Our election model considers what might happen in each of Britain’s 632 constituencies if an election were held today. But rather than giving a single prediction, we fine-tuned our model to show a range of possible outcomes, based on historical trends and the latest opinion polls. As illustrated above, Britain’s electoral system is highly uncertain. We drew on data from the past 80 years of elections to quantify this uncertainty, and estimate how it might unfold in an imaginary election.
"...The starting point for our model is nationwide opinion polling..."
That's your input, but what's your output?
"...We measured the difference between thousands of historical nationwide polls and the subsequent election results to estimate the likely polling error if an election were held today. We found that polling errors often lean towards the last election result (perhaps because undecided voters return to the party they supported last time) and encoded that into our model..."
OK the best predictor of the next election is the last election, but I could have told them that. And they're modelling the polling error (between the poll and the vote?)
"...Next we considered how each region and nation might swing..."
Fair enough, you've added a regional component. I like that. This is presumably a swing in the vote?
"...We fit a regression model to consider the historical relationship between a party’s vote share in a constituency in one election and the next, given the nationwide and regional picture..."
OK, you've built a model that inputs one or more polls, the estimated polling error and regional swing, and converts that to...an election vote in a region?
"...Finally, we translate these regional results to each constituency [using MRP]...."
OK, got that,
So they have three models.
MODEL 0
Inputs: lots of historical and regional polls up to the last election
Method: Simulation
Output: polling error and regional swing for the next election
MODEL 1
Inputs: Today's poll(s)
Method: Linear regression?
Output: Today's election vote in the regions and nations taking polling error and regional swing into account
MODEL 2
Input: election vote in the regions and nations taking polling error and regional swing into account
Method: MRP
Output: Today's election result for each constituency and hence today's election result
In similar vein, Waitrose has just emailed to let me know that I am the top buyer of their rosemary and garlic crackers on the island. Someone in their data-crunching department has too much time on their hands…
If you get an email like that you're not likely to rush out and buy more. You'll be thinking, do I need to see someone about my rosemary and garlic cracker dependency?
They are clearly highly addictive. Maybe that's why their name includes the word crack.
It looks like Labour have found their soul and have made reducing child poverty a key mission in this parliament.
A government needs a narrative and needs the public to see a purpose . Regardless of whether people agree with lifting the two child benefit cap Labour no child should live in poverty .
No person should live in poverty but what is poverty in this day and age ? An arbitrary figure based on median income. Yeah, right 😂
I think you're arguing that children should stay in poverty if removing it requires action or money from government. Which is a valid, if somewhat brutal argument. The "arbitrary" bit is just to avoid having to accept the logical consequences of the argument.
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
For the second point to be valid, then we, not the US should be deciding how or whether to negotiate with the Russian invader. As far as the US wanting to limit European defence capacity is concerned, they can do one.
The section of the new Nat Sec document which deals with Europe sounds as though the first draft was written by Putin, before being rephrased in Trumpspeak.
Our election model considers what might happen in each of Britain’s 632 constituencies if an election were held today. But rather than giving a single prediction, we fine-tuned our model to show a range of possible outcomes, based on historical trends and the latest opinion polls. As illustrated above, Britain’s electoral system is highly uncertain. We drew on data from the past 80 years of elections to quantify this uncertainty, and estimate how it might unfold in an imaginary election.
Do they have any findings/conclusions? I can't read the article.
The modelling of the various scenarios is interesting, and ranges from Reform majorities to various balanced parliaments, and from Tory wipeout to modest recovery, and even one scenario where Labour recovers to largest party. But the TLDR findings are ‘f*** knows what’s going happen next time’ and ‘our electoral system is a lottery that is no longer fit for purpose’.
My wife won't drive on the motorway. I keep telling her that if she can drive in SE London she can drive on the motorway, to no avail.
I find my wife's unwillingness to use Adaptive Cruise control on a motorway annoying.
It makes driving really simple, sit in the inside lane until bored or you actually notice the car in front has slowed down to 50 then move a lane accelerate a bit and slot in again a few cars further up...
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
Joke mode on.
Only consider anyone a woman if they can multi-task - as no man can.
Only consider anyone a man if they can parallel park - an no woman can.
Joke mode off, and dives behind the sofa.
I'm so bad at parallel parking - I'm clearly a women...
There you go. Make sure you use the appropriate toilet.
I always use the Laddies' toilet
What happens to clients who go to ladbrokesexchange first though?
Our election model considers what might happen in each of Britain’s 632 constituencies if an election were held today. But rather than giving a single prediction, we fine-tuned our model to show a range of possible outcomes, based on historical trends and the latest opinion polls. As illustrated above, Britain’s electoral system is highly uncertain. We drew on data from the past 80 years of elections to quantify this uncertainty, and estimate how it might unfold in an imaginary election.
"...The starting point for our model is nationwide opinion polling..."
That's your input, but what's your output?
"...We measured the difference between thousands of historical nationwide polls and the subsequent election results to estimate the likely polling error if an election were held today. We found that polling errors often lean towards the last election result (perhaps because undecided voters return to the party they supported last time) and encoded that into our model..."
OK the best predictor of the next election is the last election, but I could have told them that. And they're modelling the polling error (between the poll and the vote?)
"...Next we considered how each region and nation might swing..."
Fair enough, you've added a regional component. I like that. This is presumably a swing in the vote?
"...We fit a regression model to consider the historical relationship between a party’s vote share in a constituency in one election and the next, given the nationwide and regional picture..."
OK, you've built a model that inputs one or more polls, the estimated polling error and regional swing, and converts that to...an election vote in a region?
"...Finally, we translate these regional results to each constituency [using MRP]...."
OK, got that,
So they have three models.
MODEL 0
Inputs: lots of historical and regional polls up to the last election
Method: Simulation
Output: polling error and regional swing for the next election
MODEL 1
Inputs: Today's poll(s)
Method: Linear regression?
Output: Today's election vote in the regions and nations taking polling error and regional swing into account
MODEL 2
Input: election vote in the regions and nations taking polling error and regional swing into account
Method: MRP
Output: Today's election result for each constituency and hence today's election result
In similar vein, Waitrose has just emailed to let me know that I am the top buyer of their rosemary and garlic crackers on the island. Someone in their data-crunching department has too much time on their hands…
If you get an email like that you're not likely to rush out and buy more. You'll be thinking, do I need to see someone about my rosemary and garlic cracker dependency?
They are clearly highly addictive. Maybe that's why their name includes the word crack.
They certainly are! When, some years back, Waitrose discontinued its rosemary crackers, I was forced to prowl the island in search of a replacement, and found myself leaving the dog in the car while I went into Morrisons to buy six boxes at a time of their rosemary crackers, often attracting very suspicious glances from the staff member watching their self-checkout terminals. Once I was even driven to go into the local co-op for their similar product.
Now, Waitrose is back in the game, and the only embarrassment I have to endure is their delivery person dropping multiple boxes onto my doorstep every Thursday morning, while the dog sniffs about to see if I’ve remembered to order his favourite treats.
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
Joke mode on.
Only consider anyone a woman if they can multi-task - as no man can.
Only consider anyone a man if they can parallel park - an no woman can.
Joke mode off, and dives behind the sofa.
I'm so bad at parallel parking - I'm clearly a women...
Get a BMW with Parking Assistant Plus. Our iX has it and it's brilliant. If it is physically possible to get the vehicle into the parking space within the holomonic constraints of the steering geometry, PAP will do it first time, every time.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
Joke mode on.
Only consider anyone a woman if they can multi-task - as no man can.
Only consider anyone a man if they can parallel park - an no woman can.
Joke mode off, and dives behind the sofa.
I'm so bad at parallel parking - I'm clearly a women...
Get a BMW with Parking Assistant Plus. Our iX has it and it's brilliant. If it is physically possible to get the vehicle into the parking space within the holomonic constraints of the steering geometry, PAP will do it first time, every time.
You don't use a 90deg power-slide approach to the kerb ?
(Though strictly speaking that would be non-holomonic.)
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
Joke mode on.
Only consider anyone a woman if they can multi-task - as no man can.
Only consider anyone a man if they can parallel park - an no woman can.
Joke mode off, and dives behind the sofa.
I'm so bad at parallel parking - I'm clearly a women...
Get a BMW with Parking Assistant Plus. Our iX has it and it's brilliant. If it is physically possible to get the vehicle into the parking space within the holomonic constraints of the steering geometry, PAP will do it first time, every time.
That sounds better than Toyota’s offering, which refuses to park in a space that I can easily manoeuvre into.
People who live in inner London can parallel park. Those who live elsewhere with their big front drives and garages, can’t.
How, in inner London, is parking your car parallel to another ever going to be acceptable behaviour?
Happens all the time at my bit, lazy fcukers double parking cos ‘they’re just popping into a shop for 5 minutes’, even with an actual parking space several cars away.
It looks like Labour have found their soul and have made reducing child poverty a key mission in this parliament.
A government needs a narrative and needs the public to see a purpose . Regardless of whether people agree with lifting the two child benefit cap Labour no child should live in poverty .
No person should live in poverty but what is poverty in this day and age ? An arbitrary figure based on median income. Yeah, right 😂
There are clearly some people who are living in poverty, so lets focus on that rather than getting too excited about metrics.
What is poverty though ?
We are not focussing on that we are getting excited by a metric.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
Joke mode on.
Only consider anyone a woman if they can multi-task - as no man can.
Only consider anyone a man if they can parallel park - an no woman can.
Joke mode off, and dives behind the sofa.
I'm so bad at parallel parking - I'm clearly a women...
There you go. Make sure you use the appropriate toilet.
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
Hence my proposal for restructuring public services in the U.K.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
My wife won't drive on the motorway. I keep telling her that if she can drive in SE London she can drive on the motorway, to no avail.
That’s a news article on the BBC then !
Motorway driving is a doddle.
Reminds me of the Jasper Carrott joke about calling his wife to warn her about a report of a car driving the wrong way on the motorway, to be told, "It's not just one. There are dozens of them."
My wife won't drive on the motorway. I keep telling her that if she can drive in SE London she can drive on the motorway, to no avail.
That’s a news article on the BBC then !
Motorway driving is a doddle.
Reminds me of the Jasper Carrott joke about calling his wife to warn her about a report of a car driving the wrong way on the motorway, to be told, "It's not just one. There are dozens of them."
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
True.
The sensible response has been from the Poles. Who are re-arming heavily, with an emphasis on building factories on their soil - buying off the peg, but asking for a factory to be built in Poland, in light of the large orders.
That and making sure that the export restrictions on the new weapons are next-to-non-existent. See the stuff they have bought from South Korea.
In a few years the Poles will have a huge military, based on weapons that work. And that they fully control.
Our election model considers what might happen in each of Britain’s 632 constituencies if an election were held today. But rather than giving a single prediction, we fine-tuned our model to show a range of possible outcomes, based on historical trends and the latest opinion polls. As illustrated above, Britain’s electoral system is highly uncertain. We drew on data from the past 80 years of elections to quantify this uncertainty, and estimate how it might unfold in an imaginary election.
Do they have any findings/conclusions? I can't read the article.
The modelling of the various scenarios is interesting, and ranges from Reform majorities to various balanced parliaments, and from Tory wipeout to modest recovery, and even one scenario where Labour recovers to largest party. But the TLDR findings are ‘f*** knows what’s going happen next time’ and ‘our electoral system is a lottery that is no longer fit for purpose’.
It's weird because probably about 500 of the 650 MPs in the HoC would be in favour of changing the voting system to something more proportional. But it doesn't happen for some reason.
For reasons I shouldn't really go into I've just downloaded a journal article from 'Deviant Behaviour'. Never knew said journal existed until this morning!
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
What proportion of current claims get the maximum?
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
Joke mode on.
Only consider anyone a woman if they can multi-task - as no man can.
Only consider anyone a man if they can parallel park - an no woman can.
Joke mode off, and dives behind the sofa.
I'm so bad at parallel parking - I'm clearly a women...
Get a BMW with Parking Assistant Plus. Our iX has it and it's brilliant. If it is physically possible to get the vehicle into the parking space within the holomonic constraints of the steering geometry, PAP will do it first time, every time.
That sounds better than Toyota’s offering, which refuses to park in a space that I can easily manoeuvre into.
BMW use sonar rather than relying on cameras which makes it more accurate and reliable.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Why would height be factored into gender/sex considerations. Are you planning on excluding women over 6'2 from women's sports or something ?
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
The US is focused on containing China more than Putin, certainly while Trump and Vance remain in power.
So until the Democrats return to office NATO will either have to be largely US free and focused on containing Russia or shift to containing China as well to get Trump and Vance on board with it (which would also require Japan, Australia, S Korea, Singapore and maybe NZ to join NATO as well).
Our election model considers what might happen in each of Britain’s 632 constituencies if an election were held today. But rather than giving a single prediction, we fine-tuned our model to show a range of possible outcomes, based on historical trends and the latest opinion polls. As illustrated above, Britain’s electoral system is highly uncertain. We drew on data from the past 80 years of elections to quantify this uncertainty, and estimate how it might unfold in an imaginary election.
"...The starting point for our model is nationwide opinion polling..."
That's your input, but what's your output?
"...We measured the difference between thousands of historical nationwide polls and the subsequent election results to estimate the likely polling error if an election were held today. We found that polling errors often lean towards the last election result (perhaps because undecided voters return to the party they supported last time) and encoded that into our model..."
OK the best predictor of the next election is the last election, but I could have told them that. And they're modelling the polling error (between the poll and the vote?)
"...Next we considered how each region and nation might swing..."
Fair enough, you've added a regional component. I like that. This is presumably a swing in the vote?
"...We fit a regression model to consider the historical relationship between a party’s vote share in a constituency in one election and the next, given the nationwide and regional picture..."
OK, you've built a model that inputs one or more polls, the estimated polling error and regional swing, and converts that to...an election vote in a region?
"...Finally, we translate these regional results to each constituency [using MRP]...."
OK, got that,
So they have three models.
MODEL 0
Inputs: lots of historical and regional polls up to the last election
Method: Simulation
Output: polling error and regional swing for the next election
MODEL 1
Inputs: Today's poll(s)
Method: Linear regression?
Output: Today's election vote in the regions and nations taking polling error and regional swing into account
MODEL 2
Input: election vote in the regions and nations taking polling error and regional swing into account
Method: MRP
Output: Today's election result for each constituency and hence today's election result
In similar vein, Waitrose has just emailed to let me know that I am the top buyer of their rosemary and garlic crackers on the island. Someone in their data-crunching department has too much time on their hands…
If you get an email like that you're not likely to rush out and buy more. You'll be thinking, do I need to see someone about my rosemary and garlic cracker dependency?
Or the opposite. If you're the competitive type you could be spurred to do whatever it takes to stay top dog.
Me, I'd start keeping a sharp eye on the use by dates on anything they delivered, or I picked up in the aisle.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them once spent
Like the Tories (tbf with the LDs) delayed a Holyrood election because IIRC they wanted to pass the FTPA and thought the date already set in law for Holyrood would suit them.
My wife won't drive on the motorway. I keep telling her that if she can drive in SE London she can drive on the motorway, to no avail.
That’s a news article on the BBC then !
Motorway driving is a doddle.
I think the big issue is anticipation, if you haven't been taught to think ahead for example notice there's a slow vehicle ahead, check you mirrors and pull out while you're travelling at a similar speed to the other traffic but instead realize too late and slow right down so you're stuck with other traffic whizzing past you, then it's probably terrifying. TBH doesn't sound like the people the BBC interviewed should have passed in the first place.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
No. That was about £10k. Blair increased it to £50k in 1998 and it has been increasing every April broadly in line with inflation every year. Cameron introduced a further cap so that it was the lower of 52-weeks basic and the overall cap. I think I recall it went down one year...
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions for the non Murrell cases when I copied and pasted those other 2 case details
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
There are a lot of insurance policies about where you get a package of legally checked/validated policies to use in your company. If a claim is issued, then the insurance company takes over and has a panel of barristers to argue the company's case. The main reason for losing a case is that companies often don't follow their own policies. The policies are not that expensive compared with the cost of hiring people. The main cost is in training staff not to be bloody idiots.
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
Hence my proposal for restructuring public services in the U.K.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
Yes let's all have one. Go totally and utterly MAD. No more crime no more violence.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions when I copied and pasted the other 2 cases
In the context of a discussion where apparent crimes were committed and where you were trying to dismiss them as not crimes. Then suddenly yo come out with this stuff where you were clearly intending the opposite meaning - that actual crimes were committed - and made it worse by giving an example of an actual conviction (Ferrier case).
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Vance would only cease to be pro-Putin, if you could persuade him that Ukraine is where white people originate from.
Vance, who increasingly resembles a Care Bear, has zero ideological attachment to anything. If he thought Ukraine could win and that the subsequent post-war US/Ukraine relationship would benefit him personally and politically he'd be as pro-Ukraine as the thickest Slava Ukraini ultra on here.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
No. That was about £10k. Blair increased it to £50k in 1998 and it has been increasing every April broadly in line with inflation every year. Cameron introduced a further cap so that it was the lower of 52-weeks basic and the overall cap. I think I recall it went down one year...
Uncapped compensation sounds good for HENRYs or whatever they are called now but irrelevant to most of us. Do lawyers get a slice?
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
Hence my proposal for restructuring public services in the U.K.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
Yes let's all have one. Go totally and utterly MAD. No more crime no more violence.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
What proportion of current claims get the maximum?
Very few but I'm not sure of the overall proportion. Cameron introduced a rule whereby UD claims were further capped at the lower of 52-weeks basic and the upper limit so only people on more than £120k (or whatever the amount was in the relevant year) could recover that amount, and that's a small percentage of the population anyway.
Discrimination claims have never had the cap so there was an incentive, for higher value claims, to shoehorn that in.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
No. That was about £10k. Blair increased it to £50k in 1998 and it has been increasing every April broadly in line with inflation every year. Cameron introduced a further cap so that it was the lower of 52-weeks basic and the overall cap. I think I recall it went down one year...
What is a typical redundancy package these days? 4-6 months? In which case an unfair dismissal cap needs to be significantly more than that, maybe 36 months to act as a deterrent.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
When I fought one in the 90s it was the princely sum of £13k.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
There are a lot of insurance policies about where you get a package of legally checked/validated policies to use in your company. If a claim is issued, then the insurance company takes over and has a panel of barristers to argue the company's case. The main reason for losing a case is that companies often don't follow their own policies. The policies are not that expensive compared with the cost of hiring people. The main cost is in training staff not to be bloody idiots.
Which is one very important aim of HR.
It's not about woke pink teddy bears. Despite what many on here believe.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions when I copied and pasted the other 2 cases
In the context of a discussion where apparent crimes were committed and where you were trying to dismiss them as not crimes. Then suddenly yo come out with this stuff where you were clearly intending the opposite meaning - that actual crimes were committed - and made it worse by giving an example of an actual conviction (Ferrier case).
You shouldn't do that sort of thing.
No, I wasn't trying to dismiss them as non crimes. Indeed if you bothered to read my earlier posts you could have seen I said even forgetting to pay for something could potentially lead to a shoplifting conviction.
I only ever said Murrell was arrested and charged, which he was and then added 'or' convicted in relation to the other 2 cases including Ferrier's case and did not say 'and' convicted so made clear Murrell was not also included in the latter
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
No. That was about £10k. Blair increased it to £50k in 1998 and it has been increasing every April broadly in line with inflation every year. Cameron introduced a further cap so that it was the lower of 52-weeks basic and the overall cap. I think I recall it went down one year...
Uncapped compensation sounds good for HENRYs or whatever they are called now but irrelevant to most of us. Do lawyers get a slice?
Lawyers don't usually get a slice unless they're working to a damages based agreement i.e. no win no fee. Given the low recovery in UD claims its not usually worth it and costs don't normally get awarded in the ET.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Whether there should be one or not, £120k was the wrong cap, too low. Was it the same amount introduced in 1996 perchance?
No. That was about £10k. Blair increased it to £50k in 1998 and it has been increasing every April broadly in line with inflation every year. Cameron introduced a further cap so that it was the lower of 52-weeks basic and the overall cap. I think I recall it went down one year...
What is a typical redundancy package these days? 4-6 months? In which case an unfair dismissal cap needs to be significantly more than that, maybe 36 months to act as a deterrent.
One area that it will change is football management. Paying off the contract plus the relative (in football terms) pittance an UD claim would cost may not work anymore.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Why would height be factored into gender/sex considerations. Are you planning on excluding women over 6'2 from women's sports or something ?
No. I'm planning on letting MTFs under 5'5 and 10 stone into women's sports. Presumably the existing competitors and the viewing public would not object to this.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions when I copied and pasted the other 2 cases
In the context of a discussion where apparent crimes were committed and where you were trying to dismiss them as not crimes. Then suddenly yo come out with this stuff where you were clearly intending the opposite meaning - that actual crimes were committed - and made it worse by giving an example of an actual conviction (Ferrier case).
You shouldn't do that sort of thing.
No, I wasn't trying to dismiss them as non crimes. Indeed if you bothered to read my earlier posts you could have seen I said even forgetting to pay for something could potentially lead to a shoplifting conviction.
I only ever said Murrell was arrested and charged, which he was and then added 'or' convicted in relation to the other 2 cases including Ferrier's case and did not say 'and' convicted so made clear Murrell was not also included in the latter
You sure were putting the Murrell case up in the wider context of criminal records. You were all teary at the thought of folk getting a crim record for mistakenly lifting a courgette. And when I joked about it you put [edit] the Murrell case right up there in a very ambiguous context.
Don't talk about *ongoing* crim cases in the context of people ending up with a criminal record if you don't want to be suspected of contempt.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
But this is an internally inconsistent position because a Germany/Europe that were capable of independently deterring Russia would be very relevant indeed. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
But this is an internally inconsistent position because a Germany/Europe that were capable of independently deterring Russia would be very relevant indeed. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Does your article touch on how other developed countries treat transgender people? For me this is a baffling omission from the debate. You'd have thought it would be of great interest.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
But this is an internally inconsistent position because a Germany/Europe that were capable of independently deterring Russia would be very relevant indeed. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions when I copied and pasted the other 2 cases
In the context of a discussion where apparent crimes were committed and where you were trying to dismiss them as not crimes. Then suddenly yo come out with this stuff where you were clearly intending the opposite meaning - that actual crimes were committed - and made it worse by giving an example of an actual conviction (Ferrier case).
You shouldn't do that sort of thing.
No, I wasn't trying to dismiss them as non crimes. Indeed if you bothered to read my earlier posts you could have seen I said even forgetting to pay for something could potentially lead to a shoplifting conviction.
I only ever said Murrell was arrested and charged, which he was and then added 'or' convicted in relation to the other 2 cases including Ferrier's case and did not say 'and' convicted so made clear Murrell was not also included in the latter
You sure were putting the Murrell case up in the wider context of criminal records. You were all teary at the thought of folk getting a crim record for mistakenly lifting a courgette. And when I joked about it you put [edit] the Murrell case right up there in a very ambiguous context.
Don't talk about *ongoing* crim cases in the context of people ending up with a criminal record if you don't want to be suspected of contempt.
No I was not, so stop lying. Murrell has been arrested and charged with embezzlement, that is beyond dispute and the other 2 cases I mentioned had been convicted of an offence, also beyond dispute. So certainly for the majority of the 3 cases I mentioned spent offences no longer being a bar to jobs was relevant.
People who live in inner London can parallel park. Those who live elsewhere with their big front drives and garages, can’t.
How, in inner London, is parking your car parallel to another ever going to be acceptable behaviour?
Happens all the time at my bit, lazy fcukers double parking cos ‘they’re just popping into a shop for 5 minutes’, even with an actual parking space several cars away.
Standard behaviour in Bradford. Blocking a lane on a dual carriageway either to pop into a shop or an Uber picking up a fare.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions when I copied and pasted the other 2 cases
In the context of a discussion where apparent crimes were committed and where you were trying to dismiss them as not crimes. Then suddenly yo come out with this stuff where you were clearly intending the opposite meaning - that actual crimes were committed - and made it worse by giving an example of an actual conviction (Ferrier case).
You shouldn't do that sort of thing.
No, I wasn't trying to dismiss them as non crimes. Indeed if you bothered to read my earlier posts you could have seen I said even forgetting to pay for something could potentially lead to a shoplifting conviction.
I only ever said Murrell was arrested and charged, which he was and then added 'or' convicted in relation to the other 2 cases including Ferrier's case and did not say 'and' convicted so made clear Murrell was not also included in the latter
You sure were putting the Murrell case up in the wider context of criminal records. You were all teary at the thought of folk getting a crim record for mistakenly lifting a courgette. And when I joked about it you put [edit] the Murrell case right up there in a very ambiguous context.
Don't talk about *ongoing* crim cases in the context of people ending up with a criminal record if you don't want to be suspected of contempt.
No I was not, so stop lying. Murrell has been arrested and charged, that is beyond dispute and the other 2 cases I mentioned had been convicted of an offence, also beyond dispute. So certainly for the majority of the 3 cases I mentioned spent offences no longer being a bar to jobs was relevant.
I'm not lying. Your wording really was hopelessly poor and had to be read in the wider context of the discussion.
Got to say the BBC putting illegal immigrants in the audience allows him to focus on something else - attacking the BBC for pulling that stunt.
They were not illegal immigrants, they were successful asylum seekers with ILR, so by definition not illegal.
Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. It wasn't these that gave Zia a hard time (indeed both came over fairly poorly) it was the white British in the audience that were giving him a hard time.
Credit to Polanski and Cooper for winning that audience.
"Having a debate on immigration without any immigrants having a say would be rather odd. "
Would it? It would be odder to include voices on an issue who had a vested interest, a bias, in one direction.
Also a little odd to include people who can't (yet) vote in national elections, where immigration policy is decided. Though I suppose it does no harm.
Next Question Time is a law 'n' order special. Let's fill the seats with ex-cons.
(Actually, that ain't a bad idea...)
27% of working age adults have a criminal record. There will be plenty of ex-cons.
Gosh. I’d have guessed less than 5%.
It is the most surprising stat I have learnt on here. For men it is 33%.
This report is a bit lower but official at 22-23%. 27% was from Personnel Today quoting another MoJ report I can't quickly find.
Obvs people are discreet about it, but AFAIK none of my close acquaintances have a criminal record.
How do you know? Especially if spent, speeding, not paying a train fare, careless driving, drink driving, forgetting to pay for something in a shop, not paying enough tax, smoking cannabis, taking cocaine etc can all be criminal offences
You've changed "shoplifting" into "forgetting to pay for something in a shop"! Do you have something to hide??
You could just as easily have said "forgetting to buy a train ticket, failing to see a speed limit sign, getting your maths wrong on your tax form...."
Well shoplifiting could be forgetting to pay for something in a shop.
It could and I'm sure it happens, but it isn't. Forgetting to pay for something isn't shoplifting. It is an honest mistake. Obviously you may have to convince someone of that.
We joke that my wife is a thief. Several days after being at a restaurant she found a knife from the restaurant in her bag. She has no idea how it got there (so she says).
Having said that I take @hyufd's point. It is easy to have had a minor offence. I think I am completely clean, but I have had one speeding offence sometime ago from a camera. Does that count? I don't think it does.
Good morning
Last week when I returned to my car with my shopping I discovered an item that I had overlooked
I immediately returned and paid for it
That is the first time in my 81 years I have made that error
I do not accept shoplifting is forgetting to pay, it is a deliberate act to steal
Indeed but had you not returned it straight away though BigG and the supermarket raised the alarm to PC Plod you could have been charged with theft and the prosecution would try and prove you stole it with intent even if you didn't have that intent
If I knowingly did not return and pay for it then that is shoplifting
Deeply shocking to see HYUFD minimising and hand-waving away the seriousness of crime. His fellow Tories will be wondering if he's a social worker (or at least what they imagine a social worker is, which isn't the same thing).
You changed that very quickly after you realised you were committing a contempt of court! You need to be more careful with keyboards and supermarket checkouts.
Hardly given those were all linked reports from established news organisations posted without comment beyond mentioning the arrest and charge and of course in the latter 2 cases also a conviction has already been given.
In any case I personally believe once a conviction is spent you should be able to move on from it whatever walk of life you are in and criminal records should be irrelevant from that point (except in a few cases like working with children where obviously they remain relevant and offences still need to be disclosed)
You only gave one case and one report in your original post and made it clear what you thought was the situation - which was a contempt. Stop changing the text and claiming you only ever wrote version two. It's a bad habit and makes you go blind, etc.
Your para 2 is even worse as it assumes actual conviction.
No stop lying. I gave 1 report and only reported the charge and arrest, which had already been done and was a correct report.
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them
You changed it - and now I find Vanilla lets you keep the changes. Next time I'll take a screen grab of anything you write.
Nothing to report, my point Murrell was arrested and charged was correct so stop lying.
I only mentioned the convictions when I copied and pasted the other 2 cases
In the context of a discussion where apparent crimes were committed and where you were trying to dismiss them as not crimes. Then suddenly yo come out with this stuff where you were clearly intending the opposite meaning - that actual crimes were committed - and made it worse by giving an example of an actual conviction (Ferrier case).
You shouldn't do that sort of thing.
No, I wasn't trying to dismiss them as non crimes. Indeed if you bothered to read my earlier posts you could have seen I said even forgetting to pay for something could potentially lead to a shoplifting conviction.
I only ever said Murrell was arrested and charged, which he was and then added 'or' convicted in relation to the other 2 cases including Ferrier's case and did not say 'and' convicted so made clear Murrell was not also included in the latter
You sure were putting the Murrell case up in the wider context of criminal records. You were all teary at the thought of folk getting a crim record for mistakenly lifting a courgette. And when I joked about it you put [edit] the Murrell case right up there in a very ambiguous context.
Don't talk about *ongoing* crim cases in the context of people ending up with a criminal record if you don't want to be suspected of contempt.
No I was not, so stop lying. Murrell has been arrested and charged, that is beyond dispute and the other 2 cases I mentioned had been convicted of an offence, also beyond dispute. So certainly for the majority of the 3 cases I mentioned spent offences no longer being a bar to jobs was relevant.
I'm not lying. Your wording really was hopelessly poor and had to be read in the wider context of the discussion.
You are lying, every post you have written over the last hour or two relating to this has included a lie
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Vance would only cease to be pro-Putin, if you could persuade him that Ukraine is where white people originate from.
Vance, who increasingly resembles a Care Bear, has zero ideological attachment to anything. If he thought Ukraine could win and that the subsequent post-war US/Ukraine relationship would benefit him personally and politically he'd be as pro-Ukraine as the thickest Slava Ukraini ultra on here.
Probably a fair assessment, though it doesn't really apply to his monied backers/owners.
Interesting question who might or might not own him if he were to take the top job.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Does your article touch on how other developed countries treat transgender people? For me this is a baffling omission from the debate. You'd have thought it would be of great interest.
The article is currently over 1,900 words not including the appendices and now has to be expanded again to include NigelB's point about direct and indirect discrimination and Cyclefree's point about gender not equal to sex legally. It covers the events between April and December 2025 and has to stop somewhere. I can't expand it to outside UK.
Such an article covering outside the UK is possible and I would like to write it but it would be a serious piece of work and it would be unlikely to appear in 2025 or 2026, even if I started tomorrow.
I keep trying to convince my wife that driving on a motorway is safer and much less stressful than driving on a winding country road that isn't always wide enough for two vehicles to pass.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
Hence my proposal for restructuring public services in the U.K.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
Yes let's all have one. Go totally and utterly MAD. No more crime no more violence.
Ah yes. "If". Paris 68 in an English public school. Sort of.
I recall thinking it a bit pseudy. A better drama in that setting and period imo was on tv and called Good and Bad at Games. A study of the long term mental impact of bullying (are you listening, Nigel Farage?) although the scene which has stayed with me to this day was a pleasant one showing a group of boys in their dorm playing air guitar to Badge by Cream.
Spain formally recognises Moroccan sovereignty in Western Sahara, so that's pretty much the last relevant power rowing in behind Morocco's autonomy plan as basis for negotiations.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
But this is an internally inconsistent position because a Germany/Europe that were capable of independently deterring Russia would be very relevant indeed. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.
You can probably ditch the subjunctive.
The Bundestag has approved Germany’s 2026 budget with record support for Ukraine.
Defense spending will increase to approximately €108 billion — a record high since the end of the Cold War.
Ukraine will receive €11.5 billion for artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and other military equipment. This is the largest package for Ukraine since the beginning of the russian invasion. https://x.com/rshereme/status/1996689969457648033
I keep trying to convince my wife that driving on a motorway is safer and much less stressful than driving on a winding country road that isn't always wide enough for two vehicles to pass.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
Ever since our preferred route away from our house flooded a couple of months ago my wife and I have disagreed on which of the two alternatives to take. Happily this lunchtime I discovered that my wife's preferred route was also now flooded and so we have to take mine. Might be time to test that the inflatable boat doesn't have a puncture though.
Don’t forget, the “FIFA World Peace Prize for being the most amazing human ever stopping all killing” award to Donald Trump is from 5pm followed by something about football.
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
Hence my proposal for restructuring public services in the U.K.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
Yes let's all have one. Go totally and utterly MAD. No more crime no more violence.
Ah yes. "If". Paris 68 in an English public school. Sort of.
I recall thinking it a bit pseudy. A better drama in that setting and period imo was on tv and called Good and Bad at Games. A study of the long term mental impact of bullying (are you listening, Nigel Farage?) although the scene which has stayed with me to this day was a pleasant one showing a group of boys in their dorm playing air guitar to Badge by Cream.
First saw it at the film club at school - 16mm print.
There's something (bit like vinyl) about seeing films projected from film, rather than 4K digital.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Does your article touch on how other developed countries treat transgender people? For me this is a baffling omission from the debate. You'd have thought it would be of great interest.
The article is currently over 1,900 words not including the appendices and now has to be expanded again to include NigelB's point about direct and indirect discrimination and Cyclefree's point about gender not equal to sex legally. It covers the events between April and December 2025 and has to stop somewhere. I can't expand it to outside UK.
Such an article covering outside the UK is possible and I would like to write it but it would be a serious piece of work and it would be unlikely to appear in 2025 or 2026, even if I started tomorrow.
Yes fair enough. I didn't mean it as a request. The research part would be time consuming. On cursory inspection, for example, Germany has (legal) self-id but allows 'spaces' to make their own decisions on exclusive v inclusive (of trans). But what does that mean in practice? France dropped the surgery requirement in 2016. Spain is the most liberal. Far more than here. So are the likes of Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland. Eastern European countries are generally more restrictive, ie closer to where we are now going. I'm particularly interested in whether the countries who've gone the self-id inclusive route have done so with or without the very heated culture-war type drama that we've seen in the UK in recent years.
For reasons I shouldn't really go into I've just downloaded a journal article from 'Deviant Behaviour'. Never knew said journal existed until this morning!
I keep trying to convince my wife that driving on a motorway is safer and much less stressful than driving on a winding country road that isn't always wide enough for two vehicles to pass.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
Given the scales at which humans evolved (speeds, heights etc), travelling at 70mph is completely wild.
It's not surprising it scares people.
Then again, the driving I see on motorways scares me. The number of people who are offended (to road rage level) when you keep a good gap between you and the vehicle in front...
I know there are some keen weather enthusiasts on here and was wondering if anyone knew if there was a reason why it has been so insanely shit for so long. Usually the first couple of weeks of November you expect strong winds and rain but it has been incessant since the start of the month. Gusting force 8 today and heavy rain, this week saw the airport have to close the runway for a few hours due to the intensity of the hail. By December the weather is usually just a bit dull so was wondering if there was some unusual situation causing this. Thanks
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Does your article touch on how other developed countries treat transgender people? For me this is a baffling omission from the debate. You'd have thought it would be of great interest.
The article is currently over 1,900 words not including the appendices and now has to be expanded again to include NigelB's point about direct and indirect discrimination and Cyclefree's point about gender not equal to sex legally. It covers the events between April and December 2025 and has to stop somewhere. I can't expand it to outside UK.
Such an article covering outside the UK is possible and I would like to write it but it would be a serious piece of work and it would be unlikely to appear in 2025 or 2026, even if I started tomorrow.
Yes fair enough. I didn't mean it as a request. The research part would be time consuming. On cursory inspection, for example, Germany has self-id but allows 'spaces' to make their own decisions on exclusive v inclusive (of trans). But what does that mean in practice? France dropped the surgery requirement in 2016. Spain is the most liberal. Far more than here. So are the likes of Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland. Eastern European countries are generally more restrictive, ie closer to where we are now going. I'm particularly interested in whether the countries who've gone the self-id inclusive route have done so with or without the very heated culture-war type drama that we've seen here in the UK in recent years.
Why don't you write the international article as a follow on header?
I keep trying to convince my wife that driving on a motorway is safer and much less stressful than driving on a winding country road that isn't always wide enough for two vehicles to pass.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
I often take one route to go somewhere and a different route back. I don't know why.
I prefer winding roads to motorways as I enjoy driving them and hate motorways. If I'm on a long journey I use the motorway but get very bored very quickly. I am not capable of driving long distances on a motorway and don't know how people manage that.
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Does your article touch on how other developed countries treat transgender people? For me this is a baffling omission from the debate. You'd have thought it would be of great interest.
The article is currently over 1,900 words not including the appendices and now has to be expanded again to include NigelB's point about direct and indirect discrimination and Cyclefree's point about gender not equal to sex legally. It covers the events between April and December 2025 and has to stop somewhere. I can't expand it to outside UK.
Such an article covering outside the UK is possible and I would like to write it but it would be a serious piece of work and it would be unlikely to appear in 2025 or 2026, even if I started tomorrow.
Yes fair enough. I didn't mean it as a request. The research part would be time consuming. On cursory inspection, for example, Germany has self-id but allows 'spaces' to make their own decisions on exclusive v inclusive (of trans). But what does that mean in practice? France dropped the surgery requirement in 2016. Spain is the most liberal. Far more than here. So are the likes of Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland. Eastern European countries are generally more restrictive, ie closer to where we are now going. I'm particularly interested in whether the countries who've gone the self-id inclusive route have done so with or without the very heated culture-war type drama that we've seen here in the UK in recent years.
Why don't you write the international article as a follow on header?
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
But this is an internally inconsistent position because a Germany/Europe that were capable of independently deterring Russia would be very relevant indeed. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.
You can probably ditch the subjunctive.
The Bundestag has approved Germany’s 2026 budget with record support for Ukraine.
Defense spending will increase to approximately €108 billion — a record high since the end of the Cold War.
Ukraine will receive €11.5 billion for artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and other military equipment. This is the largest package for Ukraine since the beginning of the russian invasion. https://x.com/rshereme/status/1996689969457648033
Maybe Reform will run on a platform of rearmament to counter the German threat.
I keep trying to convince my wife that driving on a motorway is safer and much less stressful than driving on a winding country road that isn't always wide enough for two vehicles to pass.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
I often take one route to go somewhere and a different route back. I don't know why.
I prefer winding roads to motorways as I enjoy driving them and hate motorways. If I'm on a long journey I use the motorway but get very bored very quickly. I am not capable of driving long distances on a motorway and don't know how people manage that.
In the past I drove quite often from Llandudno to Lossiemouth in the day using motorways, the infamous A9, and county roads from Aviemore
A distance of 456 miles and I could do all of that and back to Perth on a tank of diesel
I got your message on the previous thread and will respond as requested.
I note this comment from you, which is a view share by some other posters -
"I hold the Widdecombe position on trans: namely, those who have gone all the way surgically/hormonally and can reasonably function as the opposite sex should be allowed to be legally considered as the opposite sex."
I realise that people cannot be expected to follow the ins and outs of complicated areas of law. But the ECHR ruled in 2017 in the case of Garçon & Nicot v France (followed in a case against Italy in 2018 and Romania in 2021 saying the same) that countries could NOT insist on surgery (with a high risk of sterility) as a condition for recognising a change in gender in law. The ECHR has ruled that a change gender identity must in certain circumstances be recognised in law, regardless of a persons physical body. This therefore means means that you cannot link gender recognition to surgery/hormone treatment and must give it to, for instance, a man who has made no changes to his body whatsoever or to a woman trying to get pregnant, if they claim to have changed their gender (re this last, see the recent ruling by Mr Justice Hayden in the "W" case - in October 2025).
Ms Widdecombe, as a former MP and Minister in the Home Office, should have done her research before opining on this or putting this forward as some sort of solution or compromise. It isn't. It is unlawful. This debate is persistently hampered by politicians and commentators putting forward "solutions" which are unlawful. It is unfair and unkind to all concerned to offer false solutions and to mislead about what the law says and has said for some time, whatever side of the debate anyone is on.
I understood that, although thank you for the sources: always a help. But you misunderstood my point.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
Does your article touch on how other developed countries treat transgender people? For me this is a baffling omission from the debate. You'd have thought it would be of great interest.
The article is currently over 1,900 words not including the appendices and now has to be expanded again to include NigelB's point about direct and indirect discrimination and Cyclefree's point about gender not equal to sex legally. It covers the events between April and December 2025 and has to stop somewhere. I can't expand it to outside UK.
Such an article covering outside the UK is possible and I would like to write it but it would be a serious piece of work and it would be unlikely to appear in 2025 or 2026, even if I started tomorrow.
Yes fair enough. I didn't mean it as a request. The research part would be time consuming. On cursory inspection, for example, Germany has self-id but allows 'spaces' to make their own decisions on exclusive v inclusive (of trans). But what does that mean in practice? France dropped the surgery requirement in 2016. Spain is the most liberal. Far more than here. So are the likes of Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Portugal, Switzerland, Finland. Eastern European countries are generally more restrictive, ie closer to where we are now going. I'm particularly interested in whether the countries who've gone the self-id inclusive route have done so with or without the very heated culture-war type drama that we've seen here in the UK in recent years.
Why don't you write the international article as a follow on header?
I keep trying to convince my wife that driving on a motorway is safer and much less stressful than driving on a winding country road that isn't always wide enough for two vehicles to pass.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
I often take one route to go somewhere and a different route back. I don't know why.
I prefer winding roads to motorways as I enjoy driving them and hate motorways. If I'm on a long journey I use the motorway but get very bored very quickly. I am not capable of driving long distances on a motorway and don't know how people manage that.
We used to do Exeter to Edinburgh (and later either to North Wales) quite regularly. You have to do different things to keep it fresh. At one point there were lots of radiolab podcasts. Other times best of CDs - Queen, ABBA, Nina Simone. Having someone in the car with you to talk to helps.
At one point I had memorised all the service stations and the distances between them on the M5 and M6 north of the M5 junction. I am glad to have forgotten that now.
Ukraine (and probably the rest of Europe over time) will be even more thoroughly shafted if we get the Putin-Vance alliance.
Europe won't remain passive indefinitely. We shouldn't forget that the original rationale for NATO from a British perspective was to prevent Germany reemerging as a world power.
Its not really relevant anymore, so yes lets forget and focus on China and the US as the superpowers and Russia as the one starting wars and disrupting our societies.
But this is an internally inconsistent position because a Germany/Europe that were capable of independently deterring Russia would be very relevant indeed. It's a case of be careful what you wish for.
You can probably ditch the subjunctive.
The Bundestag has approved Germany’s 2026 budget with record support for Ukraine.
Defense spending will increase to approximately €108 billion — a record high since the end of the Cold War.
Ukraine will receive €11.5 billion for artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and other military equipment. This is the largest package for Ukraine since the beginning of the russian invasion. https://x.com/rshereme/status/1996689969457648033
Maybe Reform will run on a platform of rearmament to counter the German threat.
The Government rejected using the Two Power standard for the Navy the other day.
So, presumably we are on Mr Winston Churchill’s formulation - 160% of the next largest Navy.
The other day at the NATO Leaders' summit, oine of \trump's mushrooms popped up to rebuke Europe for buying fewer weapons from the USA.
But then Trump & Co are weird.
Truth, meet consequences.
Entirely consistent. The demand is both Europe buys weapons from the US (often that the US maintains control over when they can be used) and that Europe replaces US forces in conventional defence of Europe.
From a fairness point of view the second part is actually completely fine. From a protecting the peaceful legacy we have enjoyed under NATO for decades to come point of view however, it is a clear escalation in risk, that ultimately benefits Putin the most.
An ambivalent America also increases the risk of nuclear war. Avoiding it is rooted in the expectation an attack on (say) the Baltics or Taiwan would result in a US military response. If the calculation becomes that a response is doubtful it makes such an attack more likely. Then you've taken that first step on the escalator.
Hence my proposal for restructuring public services in the U.K.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
Yes let's all have one. Go totally and utterly MAD. No more crime no more violence.
Ah yes. "If". Paris 68 in an English public school. Sort of.
I recall thinking it a bit pseudy. A better drama in that setting and period imo was on tv and called Good and Bad at Games. A study of the long term mental impact of bullying (are you listening, Nigel Farage?) although the scene which has stayed with me to this day was a pleasant one showing a group of boys in their dorm playing air guitar to Badge by Cream.
Good and Bad at Games was written by William Boyd, probably my favourite or second favourite author (competing with J L Carr). Having Badge as the theme song just compounded it. That song is eternally linked to being dumped by my first girlfriend. Oh the pain of rejection!
On the subject header, personally I think those are stupid odds, Reform have peaked, the inconsistencies in Farage will begin to show - he can't play to both his left and right. The Tories I suspect will comfortably beat the LD's. Has nobody commented that despite the intense unpopularity of both the traditional big parties, the LD share in polling has not changed. Davey is a really poor leader and his head honcho's Cooper and Moran just come over as bossy schoolmistresses.
The short-odds favourite only comes in if the 1st past the post produces some very strange results.
News from my parish...the government's published amendments to the Employment Rights Bill and there's a proper seismic shift buried in there. They're scrapping the cap on unfair dismissal compensation awards. Completely. Just a simple "omit s124" - that's ERA 1996 the section that limits the payout. Gone. Will need primary legislation from a future govt to bring back as will changing the qualifying period that's going from 2 years down to 6 months.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
Unfortunately there is no incentive to accept a sensible buy out of your claim either. Previously the maximum of£120k means that you could settle most cases at £70-80k.
Luckily there’s lots of capacity in the court system to support the additional litigation
Comments
As far as the US wanting to limit European defence capacity is concerned, they can do one.
The section of the new Nat Sec document which deals with Europe sounds as though the first draft was written by Putin, before being rephrased in Trumpspeak.
It makes driving really simple, sit in the inside lane until bored or you actually notice the car in front has slowed down to 50 then move a lane accelerate a bit and slot in again a few cars further up...
Now, Waitrose is back in the game, and the only embarrassment I have to endure is their delivery person dropping multiple boxes onto my doorstep every Thursday morning, while the dog sniffs about to see if I’ve remembered to order his favourite treats.
https://x.com/harryjsisson/status/1996651623662444828
(Though strictly speaking that would be non-holomonic.)
We are not focussing on that we are getting excited by a metric.
If the traffic wardens and the CCF at the local schools have tactical nuclear weapons, then we can really democratise defence.
Motorway driving is a doddle.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/12/04/the-daily-t-labour-cancel-elections-stop-farage-reform/
That and making sure that the export restrictions on the new weapons are next-to-non-existent. See the stuff they have bought from South Korea.
In a few years the Poles will have a huge military, based on weapons that work. And that they fully control.
My point is that those who have undergone sufficient physical changes, especially but not only to the genitals, should be legally regarded as the opposite sex, not just the opposite gender (so to speak). Domains like sports, prisons etc could then be finessed by further conditions such as height, weight, history etc. This was the existing system when sex and gender were synonyms, and only became untenable when the meanings diverged and unshaven bald seven-footers started claiming a female gender.
So if this gets through the Lords, we're looking at uncapped awards for unfair dismissal claims. Sky's the limit. For context, the current cap is around £120k (or a year's salary if lower). That's already a chunky sum, but now? Could be multiples of that depending on actual losses. Admittedly the median award's only £15k so not much will actually change at the sharp end but, nevertheless, employers are going to be bricking it.
One angle that occurs, it will actually reduce the amount of legal gymnastics where claimants try to wedge whistleblowing or discrimination angles into unfair dismissal cases just to dodge the compensation cap. If there's no cap to dodge, there's less incentive for creative pleading.
So until the Democrats return to office NATO will either have to be largely US free and focused on containing Russia or shift to containing China as well to get Trump and Vance on board with it (which would also require Japan, Australia, S Korea, Singapore and maybe NZ to join NATO as well).
When I added the other 2 cases I mentioned they had included convictions and my point on spent offences applies to them once spent
TBH doesn't sound like the people the BBC interviewed should have passed in the first place.
I only mentioned the convictions for the non Murrell cases when I copied and pasted those other 2 case details
You shouldn't do that sort of thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QL3T1HuKJI
Discrimination claims have never had the cap so there was an incentive, for higher value claims, to shoehorn that in.
It's not about woke pink teddy bears. Despite what many on here believe.
I only ever said Murrell was arrested and charged, which he was and then added 'or' convicted in relation to the other 2 cases including Ferrier's case and did not say 'and' convicted so made clear Murrell was not also included in the latter
Don't talk about *ongoing* crim cases in the context of people ending up with a criminal record if you don't want to be suspected of contempt.
Interesting question who might or might not own him if he were to take the top job.
Such an article covering outside the UK is possible and I would like to write it but it would be a serious piece of work and it would be unlikely to appear in 2025 or 2026, even if I started tomorrow.
We'll never agree on this.
A few months back I was driving and we ended up taking a ridiculous route to end up at a destination about half a mile from a junction of the M62. I was not pleased!
I recall thinking it a bit pseudy. A better drama in that setting and period imo was on tv and called Good and Bad at Games. A study of the long term mental impact of bullying (are you listening, Nigel Farage?) although the scene which has stayed with me to this day was a pleasant one showing a group of boys in their dorm playing air guitar to Badge by Cream.
https://news.sky.com/story/former-doctor-charged-over-alleged-sexual-assaults-on-38-patients-13479747
The Bundestag has approved Germany’s 2026 budget with record support for Ukraine.
Defense spending will increase to approximately €108 billion — a record high since the end of the Cold War.
Ukraine will receive €11.5 billion for artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and other military equipment. This is the largest package for Ukraine since the beginning of the russian invasion.
https://x.com/rshereme/status/1996689969457648033
https://2025.adventhunt.com/
There's something (bit like vinyl) about seeing films projected from film, rather than 4K digital.
It's not surprising it scares people.
Then again, the driving I see on motorways scares me. The number of people who are offended (to road rage level) when you keep a good gap between you and the vehicle in front...
Read @viewcode's work and go from there?
I prefer winding roads to motorways as I enjoy driving them and hate motorways. If I'm on a long journey I use the motorway but get very bored very quickly. I am not capable of driving long distances on a motorway and don't know how people manage that.
A distance of 456 miles and I could do all of that and back to Perth on a tank of diesel
It is now way beyond my ability
@viewcode is already writing stuff way above that level.
Why not you? Doesn’t have to be a submission to the Supreme Court. But Economist grade content? - you could do that.
At one point I had memorised all the service stations and the distances between them on the M5 and M6 north of the M5 junction. I am glad to have forgotten that now.
So, presumably we are on Mr Winston Churchill’s formulation - 160% of the next largest Navy.
So we need 18 aircraft carriers.
On the subject header, personally I think those are stupid odds, Reform have peaked, the inconsistencies in Farage will begin to show - he can't play to both his left and right. The Tories I suspect will comfortably beat the LD's. Has nobody commented that despite the intense unpopularity of both the traditional big parties, the LD share in polling has not changed. Davey is a really poor leader and his head honcho's Cooper and Moran just come over as bossy schoolmistresses.
The short-odds favourite only comes in if the 1st past the post produces some very strange results.
Luckily there’s lots of capacity in the court system to support the additional litigation