YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I think what's worked is to give the impression that lots of streets are being reverted to 30mph by local councils. That isn't actually happening up any significant degree, but it's given the Facebook warriors a win and enough time to for the data to come through, particularly on insurance premiums.
We had something similar here - a cycle path was removed by the council to great celebration. They haven't actually finished the work though so the road remains closed to vehicles 6 months later - not a peep online and it's inadvertently become the best bit of active travel infrastructure in the city.
Yes, I think the blanket imposition of limits across the board is a mistake and bad PR. The reality is that 30mph is quite ok in some spots but in others even 20mph is too high. It's best to allow some flexibility locally and with luck you may get the best of both worlds.
It was not done. The "blanket" line was pure, fabricated, culture war politics.
In Wales, the proof of that is the programme that was implemented.
I know a few people involved with animal welfare who are quite pleased by Labour ambition in this area. Nick Palmer probably knows a lot more.
I have a feeling I belong to a niche minority here. I am deeply uncomfortable about lobster boiling and have no problem with fox hunting.
On which subject, the plan to ban trail hounds.
In Cumberland and Westmorland there is a long tradition of trail hound racing which has never had any connection with hunting animals, has always used scent trails and doesn't do red jackets and stirrup cups and lives in a world closer to whippets than Anthony Trollope novels. This should not be banned.
I’m on the same page as you. Kill the lobster first then boil it. If you need to do a few blind taste tests to convince hard care boil alivers, do so.
It seems to be a bit of strange posturing for the sake of it. It's not hard to kill a lobster, just make sure it's not Lord Mandelson.
Having said that, lobster seems to me to be to be one of those things that are massively overvalued compared to the eating experience.
IIRC Keith Floyd recommended putting a big knife through its "brain" before cooking. And that was a long time ago
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
A Plaid outright majority is unlikely, they would still likely have to do a deal with Labour
Plaid doing any deal with labour will be toxic if the polls are correct
As I have said previously I instinctively believe Plaid are gaining and Reform dropping back
Plaid should govern as a minority government
Have the main parties been written off too soon? Interesting that your username invokes North Wales. I wonder if Plaid's cultural bias might be a drawback in Cardiff and the valleys where the Welsh language is written on road signs but not used in shops. And can the Conservatives make a comeback in farming country in the north?
No - both labour and the conservatives are in trouble but labour are facing a humilation in May when they previously weighed the labour vote
I am content for Plaid to take over and certainly I expect them to do well in our farming communities
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I disliked it as it was introduced in London but part of the problem was that you could easily overlook the change as you moved from one Borough to another. It's actually better now it's 30mph across the board. Mrs PtP spends a lot of her time in London and says it is now quieter than our country home in 30mph Gloucestershire.
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
While Labour has the most to lose, it’s hard to see the local elections being that great for the Tories given they are batting off a 2022 position when they were at 35% in National VI and pulled in 30% of the local election NEV. Today they’re nearer 20% in the polls (or less!) and many of their councillors will face challenges from both right and left.
Good morning, everyone.
Might be hard to say how well they're doing if some locals are cancelled by Labour for reasons that are... questionable.
‘Questionable’ is something of an understatement.
Even Trump isn’t planning on cancelling mid-term elections.
Those well-known pro-Conservatives the, er, Lib Dems
At Westminster the Lib Dems have only ever gone into coalition with the Tories, never with Labour, so the Lib Dems are pro-Conservatives.
My logic is flawless and irrefutable.
1915, 1931 and 1940 all say hello (as to a lesser extent does the Lib/Lab pact).
I know technically the Liberal Democrats didn’t exist until 1988, but…
My comment remains true.
It's funny how many in the Labour party haven't forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
I have a Labour activist friend who still wants Nick Clegg charged with treason. He had voted Lib Dems five general elections in a row to keep the Tories out then absolutely lost it when the coalition was formed.
Clegg was right, the LDs are not supposed to be the leftwing conscience of the Labour party, that is the Greens. Indeed until Charles Kennedy traditionally the Liberals were right of Labour economically
While condemning Nick Clegg for the coalition, and campaigning on ending tuition fees when they'd already decided to abandon that, I think his far greater misdemeanours were committed running the corporate whitewash for Meta so they could continue exploiting children.
Train drivers on up to £80,000 a year categorised as ‘working class’
The Office for National Statistics ranks the role as a ‘lower supervisory and technical occupation’, while police officers on half the salary are ‘middle class’
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I disliked it as it was introduced in London but part of the problem was that you could easily overlook the change as you moved from one Borough to another. It's actually better now it's 30mph across the board. Mrs PtP spends a lot of her time in London and says it is now quieter than our country home in 30mph Gloucestershire.
I think if you are going to,do, the Welsh approach of blanket imposition is better. My last speeding ticket was in Bath by the Uni. The limit changes from 60 to 40 to 30 to 20 in the space of a mile. No clear reasons why in a lot of the places. Bath council is fabulously anti car. Happily for rugby days we know a hidden cup de sac with single yellow lines that is never checked by traffic wardens. Parked there for over a decade and no ticket…
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I disliked it as it was introduced in London but part of the problem was that you could easily overlook the change as you moved from one Borough to another. It's actually better now it's 30mph across the board. Mrs PtP spends a lot of her time in London and says it is now quieter than our country home in 30mph Gloucestershire.
Something I notice as a pedestrian in English towns compared with the same in Scotland is that average traffic speeds are higher. Leaving aside the risk of serious injury at higher speeds, it's a lot less pleasant.
Train drivers on up to £80,000 a year categorised as ‘working class’
The Office for National Statistics ranks the role as a ‘lower supervisory and technical occupation’, while police officers on half the salary are ‘middle class’
Detectives in the police force would be earning at least as much as train drivers if not more.
More police officers are likely to be graduates than train drivers too, though being a train driver is a skilled and important job
Police never used to be a graduate job. Remember what made Inspector Morse noteworthy was that he had been to university. This probably is why there were a lot of attacks during the Blair years – all those lucrative top jobs wasted on people who can't even spell Oxbridge.
I think it was more the fact* that Morse was an Oxford graduate (rather than any old uni) that made him noteworthy.
* A "fact" in the context of the novels, of course.
Train drivers on up to £80,000 a year categorised as ‘working class’
The Office for National Statistics ranks the role as a ‘lower supervisory and technical occupation’, while police officers on half the salary are ‘middle class’
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
Wouldn't most historians be absolutely delighted with 28 first hand witnesses?
They are really pushing the big hitters , ignoring all that dross like "smash the gangs", illegal immigration , cost of living , high taxes, etc
They are in government. Just not in power.
They have what power there is. Maybe the realisation that government is actually powerless to affect many of the serious issues today leads to a sort of governmental twiddling of thumbs.
I think it's more that rich world democratic governments seem terrified to use the powers they have, in a way that would have puzzled earlier generations of politicians.
We elect people who then complain that they can't do anything, and who focus on displacement activities like trans, and trail hunting. They could of course do a lot, if they were prepared to take a risk of losing votes.
And they become terrifically unpopular anyway, because they aren't doing anything useful.
Just 1 in 5 Brits say they would be angry/disappointed if their child were gay, maybe surprisingly Labour voters were the most likely to say they’d be angry or disappointed - more so than Reform or Tory voters - Green and Lib Dem voters were the least likely to say they would be
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
Wouldn't most historians be absolutely delighted with 28 first hand witnesses?
depends how consistent the accounts are and how cynical the historian is
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I disliked it as it was introduced in London but part of the problem was that you could easily overlook the change as you moved from one Borough to another. It's actually better now it's 30mph across the board. Mrs PtP spends a lot of her time in London and says it is now quieter than our country home in 30mph Gloucestershire.
Something I notice as a pedestrian in English towns compared with the same in Scotland is that average traffic speeds are higher. Leaving aside the risk of serious injury at higher speeds, it's a lot less pleasant.
Just 1 in 5 Brits say they would be angry/disappointed if their child were gay, maybe surprisingly Labour voters were the most likely to say they’d be angry or disappointed - more so than Reform or Tory voters - Green and Lib Dem voters were the least likely to say they would be
I think there is a bit of a religious element there, impacting the Labour figure.
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
According to my information, he wasn't very different in the City. Incidentally, is he making more as a politician than he could have in the City? Now probably, but Once Upon a Time?
Just 1 in 5 Brits say they would be angry/disappointed if their child were gay, maybe surprisingly Labour voters were the most likely to say they’d be angry or disappointed - more so than Reform or Tory voters - Green and Lib Dem voters were the least likely to say they would be
I think there is a bit of a religious element there, impacting the Labour figure.
Labours weakening of the agricultural IHT rules shows how arrogant and inept Reeves and Treasury are.
A big win for Kemi and the Tories.
Opposing the closing of huge tax loopholes for the extremely wealthy, and doing so on moral grounds, isn't the most obvious battleground to fight on. So yes credit where it's due.
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
Wouldn't most historians be absolutely delighted with 28 first hand witnesses?
depends how consistent the accounts are and how cynical the historian is
Maybe it's a big conspiracy if they're perfectly consistent. Or the opposite, and it's a bluff...
The Rest of History were talking through the Hardrada saga as if the guy actually fought off a dragon in Kyiv, until they caught themselves and explained it's all about the story and the vibe back then. Nothing changes.
Train drivers on up to £80,000 a year categorised as ‘working class’
The Office for National Statistics ranks the role as a ‘lower supervisory and technical occupation’, while police officers on half the salary are ‘middle class’
"France and Britain have nuclear weapons. If they allow themselves to be overwhelmed with destructive moral ideas, then you allow nuclear weapons to fall in the hands of people who can actually cause very, very serious harm to the US."
Wonder if he'll cut cooperation with us for Trident if he becomes President.
I'm sure he'd want to, but the retaliation would be significant. The US and UK nuclear sub programs are fairly closely intertwined, to the point where UK shipyards will be building parts of upcoming US Virginia class SSNs. And the UK's Dreadnought class and US Columbia class SSBNs share co-designed components.
A tit-for-tat there would be a real mess.
Even more fun - US / UK nuclear warheads are shared designs, built in each country.
The US warheads include UK ideas/features. As Chuck Hansen put it, they are actually joint designs.
So if they tried to cut us adrift, we have the design data on the crown jewels of the nuke world, such as the W88.
Same for submarine nuclear reactors.
Back in the 80s, when the issue of buying Trident came up, the French were asked to bid on an alternative
They came up with
- All the missiles would be built in France - Cost more than Trident - a lot more - The wanted access to Polaris (breaking that agreement with the US) - They wanted complete access to all warhead design data (breaking that agreement with the US)
Labours weakening of the agricultural IHT rules shows how arrogant and inept Reeves and Treasury are.
A big win for Kemi and the Tories.
Opposing the closing of huge tax loopholes for the extremely wealthy, and doing so on moral grounds, isn't the most obvious battleground to fight on. So yes credit where it's due.
I’m sure it won’t cost them any votes.
‘Extremely wealthy’ doing some heavy lifting here.
There is no doubt Kemi has improved, her performances in the Commons are sharper, she gave a good Conference speech and had a popular announcement on scrapping Stamp Duty. However she still only has a net positive rating amongst 2024 Conservative voters.
Kemi therefore needs a strong local and devolved elections next year, ideally beating Labour for second on NEV, gaining Westminster and Barnet flagship councils from Labour and minimising Tory losses at Holyrood and in the Senedd. Otherwise she risks a VONC by Tory MPs. Jenrick from the populist right or Cleverly from the moderate centre of the Conservative party would then be her likely successor
You keep repeating this when the reality is Badenoch is the best choice for leader as none of the others would improve the conservatives chances
That's the crucial point. There is no credible white knight. And the spectacle of a defenestration could be incredibly destabilising - far too risky. I think she's pretty safe as I suspect the membership will be overwhelmingly loyal now.
She's shown she can perform at the required level, and is not a dud in the vein of IDS and Truss, which was the real worry.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
A Plaid outright majority is unlikely, they would still likely have to do a deal with Labour
Plaid doing any deal with labour will be toxic if the polls are correct
As I have said previously I instinctively believe Plaid are gaining and Reform dropping back
Plaid should govern as a minority government
Have the main parties been written off too soon? Interesting that your username invokes North Wales. I wonder if Plaid's cultural bias might be a drawback in Cardiff and the valleys where the Welsh language is written on road signs but not used in shops. And can the Conservatives make a comeback in farming country in the north?
No - both labour and the conservatives are in trouble but labour are facing a humilation in May when they previously weighed the labour vote
I am content for Plaid to take over and certainly I expect them to do well in our farming communities
Finally some common ground between you and HY - both now self-declared Plaid supporters!
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Peoples memories are not like data in a computer, or a written log. We recreate them when we recall them. We know that he is an odious piece of shit now, so it’s entirely possible some are inadvertently ‘recalling’ things that didn’t happen, or were no quite as they think. That’s why contemporaneous accounts are far more reliable. An approach taken by James Holland in recent books, and one that I thin improves on older histories (such as those by Lyn Macdonald of the first war, which relied on testimony from 60 or 70 years ago).
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
According to my information, he wasn't very different in the City. Incidentally, is he making more as a politician than he could have in the City? Now probably, but Once Upon a Time?
Didn't he earn a big bunce on referendum night allegedly?
Labours weakening of the agricultural IHT rules shows how arrogant and inept Reeves and Treasury are.
The simple way to kill agricultural land as an IHT dodge is to create a charge upon the property on death. If you sell, you have to pay the tax. If you keep the land for farming, it’s there, waiting.
To be nice, when the inheriting farmer dies, the charge is replaced, not doubled.
If you can’t sell the asset without getting hit for IHT, then it’s useless as a dodge.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
A Plaid outright majority is unlikely, they would still likely have to do a deal with Labour
Plaid doing any deal with labour will be toxic if the polls are correct
As I have said previously I instinctively believe Plaid are gaining and Reform dropping back
Plaid should govern as a minority government
Have the main parties been written off too soon? Interesting that your username invokes North Wales. I wonder if Plaid's cultural bias might be a drawback in Cardiff and the valleys where the Welsh language is written on road signs but not used in shops. And can the Conservatives make a comeback in farming country in the north?
No - both labour and the conservatives are in trouble but labour are facing a humilation in May when they previously weighed the labour vote
I am content for Plaid to take over and certainly I expect them to do well in our farming communities
Finally some common ground between you and HY - both now self-declared Plaid supporters!
Yes - but I have lived in Wales for 60 years and experienced the disaster Wales labour have been and Plaid winning would break the mould
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
Just 1 in 5 Brits say they would be angry/disappointed if their child were gay, maybe surprisingly Labour voters were the most likely to say they’d be angry or disappointed - more so than Reform or Tory voters - Green and Lib Dem voters were the least likely to say they would be
I think there is a bit of a religious element there, impacting the Labour figure.
Also, it's the kind of question where people will plump for the middle option.
Alleged Epstein suicide note in latest batch of releases, to gymnastics doctor and serial child molestor Larry Nassar:
"Dear L. N.
As you know by now, I have taken the "short route" home. Good luck! We shared one thing . . . our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they'd reach their full potential.
Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to "grab snatch", whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
I have to admit it is one of my guilty pleasures as well, especially in front of white van men and lorries off the boat from Ireland.
This has a distinct echo of the topic that cannot be mentioned.
It only took 20 years. The FBI labeling the case as a “child prostitution” case back in 2005 — and the Palm Beach state attorney telling these victims they could be arrested themselves (for prostitution) was/is unforgivable. Congress must investigate who benefited (besides Epstein) from the whitewashing of this crime. https://x.com/jkbjournalist/status/2003162097710952507
What's the betting angle? It won't bring down Trump and most (all?) of his likely successors are too young to have been involved with Epstein.
There’s a fracturing of the MAGA alliance.
See the Israeli/Jews are responsible for child abuse/framing some of the GOP.
My brain is in holiday mode so I don’t have the energy to write a thread on it this side of the new year.
There’s an awful lot of antisemitism that’s appeared seemingly out of nowhere among the conservative commentator class in the US.
One theory is that the person holding everything together in a relatively moderate fashion was Charlie Kirk.
To quote Wikipedia:
In October 2023, Kirk said on The Charlie Kirk Show that "Jewish donors have been the Number 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border, neoliberal, quasi‑Marxist policies ... This is a beast created by secular Jews, and now it's coming for Jews", and also suggested that these Jews control "not just the colleges; it's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it". Soon after, he said that "Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years."
Some people might think that a little bit anti-Semitic, Sandpit.
Oh dear, wrong again.
That’ll be the quote about which the New York Times was forced to make a retraction.
Labours weakening of the agricultural IHT rules shows how arrogant and inept Reeves and Treasury are.
A big win for Kemi and the Tories.
Opposing the closing of huge tax loopholes for the extremely wealthy, and doing so on moral grounds, isn't the most obvious battleground to fight on. So yes credit where it's due.
I’m sure it won’t cost them any votes.
‘Extremely wealthy’ doing some heavy lifting here.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
The only cause of tailgating is bad driving from the person doing the tailgating.
If a driver has a problem with the person in front driving at the speed limit, then they need to sort themselves out. A bit of meditation before they take to the road may do the trick.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
I have to admit it is one of my guilty pleasures as well, especially in front of white van men and lorries off the boat from Ireland.
Not sure how you would affect Irish lorries off the ferry travelling along the A55 which is not zoned at 20mp
Anyway, as I have said it is not wise to deliberately cause road rage
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
The only cause of tailgating is bad driving from the person doing the tailgating.
If a driver has a problem with the person in front driving at the speed limit, then they need to sort themselves out. A bit of meditation before they take to the road may do the trick.
Speaking from experience there are a few who do this and as the police themselves do not prosecute under 27 mph then it does cause annoyance, though I just sit back and drive along
Maybe the shine is coming off Farage and hopefully it will continue
Proportionately the tit whisperer is down by a greater percentage than Reform.
Taz I enjoy your posts but why oh why do you always have to be so offensive about politicians. Your post refering to Harris the other day with the Camel Toe name was a new low. I am not suggesting you are not critical of the policies but why use offensive names for the individuals. You wouldn't (I assume) do it to their face.
Sorry, I do have a somewhat juvenile sense of humour at times.
I also think Polanski gets a free pass for his rather interesting past.
Oh damn. I feel a bit school mamish now after your more than pleasant reply. You could have told me to f**k off.
Maybe the shine is coming off Farage and hopefully it will continue
Proportionately the tit whisperer is down by a greater percentage than Reform.
Taz I enjoy your posts but why oh why do you always have to be so offensive about politicians. Your post refering to Harris the other day with the Camel Toe name was a new low. I am not suggesting you are not critical of the policies but why use offensive names for the individuals. You wouldn't (I assume) do it to their face.
Sorry, I do have a somewhat juvenile sense of humour at times.
I also think Polanski gets a free pass for his rather interesting past.
Oh damn. I feel a bit school mamish now after your more than pleasant reply. You could have told me to f**k off.
I wouldn’t do that as I like you and your posts here and you’re never rude 👍
"Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election," the DoJ says in a statement posted on X.
"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.
"Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DoJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."
LOL. As Mandy Rice-Davies might have said: "They would say that, wouldn't they."
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Peoples memories are not like data in a computer, or a written log. We recreate them when we recall them. We know that he is an odious piece of shit now, so it’s entirely possible some are inadvertently ‘recalling’ things that didn’t happen, or were no quite as they think. That’s why contemporaneous accounts are far more reliable. An approach taken by James Holland in recent books, and one that I thin improves on older histories (such as those by Lyn Macdonald of the first war, which relied on testimony from 60 or 70 years ago).
You’re missing the point, perhaps disingenuously. The question is whether Farage was a horrible piece of shit, not his precise choreography on a grassy knoll.
The unilateral answer is yes, and the common sense conclusion is that he remains one.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
I know someone who got done for 24 in a 20 mph zone in London and Google AI says 24 - 25.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
Maybe the shine is coming off Farage and hopefully it will continue
Proportionately the tit whisperer is down by a greater percentage than Reform.
Taz I enjoy your posts but why oh why do you always have to be so offensive about politicians. Your post refering to Harris the other day with the Camel Toe name was a new low. I am not suggesting you are not critical of the policies but why use offensive names for the individuals. You wouldn't (I assume) do it to their face.
Sorry, I do have a somewhat juvenile sense of humour at times.
I also think Polanski gets a free pass for his rather interesting past.
Oh damn. I feel a bit school mamish now after your more than pleasant reply. You could have told me to f**k off.
I wouldn’t do that as I like you and your posts here and you’re never rude 👍
If this keeps up we are going to have to find a room
Thank you. I used him and Mike Ratledge solidly for about five years especially for cars. He was the musical talent and Mike was the conversationalist. Foreign clients used to love them. Particularly the Italians. They liked recording at Abbey Road and using real musicians. The two of them looked gloriously eccentric and hardly ever spoke and was exactly what the Italians thought was typical of this creative hot spot that was London!
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Peoples memories are not like data in a computer, or a written log. We recreate them when we recall them. We know that he is an odious piece of shit now, so it’s entirely possible some are inadvertently ‘recalling’ things that didn’t happen, or were no quite as they think. That’s why contemporaneous accounts are far more reliable. An approach taken by James Holland in recent books, and one that I thin improves on older histories (such as those by Lyn Macdonald of the first war, which relied on testimony from 60 or 70 years ago).
You’re missing the point, perhaps disingenuously. The question is whether Farage was a horrible piece of shit, not his precise choreography on a grassy knoll.
The unilateral answer is yes, and the common sense conclusion is that he remains one.
The much trickier questions are: a) does Farage's horrible shittyness exclude him from top-level politics? b) should Farage's horrible shittyness exclude him from top-level politics?
(I suspect that the answer is that you need to be able and willing to act in a shitty way to be effective, but shouldn't enjoy it or default to it. The same principle as the line about a gentleman being one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.)
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
I know someone who got done for 24 in a 20 mph zone in London and Google AI says 24 - 25.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
In Wales the present enforcement is 10% + 4 which equates to 26mph
In previous 30mph areas it is quite normal to travel at around 25mph and it seems fairly well understood
It is true a small number of drivers keep to 20mph or even less but it is not wise to deliberately slow traffic
Labours weakening of the agricultural IHT rules shows how arrogant and inept Reeves and Treasury are.
Yet again they’ve burned the political capital, annoyed a specific and well-organised group of people for little money, and then pedalled back half way so they’re not even making the projected revenue.
The next season of Clarkson’s Farm isn’t about to be hastily re-edited as a result of today’s news, and it’s going to be absolutely brutal for the government.
Maybe the shine is coming off Farage and hopefully it will continue
Proportionately the tit whisperer is down by a greater percentage than Reform.
Taz I enjoy your posts but why oh why do you always have to be so offensive about politicians. Your post refering to Harris the other day with the Camel Toe name was a new low. I am not suggesting you are not critical of the policies but why use offensive names for the individuals. You wouldn't (I assume) do it to their face.
Sorry, I do have a somewhat juvenile sense of humour at times.
I also think Polanski gets a free pass for his rather interesting past.
Oh damn. I feel a bit school mamish now after your more than pleasant reply. You could have told me to f**k off.
I wouldn’t do that as I like you and your posts here and you’re never rude 👍
If this keeps up we are going to have to find a room
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
While Labour has the most to lose, it’s hard to see the local elections being that great for the Tories given they are batting off a 2022 position when they were at 35% in National VI and pulled in 30% of the local election NEV. Today they’re nearer 20% in the polls (or less!) and many of their councillors will face challenges from both right and left.
Good morning, everyone.
Might be hard to say how well they're doing if some locals are cancelled by Labour for reasons that are... questionable.
‘Questionable’ is something of an understatement.
Even Trump isn’t planning on cancelling mid-term elections.
Those well-known pro-Conservatives the, er, Lib Dems
At Westminster the Lib Dems have only ever gone into coalition with the Tories, never with Labour, so the Lib Dems are pro-Conservatives.
My logic is flawless and irrefutable.
1915, 1931 and 1940 all say hello (as to a lesser extent does the Lib/Lab pact).
I know technically the Liberal Democrats didn’t exist until 1988, but…
My comment remains true.
It's funny how many in the Labour party haven't forgiven the Lib Dems for the coalition.
I have a Labour activist friend who still wants Nick Clegg charged with treason. He had voted Lib Dems five general elections in a row to keep the Tories out then absolutely lost it when the coalition was formed.
Clegg was right, the LDs are not supposed to be the leftwing conscience of the Labour party, that is the Greens. Indeed until Charles Kennedy traditionally the Liberals were right of Labour economically
While condemning Nick Clegg for the coalition, and campaigning on ending tuition fees when they'd already decided to abandon that, I think his far greater misdemeanours were committed running the corporate whitewash for Meta so they could continue exploiting children.
Allowing the British nuclear reactor industry to die was his worst move. The Forgemasters loan guarantee to create reactor pressure vessels was a price he paid to get his feet under the Tory table.
I loathe the guy for that. All the other stuff sure, whatever, but costing us an entire industry….
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
I know someone who got done for 24 in a 20 mph zone in London and Google AI says 24 - 25.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
In Wales the present enforcement is 10% + 4 which equates to 26mph
In previous 30mph areas it is quite normal to travel at around 25mph and it seems fairly well understood
It is true a small number of drivers keep to 20mph or even less but it is not wise to deliberately slow traffic
As I recall, the correct response to being tailgated is to drive normally as far as possible, if need be take account of the increased chance of collision and gradually reduce your speed. I don't think speeding up and breaking the speed limit is a "wise" response, and certainly not one the police would accept in the event you end up hitting someone.
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
It'll make financial advisers and estate agents a bit happier though.
Labours weakening of the agricultural IHT rules shows how arrogant and inept Reeves and Treasury are.
A big win for Kemi and the Tories.
Bigger win yet is that Labour has only increased the IHT threshold to £2.5m, so the Conservatives can still campaign to axe it in the next election.
True
But consider the budget we have just seen with the no change change in that. Who has driven this change of policy ??? Explicitly Rachel Reeves said no just a month ago. Will she still be chancellor when parliament resumes ?
Well, the President of the NFU did say Emma Reynolds was welcomed to Defra because she couldn't be more vile or worse than Stephen Reed.
This must be an achievement for her and all the more a down tick for both Reed and Rachel's farmer hating husband.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
I know someone who got done for 24 in a 20 mph zone in London and Google AI says 24 - 25.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
In Wales the present enforcement is 10% + 4 which equates to 26mph
In previous 30mph areas it is quite normal to travel at around 25mph and it seems fairly well understood
It is true a small number of drivers keep to 20mph or even less but it is not wise to deliberately slow traffic
As I recall, the correct response to being tailgated is to drive normally as far as possible, if need be take account of the increased chance of collision and gradually reduce your speed. I don't think speeding up and breaking the speed limit is a "wise" response, and certainly not one the police would accept in the event you end up hitting someone.
Fortunately as I have said it is only a relative few drivers who do this and they should not be tailgated, but also it is wise not to deliberately provoke other drivers
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
It'll make financial advisers and estate agents a bit happier though.
On the contrary they will be the losers out of this.
They are really pushing the big hitters , ignoring all that dross like "smash the gangs", illegal immigration , cost of living , high taxes, etc
They are in government. Just not in power.
They have what power there is. Maybe the realisation that government is actually powerless to affect many of the serious issues today leads to a sort of governmental twiddling of thumbs.
Blair, Thatcher or even Gordon Brown would/did use majorities to change things.
The trick is not changing policy. It’s culture. The policy *follows* the culture.
The trouble conceding farmers inheritance tax is a) Badenoch will rightly boast about her win b) claiming tax is almost the same means either the Treasury originally could not do its sums or is wrong now c) all who argued in support are thrown under the bus. No way to govern
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
They also voted en masse for Brexit and then realised they had screwed themselves. They are the ultimate selfish opportunists who believe the world owes them a living. Of course they won't vote labour.
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Peoples memories are not like data in a computer, or a written log. We recreate them when we recall them. We know that he is an odious piece of shit now, so it’s entirely possible some are inadvertently ‘recalling’ things that didn’t happen, or were no quite as they think. That’s why contemporaneous accounts are far more reliable. An approach taken by James Holland in recent books, and one that I thin improves on older histories (such as those by Lyn Macdonald of the first war, which relied on testimony from 60 or 70 years ago).
You’re missing the point, perhaps disingenuously. The question is whether Farage was a horrible piece of shit, not his precise choreography on a grassy knoll.
The unilateral answer is yes, and the common sense conclusion is that he remains one.
I’m not being disingenuous, and have no doubt that he is and always was a shit. He seems able to get people to think he’s on their side, when he is only on his side. A bit like Johnson.
But I do question people’s memories. What do people really recall from their school days?
Overjoyed to report the seizure of a tonne of speed in Wigan. Delightfully named Operation Barmcake.
Warminster has had a large weed factory shut down. And reports of similar in Trowbridge. And I can report, after a few nights of charity collection in said town, that no weed was detected, unlike some years.
This has a distinct echo of the topic that cannot be mentioned.
It only took 20 years. The FBI labeling the case as a “child prostitution” case back in 2005 — and the Palm Beach state attorney telling these victims they could be arrested themselves (for prostitution) was/is unforgivable. Congress must investigate who benefited (besides Epstein) from the whitewashing of this crime. https://x.com/jkbjournalist/status/2003162097710952507
What's the betting angle? It won't bring down Trump and most (all?) of his likely successors are too young to have been involved with Epstein.
There’s a fracturing of the MAGA alliance.
See the Israeli/Jews are responsible for child abuse/framing some of the GOP.
My brain is in holiday mode so I don’t have the energy to write a thread on it this side of the new year.
There’s an awful lot of antisemitism that’s appeared seemingly out of nowhere among the conservative commentator class in the US.
One theory is that the person holding everything together in a relatively moderate fashion was Charlie Kirk.
To quote Wikipedia:
In October 2023, Kirk said on The Charlie Kirk Show that "Jewish donors have been the Number 1 funding mechanism of radical, open border, neoliberal, quasi‑Marxist policies ... This is a beast created by secular Jews, and now it's coming for Jews", and also suggested that these Jews control "not just the colleges; it's the nonprofits, it's the movies, it's Hollywood, it's all of it". Soon after, he said that "Jews have been some of the largest funders of cultural Marxist ideas and supporters of those ideas over the last 30 or 40 years."
Some people might think that a little bit anti-Semitic, Sandpit.
Oh dear, wrong again.
That’ll be the quote about which the New York Times was forced to make a retraction.
He was quoting someone else, and went on to critique the comment. He was having a go at those American Jews who were funding left-wing causes.
That Fox News article does not specify what bit the NYT was retracting (I'm unclear whether that's Fox or the NYT being evasive), but the NYT stood by calling Kirk anti-Semitic. He was, indeed, having a go at those American Jews who were funding left-wing causes, and doing so in a blatantly anti-Semitic way.
And he's said similar things on multiple occasions. Here's more from the Wikipedia article:
After Elon Musk endorsed a post which said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them," Kirk defended Musk from charges of antisemitism by claiming the post's charge against Jewish communities was accurate.[202] He went on to claim "the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors", but said he was glad that some donors were reconsidering.[203]
So, yes, Kirk did repeatedly make anti-Semitic comments, and you're defending him.
Based on this polling I wouldn’t be surprised the Tories ahead of Reform at some point in quarter one of 2026, if present trends hold, not consistently but on an outlier basis.
Word missing there?
On the substantive point, am I right in thinking as well that Farage is at the same time the oldest and the least experienced of the four major party leaders? He's not likely to be improving now as he ages and he's never been in cabinet.
No, Starmer is about 18 months older than Farage.
Blair and Cameron had never been in government before they became PM.
Fair enough on the first point.
Cameron and Blair had both been Leaders of the Opposition. Farage hasn't even done that.
Indeed he quite often skives off Parliament. I think he finds it boring because its not all about him.
This has recently set me wondering if Nigel Farage might bail soon. He is rarely in the Commons or in Clacton, and does not even seem to have much to say about Streeting or Lammy advocating customs unions with the EU, an issue you'd think would be mother's milk to him. Is he still interested in politics? (That said, maybe he is just under the weather as there are some nasty bugs doing the rounds.)
I wonder if the 'I can't really remember what happened 50 years ago but I definitely did not say those racist and antisemitic things' row has put his gas at a peep. The one time I saw Farage address the issue directly he seemed uncharacteristically shifty and evasive.
28 witnesses, including Jewish students, and written communications amongst teachers, is quite a lot to dismiss as "lies, all lies". Tice is that crass imo; Farage is not.
It's also quite awkward with respect to Farage's position on Israel, and the portrayal of Muslims as The Mortal Enemy of Western Civilisation.
Witnesses at the time (as in recording in diaries, letters etc) or witnesses ‘recalling’ events of 50 years ago. Very big difference, as all good historians know.
28 witnesses seems pretty corroborative to me. The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Peoples memories are not like data in a computer, or a written log. We recreate them when we recall them. We know that he is an odious piece of shit now, so it’s entirely possible some are inadvertently ‘recalling’ things that didn’t happen, or were no quite as they think. That’s why contemporaneous accounts are far more reliable. An approach taken by James Holland in recent books, and one that I thin improves on older histories (such as those by Lyn Macdonald of the first war, which relied on testimony from 60 or 70 years ago).
You’re missing the point, perhaps disingenuously. The question is whether Farage was a horrible piece of shit, not his precise choreography on a grassy knoll.
The unilateral answer is yes, and the common sense conclusion is that he remains one.
I’m not being disingenuous, and have no doubt that he is and always was a shit. He seems able to get people to think he’s on their side, when he is only on his side. A bit like Johnson.
But I do question people’s memories. What do people really recall from their school days?
I’d probably remember if, being Jewish, I was regularly taunted with remarks about gassing.
The trouble conceding farmers inheritance tax is a) Badenoch will rightly boast about her win b) claiming tax is almost the same means either the Treasury originally could not do its sums or is wrong now c) all who argued in support are thrown under the bus. No way to govern
The concerning thing, as I noted above, is (b). Treasury appears to be full of absolute wasters who can’t do maths. And they’ve been predating on the country for years.
Allied to Reeves’s chippy animosity to disfavoured groups, it’s a toxic brew.
He has previous. According to Cricinfo, eight years ago, while part of the Lions squad for the 2017-18 series, he was sent home with a fine and suspension by the ECB for pouring a drink over James Anderson in the Avenue Bar in Perth. Obviously hasn't grown up yet.
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
They also voted en masse for Brexit and then realised they had screwed themselves. They are the ultimate selfish opportunists who believe the world owes them a living. Of course they won't vote labour.
British farmers do appear to be cretinous, as a class. Brexit is exhibit 1.
However, if you care about land use and food quality, then you need to care about farmers.
Reeves’s problem is she actively hates much of the country, including farmers.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
I know someone who got done for 24 in a 20 mph zone in London and Google AI says 24 - 25.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
In Wales the present enforcement is 10% + 4 which equates to 26mph
In previous 30mph areas it is quite normal to travel at around 25mph and it seems fairly well understood
It is true a small number of drivers keep to 20mph or even less but it is not wise to deliberately slow traffic
As I recall, the correct response to being tailgated is to drive normally as far as possible, if need be take account of the increased chance of collision and gradually reduce your speed. I don't think speeding up and breaking the speed limit is a "wise" response, and certainly not one the police would accept in the event you end up hitting someone.
Fortunately as I have said it is only a relative few drivers who do this and they should not be tailgated, but also it is wise not to deliberately provoke other drivers
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
Public Service announcement!
That is patently untrue. The 27mph prosecution trigger is a myth.
I hate the 20mph default, it is not easy to adhere to without the limiter deployed, but if it has saved the life of just one child (and the stats are compelling) it is worth its weight in Go Safe fines.
Team Nigel and the Tories are indulging in a Labour style hostage to fortune culture for demanding the return to a default 30mph limit. If there was any non-right wing media left they would be all over the change of speed limit on news of the first avoidable fatality.
This has a distinct echo of the topic that cannot be mentioned.
It only took 20 years. The FBI labeling the case as a “child prostitution” case back in 2005 — and the Palm Beach state attorney telling these victims they could be arrested themselves (for prostitution) was/is unforgivable. Congress must investigate who benefited (besides Epstein) from the whitewashing of this crime. https://x.com/jkbjournalist/status/2003162097710952507
What's the betting angle? It won't bring down Trump and most (all?) of his likely successors are too young to have been involved with Epstein.
Train drivers on up to £80,000 a year categorised as ‘working class’
The Office for National Statistics ranks the role as a ‘lower supervisory and technical occupation’, while police officers on half the salary are ‘middle class’
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
Public Service announcement!
That is patently untrue. The 27mph prosecution trigger is a myth.
I hate the 20mph default, it is not easy to adhere to without the limiter deployed, but if it has saved the life of just one child (and the stats are compelling) it is worth its weight in Go Safe fines.
Team Nigel and the Tories are indulging in a Labour style hostage to fortune culture for demanding the return to a default 30mph limit. If there was any non-right wing media left they would be all over the change of speed limit on news of the first avoidable fatality.
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
They also voted en masse for Brexit and then realised they had screwed themselves. They are the ultimate selfish opportunists who believe the world owes them a living. Of course they won't vote labour.
British farmers do appear to be cretinous, as a class. Brexit is exhibit 1.
However, if you care about land use and food quality, then you need to care about farmers.
Reeves’s problem is she actively hates much of the country, including farmers.
The amount of political capital burnt in this thing is incredible. Ultimately, the correct decision, tax should be targeted at investors and companies buying land. The vast majority of farm estates will now be exempt, providing they make use of the £5m spouse allowance
Train drivers on up to £80,000 a year categorised as ‘working class’
The Office for National Statistics ranks the role as a ‘lower supervisory and technical occupation’, while police officers on half the salary are ‘middle class’
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
Public Service announcement!
That is patently untrue. The 27mph prosecution trigger is a myth.
I hate the 20mph default, it is not easy to adhere to without the limiter deployed, but if it has saved the life of just one child (and the stats are compelling) it is worth its weight in Go Safe fines.
Team Nigel and the Tories are indulging in a Labour style hostage to fortune culture for demanding the return to a default 30mph limit. If there was any non-right wing media left they would be all over the change of speed limit on news of the first avoidable fatality.
YouGov had a Reform 25% in late November. There's a clear sign of a small Tory recovery mirrored by Reform declining in the opinion poll average graph on Wikipedia.
The unknown is whether this trend will be reinforced by campaigning for the May elections, or if that will interrupt it.
Also, given the personal ambitions of many of those involved, what are the chances Kemi gets ditched after losing lots of councillors in May anyway?
Barring immense change during the next few months, the story of election night is almost written already, as significant Reform and Green gains are surely nailed on. The competition is for who gets seen as the biggest loser, and there Labour already has a very good head start.
Part of the question will be timing. The first results often create the story.
I think Wales is still in doubt though. If Reform do come further off the boil then the big story might be a Plaid victory in Wales, rather than Reform doing very well there.
Sunderland voting in a Reform council will be the first news story. Then will come some London boroughs.
Picking up on Wales, and the conversation yesterday, I see that on 20mh default speed limits in towns we have:
- Con current policy is to reverse, despite their noisy demands back in 2020/21 that timid Labour were not implementing it quicky enough. - Ref UK committed to reverse. - Evidence of the benefits is firming up in reduced casualties, safety and reduced insurance premiums, with annother year of data due before the Senedd elections next May.
One to watch.
(Checking, the position in England is that 20mph limits now cover areas where just under 20 million people live. TBH that is a lot higher than I thought it was.) -
I had the opportunity recently to spend at least half an hour in total driving through 20mph speed limits in Wales and so, in true PB.com fashion, I am now an expert.
What surprised me most, given the vitriol in online discussions about them, is how well-observed they were. My experience in the past of driving through 20mph speed limits in England and Scotland is that a lot of drivers will speed past anyone obeying the speed limit.
That was exactly my experience of driving in Wales soon after the limit was introduced. I have the impression that the vitriol has died down now, and some may even be acknowledging that lives have been saved and things are generally pleasanter but I don't follow Welsh politics much so I wouldn't really know if the hostility to Labour on this issue has abated at all.
I am a convert to the 20, after being opposed to it in the start. The roads in towns are so much safer. You can also pull out easily from side roads.
Most newer cars also have a limiter which means you don't have to keep monitoring your speed.
I was chatting to a chap from South Wales the other week. He says he loves driving at exactly 20 mph and watching the queue build up behind him. And if they get too close, he'll slow to 18...
There are a few who do this, but it in itself is dangerous causing anger and tailgating, even unsafe overtaking
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
I know someone who got done for 24 in a 20 mph zone in London and Google AI says 24 - 25.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
In Wales the present enforcement is 10% + 4 which equates to 26mph
In previous 30mph areas it is quite normal to travel at around 25mph and it seems fairly well understood
It is true a small number of drivers keep to 20mph or even less but it is not wise to deliberately slow traffic
As I recall, the correct response to being tailgated is to drive normally as far as possible, if need be take account of the increased chance of collision and gradually reduce your speed. I don't think speeding up and breaking the speed limit is a "wise" response, and certainly not one the police would accept in the event you end up hitting someone.
Fortunately as I have said it is only a relative few drivers who do this and they should not be tailgated, but also it is wise not to deliberately provoke other drivers
This is the best Christmas present me, my family and my friends could have had. I can now safely sleep at night, that is how bad it has been. Especially for those older than me with serious health issues. Bad news for agricultural valuers of course who would have made a fortune over the arguing the toss over the values of farms. It takes my estate out of the danger zone and so we can now look forwards to building the shed which we have needed for many years.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
That is the whole point
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
They also voted en masse for Brexit and then realised they had screwed themselves. They are the ultimate selfish opportunists who believe the world owes them a living. Of course they won't vote labour.
British farmers do appear to be cretinous, as a class. Brexit is exhibit 1.
However, if you care about land use and food quality, then you need to care about farmers.
Reeves’s problem is she actively hates much of the country, including farmers.
Though Reeves's problem is just another manifestation of the bigger British Problem.
An awful lot of the place seems to be powered on hate and definition by what we hate. Some of that is what happens when you have a zero-sum nation, some of it is media playing on easy mode.
Comments
In Wales, the proof of that is the programme that was implemented.
I am content for Plaid to take over and certainly I expect them to do well in our farming communities
* A "fact" in the context of the novels, of course.
The man’s a bully, and a spiv, and has been so since his earliest years.
Just 1 in 5 Brits say they would be angry/disappointed if their child were gay, maybe surprisingly Labour voters were the most likely to say they’d be angry or disappointed - more so than Reform or Tory voters - Green and Lib Dem voters were the least likely to say they would be
Incidentally, is he making more as a politician than he could have in the City? Now probably, but Once Upon a Time?
The Rest of History were talking through the Hardrada saga as if the guy actually fought off a dragon in Kyiv, until they caught themselves and explained it's all about the story and the vibe back then. Nothing changes.
The US warheads include UK ideas/features. As Chuck Hansen put it, they are actually joint designs.
So if they tried to cut us adrift, we have the design data on the crown jewels of the nuke world, such as the W88.
Same for submarine nuclear reactors.
Back in the 80s, when the issue of buying Trident came up, the French were asked to bid on an alternative
They came up with
- All the missiles would be built in France
- Cost more than Trident - a lot more
- The wanted access to Polaris (breaking that agreement with the US)
- They wanted complete access to all warhead design data (breaking that agreement with the US)
‘Extremely wealthy’ doing some heavy lifting here.
John Rentoul called it
https://x.com/johnrentoul/status/2003441943976771943?s=61
She's shown she can perform at the required level, and is not a dud in the vein of IDS and Truss, which was the real worry.
To be nice, when the inheriting farmer dies, the charge is replaced, not doubled.
If you can’t sell the asset without getting hit for IHT, then it’s useless as a dodge.
I will be voting conservatives
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3dM7IF1HB1A
"Dear L. N.
As you know by now, I have taken the "short route" home. Good luck! We shared one thing . . . our love & caring for young ladies and the hope they'd reach their full potential.
Our president shares our love of young, nubile girls. When a young beauty walked by he loved to "grab snatch", whereas we ended up snatching grub in the mess halls of the system.
Life is unfair.
Yours
J. Epstein"
These lads can rest easy now, and look forward to their next visit to the Land Rover dealership.
That’ll be the quote about which the New York Times was forced to make a retraction.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-admits-falsely-claimed-charlie-kirk-made-antisemitic-statement-issues-humiliating-correctio
He was quoting someone else, and went on to critique the comment. He was having a go at those American Jews who were funding left-wing causes.
The speed in these 20mph zones is not enforced until you reach 27mph
As far as the present position is, most councils are or have reviewed and reinstated some of the 30mph which have generally been accepted
If a driver has a problem with the person in front driving at the speed limit, then they need to sort themselves out. A bit of meditation before they take to the road may do the trick.
Anyway, as I have said it is not wise to deliberately cause road rage
"Some of these documents contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election," the DoJ says in a statement posted on X.
"To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.
"Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DoJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein’s victims."
LOL. As Mandy Rice-Davies might have said: "They would say that, wouldn't they."
The question is whether Farage was a horrible piece of shit, not his precise choreography on a grassy knoll.
The unilateral answer is yes, and the common sense conclusion is that he remains one.
I'm currently having lessons for my Advanced Drivers Test and speed limits are important for that and I struggle with some 20 and 30 limits at the margins and also don't want the distraction of keep checking so I am going to set my limiter on. Annoyingly I got told off for driving too slowly on my last lesson at one point on a country lane. They expect good progress. It was a bit weird as my wife thinks I drive too fast on country lanes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2-eNucEYSg (32 mins)
https://x.com/daractenus/status/2003435846377308674
a) does Farage's horrible shittyness exclude him from top-level politics?
b) should Farage's horrible shittyness exclude him from top-level politics?
(I suspect that the answer is that you need to be able and willing to act in a shitty way to be effective, but shouldn't enjoy it or default to it. The same principle as the line about a gentleman being one who never hurts anyone's feelings unintentionally.)
In previous 30mph areas it is quite normal to travel at around 25mph and it seems fairly well understood
It is true a small number of drivers keep to 20mph or even less but it is not wise to deliberately slow traffic
The next season of Clarkson’s Farm isn’t about to be hastily re-edited as a result of today’s news, and it’s going to be absolutely brutal for the government.
I had expected this to become a jockeying point when the new Labour leader was selected or else it to be put off for a year, and a year and a year.
They pointed the shotgun at the whole farming industry. We stood up to them and they have blinked. But we won't forget, no we won't forget ...
https://x.com/aryan42832goel/status/2003411462237348278?s=61
The farmers will not forgive or vote labour because of this
I loathe the guy for that. All the other stuff sure, whatever, but costing us an entire industry….
But consider the budget we have just seen with the no change change in that. Who has driven this change of policy ??? Explicitly Rachel Reeves said no just a month ago. Will she still be chancellor when parliament resumes ?
Well, the President of the NFU did say Emma Reynolds was welcomed to Defra because she couldn't be more vile or worse than Stephen Reed.
This must be an achievement for her and all the more a down tick for both Reed and Rachel's farmer hating husband.
Delightfully named Operation Barmcake.
The trick is not changing policy. It’s culture. The policy *follows* the culture.
The trouble conceding farmers inheritance tax is a) Badenoch will rightly boast about her win b) claiming tax is almost the same means either the Treasury originally could not do its sums or is wrong now c) all who argued in support are thrown under the bus. No way to govern
But I do question people’s memories. What do people really recall from their school days?
Snopes stands by the claims too at https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/charlie-kirk-jewish-money-quote/ and has clips from Kirk's show. He's not quoting someone else there. He's repeating anti-Semitic tropes himself.
And he's said similar things on multiple occasions. Here's more from the Wikipedia article:
After Elon Musk endorsed a post which said that "Jewish communities have been pushing the exact kind of hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them," Kirk defended Musk from charges of antisemitism by claiming the post's charge against Jewish communities was accurate.[202] He went on to claim "the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors", but said he was glad that some donors were reconsidering.[203]
So, yes, Kirk did repeatedly make anti-Semitic comments, and you're defending him.
Treasury appears to be full of absolute wasters who can’t do maths. And they’ve been predating on the country for years.
Allied to Reeves’s chippy animosity to disfavoured groups, it’s a toxic brew.
Obviously hasn't grown up yet.
Brexit is exhibit 1.
However, if you care about land use and food quality, then you need to care about farmers.
Reeves’s problem is she actively hates much of the country, including farmers.
Media Matters have plenty of clips of Kirk being anti-Semitic: https://www.mediamatters.org/antisemitism/charlie-kirk-turns-antisemitic-stereotypes-amid-israel-hamas-war That's Kirk, in his own words, in clips where you can see the context.
That is patently untrue. The 27mph prosecution trigger is a myth.
I hate the 20mph default, it is not easy to adhere to without the limiter deployed, but if it has saved the life of just one child (and the stats are compelling) it is worth its weight in Go Safe fines.
Team Nigel and the Tories are indulging in a Labour style hostage to fortune culture for demanding the return to a default 30mph limit. If there was any non-right wing media left they would be all over the change of speed limit on news of the first avoidable fatality.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/20mph-speed-limit-update-wales-32892181
Government proposals to tax inherited farmland have been watered down, with the planned threshold increasing from £1m to £2.5m."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e9n3y28g1o
An awful lot of the place seems to be powered on hate and definition by what we hate. Some of that is what happens when you have a zero-sum nation, some of it is media playing on easy mode.
But I'm pretty sure it's not good for us.
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/charlie-kirk-and-israel-the-record-his-critics-cant-rewrite/