing from a house that some immigrants lived next to?
Ie no evidence for the accusation but some sort of event that they could build on
There was a Facebook post where someone claimed their neighbour said that her daughter's friend's cat went missing and it was then discovered that the Haitians next door had eaten it. The neighbour was tracked down by the media and said that, no, it wasn't her daughter's friend, it was just a rumour she had heard from a friend of a friend. So, it was just people on social media repeating an "urban myth".
On the other hand, I think it is established that people take ducks, geese and fish from the municipal duck pond, and of course it is usually people from countries where you don't rely on getting your food from the supermarket
No, that's not established. It's just another xenophobic urban myth that immigrants are eating the ducks. Let me just quote the Wikipedia article on "they're eating the cats":
Misinformation about several unrelated stories led to their being linked to the pet-eating hoax. Before the pet-eating claims gained virality, there were rumors in Springfield of Haitians eating waterfowl from city parks, which the city's deputy director of public safety and operations denied.[28] In July, a user posted a photo to Reddit of a man carrying a dead Canada goose on the street in Columbus, Ohio.[2][54] The goose was roadkill, there was no evidence that the man intended to eat it, and there was never any evidence the man was Haitian or an immigrant.[55] More than a month after the Reddit post, right-wing sites and influencers publicized the photo, claiming it shows a Haitian immigrant stealing geese in Springfield.[56] The Ohio Department of Natural Resources was inundated with phone calls from people who believed the misinformation, and it became associated with the larger pet-eating hoax.[56]
[...]
On August 26, Clark County law enforcement dispatchers received a call from someone who said they saw Haitians carrying geese near a Springfield bike trail, but police found no evidence. Clark County Commission president Melanie Flax Wilt characterized the episode as a "literal wild goose chase", and Clark County officials said no other calls regarding stolen animals had been received in the last 11 months.[61] The following day, a Springfield resident commented at a city commission meeting, without evidence, that immigrants were "in the park grabbing up ducks by their neck and cutting their head off ... and eating them".[62] The only confirmed report of someone illegally hunting geese in Springfield was a 64-year-old white man, who was arrested on September 10 and charged with illegally hunting Canada geese at a golf course with a shotgun; he later pled guilty to hunting without a permit.[63][64]
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
People have accidents all the time! What makes you think it was sabotage?
One way for Reeves to keep pensioners out of tax would be to increase the basic and higher personal allowances by £500, but reduce the amount of untaxable interest a person could have at the basic rate to £500 and at the higher rate to £0.
That works for one year - what do you do the following year ?
Adjusting people's tax code because they received over £1k in interest seems reasonable, adjusting it because they received £5 in interest would aggravate.
Alternatively tax could be deducted from interest at source, which would be a politically 'brave' thing to do.
Would it be that brave? I recall tax used to be deducted at the basic rate.
The obvious answer is to link the TFA to the State Pension, but they would have to stop the bullshit about not increasing rates. And in any case governments seem to like to help accountants out by making the tax system as complicated as possible
Ten years of interest being paid gross means that people will feel entitled to it.
Its a tax increase which would be very visible on every bank statement in a way changing a tax code isn't.
A moment to be controversial which I try not to be but it's Friday morning....
It's been enlightening to see the turn in sentiment on Badenoch among some on here in the past few weeks. Not so long ago, she was widely derided and the expectation was she would be ousted and replaced by Jenrick, Lam or Cleverly but of late she seems to be gaining some favour among the, let's call them, "anti-Left" majority.
To pick up on a point made up thread, it's no good the "right" parties polling 50% if that's spread evenly between Reform and the Conservatives - one has to dominate and just as an earlier incarnation of Reform wilted in the face of Boris Johnson so perhaps the "dream" is the current version will fall to Badenoch and the Conservatives will have a route back to a majority.
Reform polling 35% and the Conservatives 15% ends poorly for the latter but turn the numbers round and the Conservatives look like players again and any and every attempt to weaken Farage by implication, innuendo or just the plain truth works to Badenoch's advantage as she offers a home for disaffected Reform supporters (well, some of them, I'd argue with Polanski and the Greens the other refuge).
Local council by-elections have shown there remain islands of Conservative strength but that's all they are and, even with the Savanta London poll showing the party back it was at the last GE, there's a possibility the decline of Labour may allow the Tories to win back enough seats and council to produce a decent result (for all that might be offset by losses to Reform elsewhere) and avert any challenge to Badenoch's leadership.
Given we are probably three and a half years from an election, a lot can and will happen. As she gains experience as LOTO, it will shape how she will be as Prime Minister. The one thing you have to do is offer hope and a positive vision for the country not just settle old scores and demonising groups you don't like. At the moment, Badenoch is, for me, doing too little of the former and too much of the latter - compare with Reform's two page "letter" yesterday which read more positive and it was nice to see the old phrase "alarm clock Britain" re-hashed (a nod to Nick Clegg with whom Farage had more than one run-in).
Yes. There are a couple of bits of significant variable geometry in all this.
In GE 2024 the Tories + Reform got only 39% of the poll between them. Currently Tory + Reform is getting about about 44-50% (with marked variation between pollsters, and no way of telling which trend is to be preferred).
The split in the vote between Tory and Reform can lead, with the same totals to:
Tory victory Reform victory Tory needing Reform as well Reform needing Tory as well Defeat for both. (Let's ignore a winning tie for now - but something close is possible).
Dependent of course on both the split between them, and also the split between the non T and R parties. This is too many variables.
A current further variable is the impossible choice the Tories must make, each of which is wrong but even by doing nothing a choice is made. Are they willing or unwilling to support a Reform government, or do they decide not to say?
No-one is doing hope at the moment. The Reform constituency is mostly not a hope based one but one based on winners and losers. Kemi's best chance of being distinctive from the centre left and Reform is to major on clarity of purpose and plan and policy, and honesty about public finances, and explaining the direction of travel to sunlit uplands. I also think she should in time be bold, and declare outright opposition to Reform.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
There are many things wrong with the US legal system.
But their definitions of libel and the resulting ability/inability to sue are vastly better than this country.
It is very noticeable that libel law in this country is often used by the rich and guilty to try to hide their behaviour.
It simply doesn't work like that in the US.
This is not surprising when you look at the history of libel in the UK - what it was invented for. And how, in the US, they shaped the laws at the founding, in response to that.
But maybe libel laws also help constrain the excesses of political lying. The sheer scale of mendacity from Trump and the Republicans might have been less sustainable with UK libel laws allowing people to defend themselves.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
People have accidents all the time! What makes you think it was sabotage?
I don’t think it was sabotage, launch pads being damaged happens all the time in spaceflight, it’s a pretty unforgiving environment underneath a rocket launch!
It’s just that this particular failure has collapsed the entire service structure under the pad, and it’s debatable whether it’s even possible to fix it. It weighs hundreds of tonnes and was six decades old, but also the only one operational. Other similar structures exist close by at Baikanur, but they’re unlikely to be in good condition.
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
There are many things wrong with the US legal system.
But their definitions of libel and the resulting ability/inability to sue are vastly better than this country.
It is very noticeable that libel law in this country is often used by the rich and guilty to try to hide their behaviour.
It simply doesn't work like that in the US.
This is not surprising when you look at the history of libel in the UK - what it was invented for. And how, in the US, they shaped the laws at the founding, in response to that.
But maybe libel laws also help constrain the excesses of political lying. The sheer scale of mendacity from Trump and the Republicans might have been less sustainable with UK libel laws allowing people to defend themselves.
It’s keeping up with the bullshit.
Huge settlement have been awarded against MAGA types for this - see Dominion vs Fox News (Fucker Carlson), Alex Jones vs the Sandy Hook families
If the US had U.K. style libel laws, Donald Trump would have a branch of Carter Fuck in an office in the White House, weaponising libel against his opponents.
A moment to be controversial which I try not to be but it's Friday morning....
It's been enlightening to see the turn in sentiment on Badenoch among some on here in the past few weeks. Not so long ago, she was widely derided and the expectation was she would be ousted and replaced by Jenrick, Lam or Cleverly but of late she seems to be gaining some favour among the, let's call them, "anti-Left" majority.
To pick up on a point made up thread, it's no good the "right" parties polling 50% if that's spread evenly between Reform and the Conservatives - one has to dominate and just as an earlier incarnation of Reform wilted in the face of Boris Johnson so perhaps the "dream" is the current version will fall to Badenoch and the Conservatives will have a route back to a majority.
Reform polling 35% and the Conservatives 15% ends poorly for the latter but turn the numbers round and the Conservatives look like players again and any and every attempt to weaken Farage by implication, innuendo or just the plain truth works to Badenoch's advantage as she offers a home for disaffected Reform supporters (well, some of them, I'd argue with Polanski and the Greens the other refuge).
Local council by-elections have shown there remain islands of Conservative strength but that's all they are and, even with the Savanta London poll showing the party back it was at the last GE, there's a possibility the decline of Labour may allow the Tories to win back enough seats and council to produce a decent result (for all that might be offset by losses to Reform elsewhere) and avert any challenge to Badenoch's leadership.
Given we are probably three and a half years from an election, a lot can and will happen. As she gains experience as LOTO, it will shape how she will be as Prime Minister. The one thing you have to do is offer hope and a positive vision for the country not just settle old scores and demonising groups you don't like. At the moment, Badenoch is, for me, doing too little of the former and too much of the latter - compare with Reform's two page "letter" yesterday which read more positive and it was nice to see the old phrase "alarm clock Britain" re-hashed (a nod to Nick Clegg with whom Farage had more than one run-in).
Yes. There are a couple of bits of significant variable geometry in all this.
In GE 2024 the Tories + Reform got only 39% of the poll between them. Currently Tory + Reform is getting about about 44-50% (with marked variation between pollsters, and no way of telling which trend is to be preferred).
The split in the vote between Tory and Reform can lead, with the same totals to:
Tory victory Reform victory Tory needing Reform as well Reform needing Tory as well Defeat for both. (Let's ignore a winning tie for now - but something close is possible).
Dependent of course on both the split between them, and also the split between the non T and R parties. This is too many variables.
A current further variable is the impossible choice the Tories must make, each of which is wrong but even by doing nothing a choice is made. Are they willing or unwilling to support a Reform government, or do they decide not to say?
No-one is doing hope at the moment. The Reform constituency is mostly not a hope based one but one based on winners and losers. Kemi's best chance of being distinctive from the centre left and Reform is to major on clarity of purpose and plan and policy, and honesty about public finances, and explaining the direction of travel to sunlit uplands. I also think she should in time be bold, and declare outright opposition to Reform.
They shouldn't use the phrase 'sunlit uplands' it reminds people of the unfulfilled promises made over Brexit.
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The headline contradicts the more nuanced article. The sober reality is that there's a gap on the left which Your Party may or may not fill. Labour has quite deliberately moved to the centre (arguably centre-right), the LibDems still can't decide on a firm direction, and the Greens have opted to go left but are mainly known as an environmental movement. There is considerable support for a left-wing party, ideally with a working relationship with the Greens, and Your Party can potentially harvest that if they manage to avoid further splits, have a reasonable conference and build a lasting leadership. Corbyn's speech on Wednesday included the useful insight that British politics traditionally mloves in a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" policies, disguised by cod drama of five-yearly showdowns, and anything seriously left-wing runs into credibility issues magnified by the very limited press. One difficulty that they have is the way media works in Britain - the concept of a party with anonymous collective leadership is completely alien to British media tradition, so they fall back on occasionally giving Zarah an airing as the youngest recognisable semi-leader - contrast with the success of Reform, who seem willing to have Farage make up policy and reverse it at will.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
The most striking thing in the USA is how nearly all states have flipped over the decades, with the Southern heartlands flipping Republican and the Republicans losing New England, California etc. In 1948 the Dems won nearly the entire of the Midwest and West, including Texas.
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
Yes, see also the 1976 presidential election. Then Ford won California, Washington state, Oregon, New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois and Virginia. Carter won Texas, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the Deep South, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin etc. Indeed Ford won most of the states Harris won in 2024 and Carter won most of the states Trump won https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_presidential_election
One way for Reeves to keep pensioners out of tax would be to increase the basic and higher personal allowances by £500, but reduce the amount of untaxable interest a person could have at the basic rate to £500 and at the higher rate to £0.
That works for one year - what do you do the following year ?
Adjusting people's tax code because they received over £1k in interest seems reasonable, adjusting it because they received £5 in interest would aggravate.
Alternatively tax could be deducted from interest at source, which would be a politically 'brave' thing to do.
I thought it was deducted at source at basic rate, until quite recently? There was a long period when I didn't have any interest-earning accounts outside an ISA so didn't have to worry about it, and I think the rules changed in between to save HMRC having to piddle about with lots of small adjustments for 40% tax payers.
Wasn't that simple.
As I recall, the change from deduction at source by basic rate was by the Tories, presumably to pander to their OAP client vote. But this was at the cost of making life more complex for everyone on the 20% rate and bringing in a lot of those people into the tax return system if they hadn't already got any other reason for doing a tax return such as claiming professional expenses: Mrs C had to start doing tax returns, I remember. Hitherto her salary and bank interest were deducted at source at 20% - result, no need to do tax return.
Didn't make any difference to anyone on higher rate who had to sort the tax out one way or another but at least a fair chunk of the tax on interest had been paid as if PAYE, so the change would make a bigger shock at the end of the year.
Hitherto, someone who was on the not-enough-income-for-tax level - typically an OAP on state pension plus small occupational, especially many married women who had had a short straw during working life - had to fill in a simple form to reclaim the tax paid on their interest by the bank or BS on their behalf; It wasn't necessary to do a whole tax return if matters were otherwise in order. (I had to help an elderly neighbour with this.) Or you could notify the bank or BS direct to tell them to stop it.
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
The most striking thing in the USA is how nearly all states have flipped over the decades, with the Southern heartlands flipping Republican and the Republicans losing New England, California etc. In 1948 the Dems won nearly the entire of the Midwest and West, including Texas.
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
Is that because the parties have flipped? Lincoln was a Republican, George Wallace was a Democrat. In the early sixties southern Democrats were right wing and Nelson Rockefeller seemed reasonably reasonable. Eisenhower nowadays seems like a centrist Democrat.
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The headline contradicts the more nuanced article. The sober reality is that there's a gap on the left which Your Party may or may not fill. Labour has quite deliberately moved to the centre (arguably centre-right), the LibDems still can't decide on a firm direction, and the Greens have opted to go left but are mainly known as an environmental movement. There is considerable support for a left-wing party, ideally with a working relationship with the Greens, and Your Party can potentially harvest that if they manage to avoid further splits, have a reasonable conference and build a lasting leadership. Corbyn's speech on Wednesday included the useful insight that British politics traditionally mloves in a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" policies, disguised by cod drama of five-yearly showdowns, and anything seriously left-wing runs into credibility issues magnified by the very limited press. One difficulty that they have is the way media works in Britain - the concept of a party with anonymous collective leadership is completely alien to British media tradition, so they fall back on occasionally giving Zarah an airing as the youngest recognisable semi-leader - contrast with the success of Reform, who seem willing to have Farage make up policy and reverse it at will.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
As a voter, the idea of a party with "anonymous collective leadership" scares me shitless. I have never understood why political parties in a democracy have to be run according to the Fuehrerprinzip, but I want to know who the leaders are. At the moment we have no idea who is pulling the strings in Your Party, and to what end.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
People have accidents all the time! What makes you think it was sabotage?
I don’t think it was sabotage, launch pads being damaged happens all the time in spaceflight, it’s a pretty unforgiving environment underneath a rocket launch!
It’s just that this particular failure has collapsed the entire service structure under the pad, and it’s debatable whether it’s even possible to fix it. It weighs hundreds of tonnes and was six decades old, but also the only one operational. Other similar structures exist close by at Baikanur, but they’re unlikely to be in good condition.
I saw on twitter that the other recently active launch area is indefinitely out of commission as it was built with Ukrainian electronics
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
The most striking thing in the USA is how nearly all states have flipped over the decades, with the Southern heartlands flipping Republican and the Republicans losing New England, California etc. In 1948 the Dems won nearly the entire of the Midwest and West, including Texas.
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
Is that because the parties have flipped? Lincoln was a Republican, George Wallace was a Democrat. In the early sixties southern Democrats were right wing and Nelson Rockefeller seemed reasonably reasonable. Eisenhower nowadays seems like a centrist Democrat.
The dividing lines in politics have changed. They may change again in the coming years (certainly here).
I've just listened to the audiobook "The Falll of Boris Johnson" by Sebastian Payne. It simply does what it says on the cover. No great revelations but what it describes is a Party and membership in disarray. It's easy to forget when you watch Starmer and Reeves struggle quite how disfunctional their predecessors were.
Truss was adored. The right wing press thought she was the Messiah. The Mail doted on her. Crazies like Dorries and Rees Mogg are everywhere. Anyone wishing for a Tory renaissance anytime soon ought to read it.
Good morning
The lesson labour should learn is the Tories got rid of Truss in just 6 weeks not an 18 month slow burn of economic tragedy and incompetence delivered by Starmer and Reeves
I note the markets are expressing concern that because of the back loading of the tax increases towards the next GE the government may attempt to defer the pain until the next parliament
Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Deferring all the fiscal pain to the next parliament was the Sunak/Hunt strategy, so perfectly fair game to return the favour.
The risk is that Labour might win that election, unlikely as that seems. More likely Reform collapses in true "Your Party" style.
The really weird thing (well, one of them,) is that Reeves has not postponed the tax raising to the next Parliament but she has end loaded the tax into the latter part of this Parliament. The traditional approach was to squeeze the pips in the early years and then hand out some sweeties as the election approaches. Reeves is doing the reverse which has the attraction of novelty but is poor politics.
There are 3 possibles.
1) planning an early election in 2028 2) she is gambling that growth will be above the predictions so will not have to implement the changes, or can do a cut in the IT rate. 3) she doesnt expect to be CoE by then, going with Starmer.
The really dangerous thing is that everything hinges on 5 years of economic calm. The OBR doesn't seem to take into account the possibility of a stock market crash for example, despite markets looking very peaky, and pretty much everyone expecting the AI bubble to pop.
I completely agree. We are teetering along the edge of a precipice and the Chancellor's response, rather than battening down the hatches, was to increase borrowing for the next 3 years. Utterly reckless. She might get away with it if, for example, peace broke out in Ukraine and energy prices fall but we have increased our vulnerability in uncertain times with that lunatic in the White House and Vance waiting to replace him and Putin in charge of a potentially failed state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.
5 years of economic calm would be very helpful. It's not at all likely.
Can we invite her here? This budget is the ultimate Political betting
Strange to think that in 1988 West Virginia voted for Dukakis and California for George HW Bush. Bill Clinton twice won West Virginia too. Reflects how the Republicans have become a more white working class party since and the Democrats more upper middle class
The most striking thing in the USA is how nearly all states have flipped over the decades, with the Southern heartlands flipping Republican and the Republicans losing New England, California etc. In 1948 the Dems won nearly the entire of the Midwest and West, including Texas.
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
Yes, see also the 1976 presidential election. Then Ford won California, Washington state, Oregon, New Jersey, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois and Virginia. Carter won Texas, Georgia, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the Deep South, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Wisconsin etc. Indeed Ford won most of the states Harris won in 2024 and Carter won most of the states Trump won https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_presidential_election
What’s that about IIhan Omar marrying her brother?!
Its a longstanding slur by the alt-right. Omar's husband is really her brother brought to the USA as a fake marriage.
I figured out that from googling, but it’s just so implausible
MAGA Republicans are not very well connected to reality.
True, although most of them usually have some kind of tenuous link to reality that is then stretched, twisted and extrapolated. This doesn’t seem to have any basis whatsoever
Michelle Obama and Brigitte Marcon are actually men, would be another example of how MAGA conspiracy theories can have zero relationship with reality.
The nasty Macron rumour wasn’t really a MAGA conspiracy theory (not that I want to defend them). It was a French hit job which was picked up by conspiracy loons and podcasters who just want conspiracies and toxic stories to discuss for hits. It wasn’t on MAGA’s radar as such as their focus is the US and domestic opposition however there is a big crossover between MAGA and the aforementioned toxic podcasters.
Candace Owens is getting her arse sued for hundreds of millions in the US by Brigette Macron.
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
There are many things wrong with the US legal system.
But their definitions of libel and the resulting ability/inability to sue are vastly better than this country.
It is very noticeable that libel law in this country is often used by the rich and guilty to try to hide their behaviour.
It simply doesn't work like that in the US.
This is not surprising when you look at the history of libel in the UK - what it was invented for. And how, in the US, they shaped the laws at the founding, in response to that.
But maybe libel laws also help constrain the excesses of political lying. The sheer scale of mendacity from Trump and the Republicans might have been less sustainable with UK libel laws allowing people to defend themselves.
It’s keeping up with the bullshit.
Huge settlement have been awarded against MAGA types for this - see Dominion vs Fox News (Fucker Carlson), Alex Jones vs the Sandy Hook families
If the US had U.K. style libel laws, Donald Trump would have a branch of Carter Fuck in an office in the White House, weaponising libel against his opponents.
There is plenty of mendacity that has gone unpunished, and with many of the cases that have been won in court, the defendants are avoiding paying. Trump still ows E Jean Carroll millions. Alex Jones is still operating.
Trump has also used libel cases as a weapon against his opponents, but he's never won a case in court. I don't think he's never won a case because US law has a very high threshold for libel. I think he's never won a case because he's a bloviating liar.
A moment to be controversial which I try not to be but it's Friday morning....
It's been enlightening to see the turn in sentiment on Badenoch among some on here in the past few weeks. Not so long ago, she was widely derided and the expectation was she would be ousted and replaced by Jenrick, Lam or Cleverly but of late she seems to be gaining some favour among the, let's call them, "anti-Left" majority.
To pick up on a point made up thread, it's no good the "right" parties polling 50% if that's spread evenly between Reform and the Conservatives - one has to dominate and just as an earlier incarnation of Reform wilted in the face of Boris Johnson so perhaps the "dream" is the current version will fall to Badenoch and the Conservatives will have a route back to a majority.
Reform polling 35% and the Conservatives 15% ends poorly for the latter but turn the numbers round and the Conservatives look like players again and any and every attempt to weaken Farage by implication, innuendo or just the plain truth works to Badenoch's advantage as she offers a home for disaffected Reform supporters (well, some of them, I'd argue with Polanski and the Greens the other refuge).
Local council by-elections have shown there remain islands of Conservative strength but that's all they are and, even with the Savanta London poll showing the party back it was at the last GE, there's a possibility the decline of Labour may allow the Tories to win back enough seats and council to produce a decent result (for all that might be offset by losses to Reform elsewhere) and avert any challenge to Badenoch's leadership.
Given we are probably three and a half years from an election, a lot can and will happen. As she gains experience as LOTO, it will shape how she will be as Prime Minister. The one thing you have to do is offer hope and a positive vision for the country not just settle old scores and demonising groups you don't like. At the moment, Badenoch is, for me, doing too little of the former and too much of the latter - compare with Reform's two page "letter" yesterday which read more positive and it was nice to see the old phrase "alarm clock Britain" re-hashed (a nod to Nick Clegg with whom Farage had more than one run-in).
Yes. There are a couple of bits of significant variable geometry in all this.
In GE 2024 the Tories + Reform got only 39% of the poll between them. Currently Tory + Reform is getting about about 44-50% (with marked variation between pollsters, and no way of telling which trend is to be preferred).
The split in the vote between Tory and Reform can lead, with the same totals to:
Tory victory Reform victory Tory needing Reform as well Reform needing Tory as well Defeat for both. (Let's ignore a winning tie for now - but something close is possible).
Dependent of course on both the split between them, and also the split between the non T and R parties. This is too many variables.
A current further variable is the impossible choice the Tories must make, each of which is wrong but even by doing nothing a choice is made. Are they willing or unwilling to support a Reform government, or do they decide not to say?
No-one is doing hope at the moment. The Reform constituency is mostly not a hope based one but one based on winners and losers. Kemi's best chance of being distinctive from the centre left and Reform is to major on clarity of purpose and plan and policy, and honesty about public finances, and explaining the direction of travel to sunlit uplands. I also think she should in time be bold, and declare outright opposition to Reform.
They shouldn't use the phrase 'sunlit uplands' it reminds people of the unfulfilled promises made over Brexit.
They need to come up with a few positive things that we can do with Brexit. None of the original proponents had a clue what they wanted to do with it, but the Tories have some breathing space to identify and sell some real Brexit benefits. That will also help differentiate them from Reform, who will just continue to whinge.
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The headline contradicts the more nuanced article. The sober reality is that there's a gap on the left which Your Party may or may not fill. Labour has quite deliberately moved to the centre (arguably centre-right), the LibDems still can't decide on a firm direction, and the Greens have opted to go left but are mainly known as an environmental movement. There is considerable support for a left-wing party, ideally with a working relationship with the Greens, and Your Party can potentially harvest that if they manage to avoid further splits, have a reasonable conference and build a lasting leadership. Corbyn's speech on Wednesday included the useful insight that British politics traditionally mloves in a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" policies, disguised by cod drama of five-yearly showdowns, and anything seriously left-wing runs into credibility issues magnified by the very limited press. One difficulty that they have is the way media works in Britain - the concept of a party with anonymous collective leadership is completely alien to British media tradition, so they fall back on occasionally giving Zarah an airing as the youngest recognisable semi-leader - contrast with the success of Reform, who seem willing to have Farage make up policy and reverse it at will.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
For me the idea of the left and a shift leftwards (leaving aside environmentalism and climate for a moment) raises interesting alternatives about what it is, how it goes about things, and what it is for.
My start point is this: from 1945 to today the dominant and only forms of government have been versions of incrementally improving (and sometimes standing still and sometimes going a little backwards) social democracy. This is both a narrow window, but also built into 80 years (arguably much longer) of the political order in the UK.
If the Corbyn style left exists as a nice club or a secular non conformist society to be in and argue about, plus some single issue campaigning, that's fine. But if it plans to govern it has to be clear where it stands in relation to who owns what, and the UK and global capitalist order, and our sets of historic alliances.
The left, from a starting point of 8 year olds hauling trucks down mines in 1840, makes perfect sense. The left, after 80 years of quite successful social democracy, less so unless it can explain itself in relation to theory, policy and actual implementation comprehensible to a reader of the Daily Mirror or Mail. Is it able to do so?
A dire YouGov poll on the budget lays out the scale of the task for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves
48% see it as unfair vs 21% who see it as fair
That’s the second worst score for a budget recorded by YouGov. Only the Truss mini-budget fared worse
50% say it will leave their family worse off. Only 3% say they’ll be better off
a clear majority of people oppose the tax rise on workers and lifting the two child benefit cap - a brutal indictment of the decisions taken on Wednesday
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad 2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad 3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years 2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt. 3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
Yeah that launch pad is a real mess, looks to be a total writeoff.
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
People have accidents all the time! What makes you think it was sabotage?
I don’t think it was sabotage, launch pads being damaged happens all the time in spaceflight, it’s a pretty unforgiving environment underneath a rocket launch!
It’s just that this particular failure has collapsed the entire service structure under the pad, and it’s debatable whether it’s even possible to fix it. It weighs hundreds of tonnes and was six decades old, but also the only one operational. Other similar structures exist close by at Baikanur, but they’re unlikely to be in good condition.
I saw on twitter that the other recently active launch area is indefinitely out of commission as it was built with Ukrainian electronics
Haha that would be funny, perhaps the Russians should have thought about things like this before they went to war with Ukraine? There’s a lot of the old Soviet military-industrial complex in Ukraine, and a lot of unserviceable equipment the Russians have is because of a need to get Ukranian parts.
One I remember well is gyroscopes for MiGs and Sukhois, they’re a very weird and quirky 1960s analogue technology that was still used up until the ‘90s, and are impossible for the Russians to service. There’s a number of Russian military planes grounded because of unserviceable gyroscopes, and they’re trying to get hold of them from all over the world they sold the planes to in period. I suspect the Chinese have some in stock they don’t want to sell!
'Donald Trump has said he will "permanently pause migration" to the US from all "third world countries".
The US president wrote in a Truth Social post that the decision would "allow the US system to fully recover" from immigration policies that had eroded the "gains and living conditions" of many Americans. He did not provide details of his plan or name which countries might be affected.' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxweyy157go
Out this morning - the Guardian on the latest YP chaos:
‘We had six MPs and four factions’: inside Your Party’s toxic power struggles
At an early meeting to set the path for what would become Your Party, participants quickly agreed on one thing: given the cliches about leftwingers forever falling out, at all costs they must avoid a descent into factionalism.
Six months on and the Liverpool venue hosting this weekend’s inaugural Your Party conference has been warned to expect potential disruption, including stage invasions by disgruntled members representing particular wings. Extra security guards have been hired.
Even by the standards of fringe parties (see also, all those Re- parties on the right), Your Party is shaping up to be a corker of a fiasco. Any theories as to why it's so bad?
(Mine, apart from hating SKS not being a solid foundation for any party, is that tech makes it too easy to arrange the surface features of a movement when there's nothing underneath.)
I suspect it is some combination of divisions over small policy differences that often fixate the far left, the fundamental contradiction between a socially progressive party and a muslim party (note the reference in the article to trans issues already being a flashpoint), and the characters of Corbyn and Sultana being diametrically opposite personalities in almost every respect?
As a brand new outfit, there is 'everything to fight for' in terms of both its platform and who gets what job and hence where the organisational power lies. And it isn't being formed because of a strong, single imperative (for example the SDP originated from counter-reaction to Labour's opposition to Europe), so they don't have much to unite around other than Gaza.
The headline contradicts the more nuanced article. The sober reality is that there's a gap on the left which Your Party may or may not fill. Labour has quite deliberately moved to the centre (arguably centre-right), the LibDems still can't decide on a firm direction, and the Greens have opted to go left but are mainly known as an environmental movement. There is considerable support for a left-wing party, ideally with a working relationship with the Greens, and Your Party can potentially harvest that if they manage to avoid further splits, have a reasonable conference and build a lasting leadership. Corbyn's speech on Wednesday included the useful insight that British politics traditionally mloves in a narrow spectrum of "acceptable" policies, disguised by cod drama of five-yearly showdowns, and anything seriously left-wing runs into credibility issues magnified by the very limited press. One difficulty that they have is the way media works in Britain - the concept of a party with anonymous collective leadership is completely alien to British media tradition, so they fall back on occasionally giving Zarah an airing as the youngest recognisable semi-leader - contrast with the success of Reform, who seem willing to have Farage make up policy and reverse it at will.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
For me the idea of the left and a shift leftwards (leaving aside environmentalism and climate for a moment) raises interesting alternatives about what it is, how it goes about things, and what it is for.
My start point is this: from 1945 to today the dominant and only forms of government have been versions of incrementally improving (and sometimes standing still and sometimes going a little backwards) social democracy. This is both a narrow window, but also built into 80 years (arguably much longer) of the political order in the UK.
If the Corbyn style left exists as a nice club or a secular non conformist society to be in and argue about, plus some single issue campaigning, that's fine. But if it plans to govern it has to be clear where it stands in relation to who owns what, and the UK and global capitalist order, and our sets of historic alliances.
The left, from a starting point of 8 year olds hauling trucks down mines in 1840, makes perfect sense. The left, after 80 years of quite successful social democracy, less so unless it can explain itself in relation to theory, policy and actual implementation comprehensible to a reader of the Daily Mirror or Mail. Is it able to do so?
The recent Origin Story podcast episodes on the history of the Labour Party and of socialism more generally are good on this.
Comments
1) planning an early election in 2028
2) she is gambling that growth will be above the predictions so will not have to implement the changes, or can do a cut in the IT rate.
3) she doesnt expect to be CoE by then, going with Starmer.
The really dangerous thing is that everything hinges on 5 years of economic calm. The OBR doesn't seem to take into account the possibility of a stock market crash for example, despite markets looking very peaky, and pretty much everyone expecting the AI bubble to pop.
There’s one school of thought that says it could continue for another decade, because there’s so much money around in the tech sector, meanwhile the cost of computer memory has tripled since early summer as the demand is off the charts.
I’m not shorting NVidia just yet.
Whoever is GOP nominee will have an almost cult-like following because so many Americans hate the Democrats/liberals/woke that they will set aside whatever views they have to unquestioningly vote for anyone with an (R) next to their name.
Of course the inverse is also true.
For that matter so did Callaghan and Healey.
5 years of economic calm would be very helpful. It's not at all likely.
UK is going the same way, SYL declared bankruptcy and hasn't paid damages or costs to the teenager he repeatedly libelled.
A question for the CELs, would SYL have paid his own legal fees? If not, why would anyone act for him in future and is this not a "collegiate issue" if the losing legal team get paid but the other side's costs award is not paid?
*even when a court finds against them, they wriggle out e.g Giuliani has kept everything, so clearly settled for a tiny percentage of the court award.
The damage to the the Soyuz pad at Baikonur is confirmed.
This is the only pad the Russians currently have to launch to ISS. This means crew rotations blocked, but more importantly (perhaps) Progress cargo craft can't be sent to the station. The ISS can only be refuelled by Progress. Which means that after a while ISS will run out of fuel for attitude control related matters (It's a bit complicated with gyroscopes and de saturation, but that's the size of it)
To fix the pad, they would need to -
1) build a new service structure under the pad
2) Take a service structure from a mothballed pad
3) Convert/reactivate another pad - would ned to include work for Progress and the Suyuz spacecraft.
1) Will take a long, long time. SpaceX they are not. Years
2) Not been done before. It's a huge piece of equipment - might well need to be cut into sections, moved, rebuilt.
3) Again, will take a long, long time. Experience with Russian space tech and other Russian stuff is that the Russian approach to "moth balling" is "leave it to rust".
So no launches to the space station for months. Possibly years.
Which means a growing problem for the ISS - and a humiliation for Putin, incoming.
A moment to be controversial which I try not to be but it's Friday morning....
It's been enlightening to see the turn in sentiment on Badenoch among some on here in the past few weeks. Not so long ago, she was widely derided and the expectation was she would be ousted and replaced by Jenrick, Lam or Cleverly but of late she seems to be gaining some favour among the, let's call them, "anti-Left" majority.
To pick up on a point made up thread, it's no good the "right" parties polling 50% if that's spread evenly between Reform and the Conservatives - one has to dominate and just as an earlier incarnation of Reform wilted in the face of Boris Johnson so perhaps the "dream" is the current version will fall to Badenoch and the Conservatives will have a route back to a majority.
Reform polling 35% and the Conservatives 15% ends poorly for the latter but turn the numbers round and the Conservatives look like players again and any and every attempt to weaken Farage by implication, innuendo or just the plain truth works to Badenoch's advantage as she offers a home for disaffected Reform supporters (well, some of them, I'd argue with Polanski and the Greens the other refuge).
Local council by-elections have shown there remain islands of Conservative strength but that's all they are and, even with the Savanta London poll showing the party back it was at the last GE, there's a possibility the decline of Labour may allow the Tories to win back enough seats and council to produce a decent result (for all that might be offset by losses to Reform elsewhere) and avert any challenge to Badenoch's leadership.
Given we are probably three and a half years from an election, a lot can and will happen. As she gains experience as LOTO, it will shape how she will be as Prime Minister. The one thing you have to do is offer hope and a positive vision for the country not just settle old scores and demonising groups you don't like. At the moment, Badenoch is, for me, doing too little of the former and too much of the latter - compare with Reform's two page "letter" yesterday which read more positive and it was nice to see the old phrase "alarm clock Britain" re-hashed (a nod to Nick Clegg with whom Farage had more than one run-in).
The standard of proof for defamation in the US is very high, requiring “Actual Malice”, but there’s a pretty good chance she ends up losing and bankrupt.
She’s now suggesting, with no evidence, that the Macrons are trying to kill her.
Analysis of the lawsuit filings. https://x.com/gbnt1952/status/1993120233809215701
*Remember, that Labour had worked very hard for 15 years (at that point) to have a reputation as lunatic spenders.
Parents threatened and blamed by authorities as 1,000 adopted children returned to care
Verity and Ian are just two of 50 parents the BBC has spoken to during a six-month investigation into why adoptive families are being broken apart and their children returned to care.
It has uncovered a hidden world where parents are subjected to lies and blame by authorities across the UK, as they struggle with the needs of traumatised children who have often suffered abuse and neglect before they were removed from their birth families.
Parents speak of being threatened, harassed and pushed into mental health crisis, while one adopted teenager who returned to care says that with more support his family might still be together now.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kdv1x83gko
The US is highly polarised, but those poles shift over time.
Kemi has just shown that, when on form, she can be a brilliant attack dog. She is good at arguing for and articulating ‘values’, but she’s less good at being clear and precise about what that looks like in practice.
“Reforming welfare” and “shrinking the state” is exactly right, but you need to have a serious conversation about how you build an economy and a growth agenda that works for people around that. And that includes serious Tory blind spots like property, NIMBYism, and pensions - things that I’m still far from convinced the Tories have the appetite to seriously look at (the stamp duty thing is a start to generate the conversation re downsizing; but needs more thought and it’s the easiest of easy wins to sell to the faithful).
The Tories are slowly moving into a space that I can get on board with; but much more work is needed, and Badenoch needs to really seize this moment and mature as a politician into someone who looks, talks and thinks like a serious reforming leader. What I will say, is that I think they’d be stupid to remove her as leader right now.
Sadly these are often very disturbed and damaged children and love does not conquer all.
If you want growth, you need to allow companies out of the struggling-to-survive mode. Especially smaller companies.
What we have at the moment is that it is easy to setup a one-man-band company. But when you grow to a dozen employees (or so) a whole raft of stuff goes crashing down on you.
Looks like either the process of retraction failed and interlocks failed, or launch vibration broke the locks on the rails and the service structure slid back. It ultimately fell of the end of the rail into the flame trench...
If that was sabotage, it is extremely complex stuff.
More likely to be a combination of age, and corruption related poor maintenance.
The Russian space program has long been a mess and is in slow decay.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRimzkqiqzo/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
My local barbers is a prime example, usual busy, turn up and wait operation with over 10 barbers.
COVID appointment only, post-COVID still appointments, turn up and be turned away for a couple of hours, now you're lucky if there are 2 barbers on and I've got my own clippers.
Adjusting people's tax code because they received over £1k in interest seems reasonable, adjusting it because they received £5 in interest would aggravate.
Alternatively tax could be deducted from interest at source, which would be a politically 'brave' thing to do.
"The Full Monty southern remake gets mixed reviews"
Mounting costs on employers, again, at a time when major sectors of the population have a significant and rising unemployment problem.
Where is the benefit, precisely, to the real world economy coming from?
Coins will be a thing of the past within a decade. Notes will take much longer to remove though, I reckon.
Have I read that before or thought of it myself ?
But their definitions of libel and the resulting ability/inability to sue are vastly better than this country.
It is very noticeable that libel law in this country is often used by the rich and guilty to try to hide their behaviour.
It simply doesn't work like that in the US.
This is not surprising when you look at the history of libel in the UK - what it was invented for. And how, in the US, they shaped the laws at the founding, in response to that.
The problem, as I said on here many times, was what Brown did was the equivalent of force feeding a starving man a banquet. So much money was thrown at the public sector, especially the NHS, and at infrastructures which couldn't properly use it and absorb it a lot was wasted. A more controlled drip-feed of money over a number of years would have been so much better and enabled the organisations to build up the structures which would have allowed the funds to be better used.
The irony was both the Conservatives at the time and the LDs also engaged in this dutch auction of seeing how much they could throw at the public sector. After the events of September 2001, the whole defence and security establishment came with their begging bowl wanting money to combat Islamic terrorism and to fund the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
All this spending was fine while the economy was growing and the tax receipts were coming in but that all stopped in 2008 and that's when our problems really started and I think so much of what has happened since dates from that.
The obvious answer is to link the TFA to the State Pension, but they would have to stop the bullshit about not increasing rates. And in any case governments seem to like to help accountants out by making the tax system as complicated as possible
They’re going to have to try and re-activate one of the old ones, and in the meantime there’s no Russian transport to the ISS, only SpaceX Dragon and Crew Dragon modules.
The big one is the refuelling, for which they’re going to have to either improvise a US solution or wait for the pad to be rebuilt. You’d put good money on SpaceX being able to improvise something if they could get their hands on a Russian docking assembly and refuelling rig.
Fun fact, the service module which collapsed under the launch pad was made in, you guessed it, Ukraine.
OTOH funding was firmed up two (?) decades ago, and it became possible to treat "adoptive parent" as a side gig. When I was house-hunting around 2012 I noted at least one couple in a 6 bed house (4 bed detached with converted loft) with couple of adopted children in their big family. A viable model for some.
File on4 Programme. Here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002n0hg
* I have not checked but I would not be surprised if there is a Christian Concern legal action back in the day somewhere. It would be their beat.
Anyway, why not book. I never understood the attraction of "while you wait" I don't like waiting. Although my barber (who is a lady) says men won't book, they like to appear spontaneous even if in practice they always go out to do something at the same time and day
Conservative Party members of
net satisfaction with Shadow
Cabinet ministers, Stride
overtaking Kemi in the process
and now just 2% behind first
placed Jenrick with Kemi third
"Shadow Cabinet League Table: Badenoch bumped into third place | Conservative Home" https://conservativehome.com/2025/11/25/shadow-cabinet-league-table-badenoch-bumped-into-third-place/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_United_States_presidential_election
Since then it’s been much more polarised, with less than a dozen swing States in recent years.
https://nicktimothy.com/nick-timothy-mp-exposes-doubts-about-police-intelligence/
They're as bad as David Cameron:
"The most recent match Maccabi Tel Aviv played in the UK was against West Ham United in the UEFA Europa Conference League group stage on 9th November 2023"
Only problem is that West Ham played Olympiacos that night.
Speaking outside his chateau in France, former Brexit Party and UKIP MEP Coburn answered "no" when a BBC journalist asked him whether he had ever been paid to give a speech to promote pro-Russian campaigners.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn09x11yr7ro
The refuelling issue has the potential to kill the ISS, if a fix can't be done in time.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/JCO/Documents/FJC/Publications/Baby+P.pdf
The current process for undertaking, for example, a core assessment requires the compilation of large amounts of detailed information. For many, hard pressed, social workers it is a dauntingly time consuming task. Indeed it is estimated that social workers spend between 12% and 20% of their time working directly with children and families, the remainder being spend on administrative tasks.
In this case, though, they could have gone with “sham marriage to obtain a green card” - inaccurate (especially since I don’t believe her ex husband applied for a green card) but plausible. But the whole brother thing? Just weird.
Misinformation about several unrelated stories led to their being linked to the pet-eating hoax. Before the pet-eating claims gained virality, there were rumors in Springfield of Haitians eating waterfowl from city parks, which the city's deputy director of public safety and operations denied.[28] In July, a user posted a photo to Reddit of a man carrying a dead Canada goose on the street in Columbus, Ohio.[2][54] The goose was roadkill, there was no evidence that the man intended to eat it, and there was never any evidence the man was Haitian or an immigrant.[55] More than a month after the Reddit post, right-wing sites and influencers publicized the photo, claiming it shows a Haitian immigrant stealing geese in Springfield.[56] The Ohio Department of Natural Resources was inundated with phone calls from people who believed the misinformation, and it became associated with the larger pet-eating hoax.[56]
[...]
On August 26, Clark County law enforcement dispatchers received a call from someone who said they saw Haitians carrying geese near a Springfield bike trail, but police found no evidence. Clark County Commission president Melanie Flax Wilt characterized the episode as a "literal wild goose chase", and Clark County officials said no other calls regarding stolen animals had been received in the last 11 months.[61] The following day, a Springfield resident commented at a city commission meeting, without evidence, that immigrants were "in the park grabbing up ducks by their neck and cutting their head off ... and eating them".[62] The only confirmed report of someone illegally hunting geese in Springfield was a 64-year-old white man, who was arrested on September 10 and charged with illegally hunting Canada geese at a golf course with a shotgun; he later pled guilty to hunting without a permit.[63][64]
It's just people repeating stories.
Its a tax increase which would be very visible on every bank statement in a way changing a tax code isn't.
In GE 2024 the Tories + Reform got only 39% of the poll between them. Currently Tory + Reform is getting about about 44-50% (with marked variation between pollsters, and no way of telling which trend is to be preferred).
The split in the vote between Tory and Reform can lead, with the same totals to:
Tory victory
Reform victory
Tory needing Reform as well
Reform needing Tory as well
Defeat for both.
(Let's ignore a winning tie for now - but something close is possible).
Dependent of course on both the split between them, and also the split between the non T and R parties. This is too many variables.
A current further variable is the impossible choice the Tories must make, each of which is wrong but even by doing nothing a choice is made. Are they willing or unwilling to support a Reform government, or do they decide not to say?
No-one is doing hope at the moment. The Reform constituency is mostly not a hope based one but one based on winners and losers. Kemi's best chance of being distinctive from the centre left and Reform is to major on clarity of purpose and plan and policy, and honesty about public finances, and explaining the direction of travel to sunlit uplands. I also think she should in time be bold, and declare outright opposition to Reform.
It’s just that this particular failure has collapsed the entire service structure under the pad, and it’s debatable whether it’s even possible to fix it. It weighs hundreds of tonnes and was six decades old, but also the only one operational. Other similar structures exist close by at Baikanur, but they’re unlikely to be in good condition.
Huge settlement have been awarded against MAGA types for this - see Dominion vs Fox News (Fucker Carlson), Alex Jones vs the Sandy Hook families
If the US had U.K. style libel laws, Donald Trump would have a branch of Carter Fuck in an office in the White House, weaponising libel against his opponents.
People like me who think Labour has moved too far to the right but aren't very interested in ecology have a choice - do we try to help move Labour leftwards again, give Your Party a try, have a go with the Greens, or do nothing and hope that a way forward becomes obvious. The weekend may cast some light. I wouldn't rely on the media to give the answer, but Your Party badly needs an identifiable leadership.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_United_States_presidential_election
As I recall, the change from deduction at source by basic rate was by the Tories, presumably to pander to their OAP client vote. But this was at the cost of making life more complex for everyone on the 20% rate and bringing in a lot of those people into the tax return system if they hadn't already got any other reason for doing a tax return such as claiming professional expenses: Mrs C had to start doing tax returns, I remember. Hitherto her salary and bank interest were deducted at source at 20% - result, no need to do tax return.
Didn't make any difference to anyone on higher rate who had to sort the tax out one way or another but at least a fair chunk of the tax on interest had been paid as if PAYE, so the change would make a bigger shock at the end of the year.
Hitherto, someone who was on the not-enough-income-for-tax level - typically an OAP on state pension plus small occupational, especially many married women who had had a short straw during working life - had to fill in a simple form to reclaim the tax paid on their interest by the bank or BS on their behalf; It wasn't necessary to do a whole tax return if matters were otherwise in order. (I had to help an elderly neighbour with this.) Or you could notify the bank or BS direct to tell them to stop it.
"Speaking from outside his chateau..."
BBC News - Former Brexit Party MEP denies taking payment from pro-Russian campaign - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn09x11yr7ro?app-referrer=deep-link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1948_United_States_presidential_election
Trump has also used libel cases as a weapon against his opponents, but he's never won a case in court. I don't think he's never won a case because US law has a very high threshold for libel. I think he's never won a case because he's a bloviating liar.
Namibia says “hold my pint”.
https://www.euronews.com/2025/11/27/adolf-hitlers-namesake-triumphs-in-namibia-local-elections-fifth-time-in-a-row
My start point is this: from 1945 to today the dominant and only forms of government have been versions of incrementally improving (and sometimes standing still and sometimes going a little backwards) social democracy. This is both a narrow window, but also built into 80 years (arguably much longer) of the political order in the UK.
If the Corbyn style left exists as a nice club or a secular non conformist society to be in and argue about, plus some single issue campaigning, that's fine. But if it plans to govern it has to be clear where it stands in relation to who owns what, and the UK and global capitalist order, and our sets of historic alliances.
The left, from a starting point of 8 year olds hauling trucks down mines in 1840, makes perfect sense. The left, after 80 years of quite successful social democracy, less so unless it can explain itself in relation to theory, policy and actual implementation comprehensible to a reader of the Daily Mirror or Mail. Is it able to do so?
Alex Wickham
@alexwickham
A dire YouGov poll on the budget lays out the scale of the task for Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves
48% see it as unfair vs 21% who see it as fair
That’s the second worst score for a budget recorded by YouGov. Only the Truss mini-budget fared worse
50% say it will leave their family worse off. Only 3% say they’ll be better off
a clear majority of people oppose the tax rise on workers and lifting the two child benefit cap - a brutal indictment of the decisions taken on Wednesday
https://x.com/alexwickham/status/1994310728405209177
One I remember well is gyroscopes for MiGs and Sukhois, they’re a very weird and quirky 1960s analogue technology that was still used up until the ‘90s, and are impossible for the Russians to service. There’s a number of Russian military planes grounded because of unserviceable gyroscopes, and they’re trying to get hold of them from all over the world they sold the planes to in period. I suspect the Chinese have some in stock they don’t want to sell!
The US president wrote in a Truth Social post that the decision would "allow the US system to fully recover" from immigration policies that had eroded the "gains and living conditions" of many Americans. He did not provide details of his plan or name which countries might be affected.'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxweyy157go
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Nama_genocide
Fun, familiar names pop up....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Ernst_Göring