Republican activists starting to lose patience with the Congresscritters not doing their job. It sounds like they want to start gearing up to primary those who have sat on their arses for a year, and not even attempted to pass anything such as codification of executive orders.
I want to make something clear to Republican House & Senate members:
The American people don’t want to hear that you WON’T introduce legislation b/c you think it won’t pass.
We EXPECT you to vote on bills, so we can find out who’s with us & against us.
There's a reason, though, why this hasn't happened.
In theory, the Republicans have a five vote majority.
However, Republican Representative of the California 1st -Doug LaMalfa- died about ten days ago. So, it's really just a four vote majority.
Oh yes, and then Marjorie Taylor Greene resigned from Congress. So, now it's three vote majority.
And one of those is Victoria Spartz, who while technically a Republican, has been generally pissed off over the Trump handling of Ukraine, and has resigned all her Republican assignments.
Then there are another dozen or so Republicans in districts which were won by tiny margins, and who ran as moderates. Their only chance of getting reelected in November is to avoid being put in a situation where they have to vote for policies that their electorates disagree with. A couple of these: Brian Fitzpatrick and Mike Lawler are in districts which voted Democrat in the Senate and which Kamala won, and they are only Republican because their Representatives have done an incredible of job of courting conservative Democratic votes. Most of the Trump Executive Orders that the activists want voting on are going to be complete electoral poison in the midterms. Their only hope of reelection in November is persuade their Republican base that they would vote for these things... while making sure they don't actually have to vote on -say- tariffs.
Indeed, which is why the activists are furious with John Thune and Mike Johnson, and want Congress on record individually as voting for or against a number of single-issue bills. Voter ID is the latest one.
They all spent a considerable amount of time getting Trump elected, and don’t want to see everything good that the President has done, undone at the stroke of the pen of the next guy who turns up in the White House.
It’s rather like the peak of the Brexit votes in 2007 and 2008, where everyone wanted to see the MPs have to walk through the lobbies and be accountable for their actions afterwards.
The next President will probably have a workable Congressional majority, though. So it's rather performative.
But it's 60 votes to pass Legislation in the Senate - so there is no chance of any Legislation passing either now or for a very long time into the future without bipartisan support.
Which is why the activists are furious with Thune in particular.
They don’t want him saying they’re not proposing anything because it won’t pass, they want to get all 100 Senators on record as supporting or opposing every Bill - mostly so they can be held accountable for at least trying.
But the Senators don’t want to be ‘held accountable’ via the primary system, the GOP Sens want to be able to say they’re supported Trump but without actually supporting him (in the eyes of the activists), and the Dem Sens want to say they’re opposed Trump without actually voting against him.
Sure:
But the Republicans would then certainly lose -say- Maine.
Ms Collins is the Senator for Maine because she's willing to oppose her party, and reflect the views of her constituents.
The Republicans could have a vote on every one of Trump's Executive Orders, which would be carthatic for the Revolutionary wing of the Party, but would ensure they would lose control of both Houses of Congress in November.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Top tip: during the World Economic Forum, the ski slopes of Davos-Klosters are deserted. It's the best time of year to ski some of Europe's premier ski slopes. The only problem is that the hotels are all booked out, so you'll need to get a train in with your ski gear.
Like the thinking! Almost no-one is there to actually go skiing, so if you can get yourself to the bottom of the lift through crazy town with no hotel rooms…
Personally, I wouldn't miss any of them, but I'm not sure there's a future for Reform as a purely faith/flag/family National Popular Conservative party.
If they can replace the Tories there is. They seem to be dropping any pretence to more general appeal, instead being the Tories 'done right', and about how bad all legacy parties are (apart from all the ex-Tories), which is a gamble i didn't think they'd make until after the May elections.
Maybe areas being delayed persuaded them it was time to just drop the act now?
Perhaps. Though the other possibility is that events bounced both of them into jumping sooner than the planned. Jenrick by being caught printing a speech out and Rosindell by having his plan reach the ears of a teenage tweeter.
Lads- if your plan is nefarious, keep it in your head until you are ready to enact it.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Top tip: during the World Economic Forum, the ski slopes of Davos-Klosters are deserted. It's the best time of year to ski some of Europe's premier ski slopes. The only problem is that the hotels are all booked out, so you'll need to get a train in with your ski gear.
Advice for the common man
I skiied there in 2000/2001, just a few years out of college, during the WEF. My friend Greg and I stayed in a youth hostel and had an absolute whale of a time. And in the bars of Davos (where we paid 3x as much for a beer as we paid for a bed), we heard lots of assistants being very rude about their masters.
Personally, I wouldn't miss any of them, but I'm not sure there's a future for Reform as a purely faith/flag/family National Popular Conservative party.
If they can replace the Tories there is. They seem to be dropping any pretence to more general appeal, instead being the Tories 'done right', and about how bad all legacy parties are (apart from all the ex-Tories), which is a gamble i didn't think they'd make until after the May elections.
Maybe areas being delayed persuaded them it was time to just drop the act now?
Perhaps. Though the other possibility is that events bounced both of them into jumping sooner than the planned. Jenrick by being caught printing a speech out and Rosindell by having his plan reach the ears of a teenage tweeter.
Lads- if your plan is nefarious, keep it in your head until you are ready to enact it.
The lack of OpSec is rather amusing to watch from a distance though!
These things used to be done really in secret, very few people involved, no phones, messages passed physically via couriers, meetings in random houses arriving in unusual cars, so no-one knew what was happening until it was officially announced. Douglas Carswell wrote half a book about it.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
It also permeates their other brands such as Vueling who had to be reminded, via the Information Commissioner, what personal information was. They will also stiff you if you give them a chance - which the CAA reminded them was unlawful - so had to pay up. One EU law that has proved to be very useful.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
Even for him that looks like parody.
I mean, we can all see he only talked about peace because he wanted a Nobel prize and he's the most transactional man on Earth, but to just admit it is still weird.
I'm not even touching the boat stuff.
The scary thing would be the tens of millions who agree with it even if you take the lower end of polling.
So far I have seen only one journalist question the veracity. Everybody else seems to assume it's genuine
To lose one MP to Reform in January can be considered unfortunate.
To lose two is downright careless.
And the Tories didn't have that many to begin with.
The 2 were Jenrick and Rosindell, if you wanted 2 Alan B'stards for 2026 those would be probably top of the list.
Hardly a shock they are now with Farage in Reform
Gotta be Kemi's best weekend since winning the leadership.
If she can find Bravermann's resignation letter tucked into the back of an office sofa then she gets the treble.
How many defections would have to happen for it to start to be a negative for the Tories?
I don’t know the number, but the Tories want to shed the skin of the party that was in charge for 14 years and the defections of old timers helps that. There is a reason Starmer always goes back to ‘14 years’ at PMQs. If Kemi can have a front bench of people untarnished from that period, I think that will help her. I’ve said it before, but I think the Tories look younger and more energetic than Reform, although Jenrick was helpful in that regard.
Badenoch, Katie Lam, and Laura Trott seem like a decent front for a revitalised party. Reform seem a bit old to me now
That only works if you have enough MPs left to form a front bench. It's all very well saying that the Tories would be better off without this person or that but they need to have some people left.
But still, you'd generally expect the younger politicians to be more likely to switch, those who were ambitious and saw that only the new party could fulfill their ambitions.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Top tip: during the World Economic Forum, the ski slopes of Davos-Klosters are deserted. It's the best time of year to ski some of Europe's premier ski slopes. The only problem is that the hotels are all booked out, so you'll need to get a train in with your ski gear.
Advice for the common man
I skiied there in 2000/2001, just a few years out of college, during the WEF. My friend Greg and I stayed in a youth hostel and had an absolute whale of a time. And in the bars of Davos (where we paid 3x as much for a beer as we paid for a bed), we heard lots of assistants being very rude about their masters.
Probably because many of their masters treated them like dirt and weren't very nice.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Be great if everyone just ignored the big clown, just turned away every time the sad git came near.
Another week, another dollar. I am going to see a flat where someone was murdered this morning.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
Have you ever noticed that everyone has priority booking now. And access to airport lounges. It's a study in how to part people from their money for next to no cost. Easyjet must be advisors to a number of political parties.
Personally, I wouldn't miss any of them, but I'm not sure there's a future for Reform as a purely faith/flag/family National Popular Conservative party.
If they can replace the Tories there is. They seem to be dropping any pretence to more general appeal, instead being the Tories 'done right', and about how bad all legacy parties are (apart from all the ex-Tories), which is a gamble i didn't think they'd make until after the May elections.
Maybe areas being delayed persuaded them it was time to just drop the act now?
Perhaps. Though the other possibility is that events bounced both of them into jumping sooner than the planned. Jenrick by being caught printing a speech out and Rosindell by having his plan reach the ears of a teenage tweeter.
Lads- if your plan is nefarious, keep it in your head until you are ready to enact it.
Gauke’s measured analysis of the situation on ConHome (yes, really) is worth a read:
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
Seems extremely unlikely.
While any given Chinese announcement or statistic has to be treated with a large pinch of salt, there seems to be a school of thought that China's massive economic development can be downplayed because their numbers are untrustworthy.
That's just delusion.
I'm assuming your suggestion is satirical rather than serious.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
Neil's problem seems to the that the answer to the question "Do you know who I am?" is, increasingly, "No".
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Top tip: during the World Economic Forum, the ski slopes of Davos-Klosters are deserted. It's the best time of year to ski some of Europe's premier ski slopes. The only problem is that the hotels are all booked out, so you'll need to get a train in with your ski gear.
Even topper tip:
Visit Davos and Klosters in the summer. It is much warmer and there's no snow about, so you can enjoy some hill walking.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
I know stats can be easily fiddled but if their population is hundreds of millions less than stated it would blow my mind.
It would imply a monumental amount of food waste, for example, or they would have to be fiddling food-related statistics to match the population statistics.
It's much more likely that the one-child policy was only ever applied unevenly, and open to corruption, plus of course people not understanding things like the lag between births and population growth, particularly when you also have rapidly improving life expectancy.
Another week, another dollar. I am going to see a flat where someone was murdered this morning.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
It is difficult to ignore the American Caligula, and perhaps dangerous to do so.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
I know stats can be easily fiddled but if their population is hundreds of millions less than stated it would blow my mind.
Yes it would be totally crazy.
But the empty cities are real, and there’s dozens of them. One explanation would be that the population stats were wrong and the builders never knew, they just kept building towers to generate economic activity.
We know they’ve been doing serious currency manipulation for decades, printing money seemingly at will while not formally devaluing the currency, and relying on very few imports priced in dollars beyond O&G.
Another week, another dollar. I am going to see a flat where someone was murdered this morning.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
How did the pretending it's not happening approach work in the early years of the 20thC, or in the 1930s ?
I don't think it fanciful to think that's likely where we are all over again.
If it was about one man, as it largely was during his first administration, you might have a point. That, though, is no longer the case. You now have an entire US administration apparently committed to remaking the world order.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
I'd be annoyed if i paid for VIP service and got a less than stellar experience, but his tone could use some work.
Another week, another dollar. I am going to see a flat where someone was murdered this morning.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
It is difficult to ignore the American Caligula, and perhaps dangerous to do so.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
Have you ever noticed that everyone has priority booking now. And access to airport lounges. It's a study in how to part people from their money for next to no cost. Easyjet must be advisors to a number of political parties.
There's a TV ad for one holiday company that features an obnoxious family getting complimentary lounge access.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
You write like that’s a good thing, rather than a scene from the Hunger Games
Another week, another dollar. I am going to see a flat where someone was murdered this morning.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
I think people did, which might in part explain his additional efforts to become unignorable.
It's depressing and exhausting. I just want to natter about by-elections, damn it!
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
I know stats can be easily fiddled but if their population is hundreds of millions less than stated it would blow my mind.
Yes it would be totally crazy.
But the empty cities are real, and there’s dozens of them. One explanation would be that the population stats were wrong and the builders never knew, they just kept building towers to generate economic activity.
We know they’ve been doing serious currency manipulation for decades, printing money seemingly at will while not formally devaluing the currency, and relying on very few imports priced in dollars beyond O&G.
Speculative bubbles leading to oversupply is a standard feature of capitalism. It's made worse in a system like China where the market is manipulated for various reasons.
You're kinda suggesting that the market operated perfectly - with the only exception that the population statistics were fiddled. That's not very plausible.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
I know stats can be easily fiddled but if their population is hundreds of millions less than stated it would blow my mind.
It would imply a monumental amount of food waste, for example, or they would have to be fiddling food-related statistics to match the population statistics.
It's much more likely that the one-child policy was only ever applied unevenly, and open to corruption, plus of course people not understanding things like the lag between births and population growth, particularly when you also have rapidly improving life expectancy.
What seems more clear is they want to improve the birthrate, and like everywhere else that has tried, is finding it difficult. Turns out adusting tax incentives and the like doesn't instantly boost births like turning on a tap.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
Seems extremely unlikely.
While any given Chinese announcement or statistic has to be treated with a large pinch of salt, there seems to be a school of thought that China's massive economic development can be downplayed because their numbers are untrustworthy.
That's just delusion.
I'm assuming your suggestion is satirical rather than serious.
Genuine story, there’s been discussion of it for a few years, that the sums simply don’t add up.
Another week, another dollar. I am going to see a flat where someone was murdered this morning.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
How did the pretending it's not happening approach work in the early years of the 20thC, or in the 1930s ?
I don't think it fanciful to think that's likely where we are all over again.
If it was about one man, as it largely was during his first administration, you might have a point. That, though, is no longer the case. You now have an entire US administration apparently committed to remaking the world order.
If anything, it's under reported.
People forget some in the last administration were restrained, or even pushed back sometimes, which is why nearly all of them are gone. This time there were detailed plans to erase institutional independence and harness every lever of power.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Is that above or below the projections? It sounds like an almighty population crash gathering pace, but I'd have to look at the details.
For context, annual births in China peaked at around 30 million in the 1960s and was consistently above 20 million until the mid-1990s.
It has now fallen below 8 million, and continues to fall quickly.
The large population fall follows this as surely as day follows night from here.
For additional context there were just under 600k births in the UK in 2024, just under 4 million births in the EU in 2024, and about 3.6 million births in the US in 2024.
So, possibly more babies born in the US + EU + UK than in China.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Top tip: during the World Economic Forum, the ski slopes of Davos-Klosters are deserted. It's the best time of year to ski some of Europe's premier ski slopes. The only problem is that the hotels are all booked out, so you'll need to get a train in with your ski gear.
Even topper tip:
Visit Davos and Klosters in the summer. It is much warmer and there's no snow about, so you can enjoy some hill walking.
And a warm welcome in half-empty bars and restaurants.
And chair lifts that hoist you to 10,000 feet so you can walk downhill all day.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
I know stats can be easily fiddled but if their population is hundreds of millions less than stated it would blow my mind.
It would imply a monumental amount of food waste, for example, or they would have to be fiddling food-related statistics to match the population statistics.
It's much more likely that the one-child policy was only ever applied unevenly, and open to corruption, plus of course people not understanding things like the lag between births and population growth, particularly when you also have rapidly improving life expectancy.
It's quite possible the numbers are out by a few tens of millions, but for a population of 1.3/1.4 billion, that's a minor discrepancy.
The fact that they are now reporting record low birth levels is of far more significance.
In the news this morning, China registers the lowest number of births since .. 1949.
Are we being prepared for the truth of the recent rumour that the Chinese population is less than half what they have been saying until recently?
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
Seems extremely unlikely.
While any given Chinese announcement or statistic has to be treated with a large pinch of salt, there seems to be a school of thought that China's massive economic development can be downplayed because their numbers are untrustworthy.
That's just delusion.
I'm assuming your suggestion is satirical rather than serious.
Genuine story, there’s been discussion of it for a few years, that the sums simply don’t add up.
Fiddling the figures by ~10% as in the Reuters article is certainly possible. (Though of course in earlier times the incentives would have been to under-report population). And it would be interesting to know what the uncertainty bounds the ONS put on UK population estimates. They might be larger than you think.
But the population of China is not half the reported figure. Not yet, anyway. Give it a few decades and it will get there via the population crash that is gathering pace.
The mad fucker has sent this to the Norwegian ambassador.
“Dear Jonas: Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America. Denmark cannot protect that land from Russia or China, and why do they have a “right of ownership” anyway? There are no written documents, it’s only that a boat landed there hundreds of years ago, but we had boats landing there, also. I have done more for NATO than any other person since its founding, and now, NATO should do something for the United States. The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland. Thank you! President DJT”
That’s quite a statement.
Davos will be interesting.
Top tip: during the World Economic Forum, the ski slopes of Davos-Klosters are deserted. It's the best time of year to ski some of Europe's premier ski slopes. The only problem is that the hotels are all booked out, so you'll need to get a train in with your ski gear.
Even topper tip:
Visit Davos and Klosters in the summer. It is much warmer and there's no snow about, so you can enjoy some hill walking.
And a warm welcome in half-empty bars and restaurants.
And chair lifts that hoist you to 10,000 feet so you can walk downhill all day.
I drive the pass to Davos - the one with the car-carrying train beneath so you can still go that way when the pass is blocked by snow - most summers (or actually spring or autumn), but have never stopped to hang about there.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
You write like that’s a good thing, rather than a scene from the Hunger Games
Its quite funny really. Those who spend so much time railing that the elite ignore the common man very much want to be treated as elite so that they can ignore the common man.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
You write like that’s a good thing, rather than a scene from the Hunger Games
It’s a very nice experience indeed, for those willing to pay the money. Sadly that’s not me.
Even Emirates economy is some orders of magnitude away from the experience of Ryanair or Wizzair.
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
The thing is that most other airlines treat their VIP customers as VIPs, boarding the plane ahead of the unwashed is exactly one of the reasons you build up status with an airline.
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
You write like that’s a good thing, rather than a scene from the Hunger Games
Its quite funny really. Those who spend so much time railing that the elite ignore the common man very much want to be treated as elite so that they can ignore the common man.
Anyone romanticising about the common man hasn't met many. Like how privileged revolutionaries rail against working class apathy.
Actually i only half believe that. But i enjoy the Pratchett quote which is like how the poor are not better than the rich and powerful they just don't have wealth and power (duh) hence trying to be on their side.
If this were true, it would seem the height of folly to publicise that the sting had worked on French TV.
Ukraine and US have both officially denied the story, blaming Russian propaganda aimed at sabotaging the peace process, adding that intelligence co-operation is unaffected.
The extraordinary meeting of EU leaders to discuss Greenland could take physically as soon as Thursday, 22 January, according to EU officials.
It will take place in Brussels after leaders attend the WEF in Davos.
By Thursday the whole meeting could be moot - that leaves 3 days for Trump to open up the gates of the American base there and take over..
Although comedic, it has been pointed out (here?) that Steve Bannon's way of doing things was to just constantly hit the newscycle with the next thing you're going to do and do it.
The EU deciding to have an 'emergency' response on Thursday is, as you say, three days too late.
Remember when Trump was imposing tariffs like crazy last year, changing them by the hour. Eventually. the EU reacted but rowed back after Trump 'cancelled' them. Which of course he didn't. He'd simply rowed back the latest (third?) announcement whilst the EU was still reacting to the first.
The EU needs an answer before lunchtime, which they can't do because they're too bureacratic and slow. They're announcing a meeting to have a meeting next Thursday, meanwhile Trump has already moved on and is planning to move the 11th Airborne to......... (Minnesota or Greenland)?
The new BA tier points structure sets impossible hurdles even for frequent flyers regularly using business or first. I have always planned my extensive and expensive global travel through London to use BA. These days are over. I will now use whatever airline is most convenient and competitive. It will make travel planning easier. I can make more use of other airlines whose business and first seats are far superior to BA. Hello Emirates, Qatar, Singapore, Etihad etc. I have BA gold for life so it no longer matters how much I use BA. I also have Group 0 status which is meant to allow priority boarding. But, like yesterday in Nice they could not even be bothered to call it. Same in London for plane to NYC. BA can’t even organise an orderly queue at the gate these days , something you’d think would come naturally to a British airline given the Brit propensity to queue. BA now run by numpties who put no value on long-standing, big-spending loyal customers, of which I’ve been one for 55 years!! They can’t even get the little things right. I flew London-NYC yesterday in First. WiFi meant to be free and I needed it for work. But free wifi didn’t work. So I had to pay for it. The lovely crew embarrassed by the poor service. I remember when my friend John King was the boss how proud the crews were to work for BA. Long gone. Crews are ashamed. No idea who runs BA these days. But he/she clearly useless. They’ve inherited the dead hand and cheapskate service of Willie Walsh, whose inability to determine what quality service meant began the long-running decline. He really was useless. Crew moral is very low as a result. Passengers see it. Good crew people, badly led. They lost any pride on working for what was once ‘the world’s favourite airline’ — then a matter of pride for staff and country and passengers. Now BA is just another middling airline over charging over the odds for a level of service barely above the cheaper budget airlines. A business model with suicide written all over it."
And how was staff morale broken? Relentlessly cutting pay, something the likes of Andrew Neil would have said was inevitable and desirable and who would have opposed the cabin crew strikes that tried to stop it.
Let’s not over-read this. It seems pretty obvious from Neil’s rant that he’s just got the hump from not being allowed to board the plane as a celebrity, in advance of all us the unwashed.
Have you ever noticed that everyone has priority booking now. And access to airport lounges. It's a study in how to part people from their money for next to no cost. Easyjet must be advisors to a number of political parties.
There's a TV ad for one holiday company that features an obnoxious family getting complimentary lounge access.
Makes Spoons look upmarket.
To Quote W.S. Gilbert "When everyone is somebody, then no one’s anybody."
The shocking thing about the China birth rate is it is still higher than South Korea.
The population chart there from 1950-2100 is going to look insane
It obviously takes a couple of decades to impact the workforce, and in the short term increases the workforce as fewer parents needing to work part time etc.
We are probably just a couple of decades off countries competing for immigrants rather than trying to exclude them. The countries unable to attract immigrants will decline even faster due to net emmigration.
Personally, I wouldn't miss any of them, but I'm not sure there's a future for Reform as a purely faith/flag/family National Popular Conservative party.
If they can replace the Tories there is. They seem to be dropping any pretence to more general appeal, instead being the Tories 'done right', and about how bad all legacy parties are (apart from all the ex-Tories), which is a gamble i didn't think they'd make until after the May elections.
Maybe areas being delayed persuaded them it was time to just drop the act now?
Perhaps. Though the other possibility is that events bounced both of them into jumping sooner than the planned. Jenrick by being caught printing a speech out and Rosindell by having his plan reach the ears of a teenage tweeter.
Lads- if your plan is nefarious, keep it in your head until you are ready to enact it.
Gauke’s measured analysis of the situation on ConHome (yes, really) is worth a read:
Matthew Parris has written a similar article Kemi Badenoch must seize one-nation opportunity
Nobody sane ever loved the Conservative Party and nobody sane ever should. But over many decades conservatism had found a place in the popular imagination — deserved or not — as businesslike and unsentimental, prudent with taxpayers’ money, competent to make the economy tick, suspicious of wild ideas and unafraid of boring common sense. “Steady on” was an eminently Tory instinct.
Well this is embarrassing! We need to think about a new Labour leader and Prime Minister. He's a decent man but we need an altogether different approach. We need someone who is saying the things Ed Davey is saying. We're being blown around like a kite in a hurricane. The only Labour figure who has the bottle and the brain is Emily Thornberry. Starmer can be reassigned the job of sorting out the detail of the UK rejoining the EU which must happen as soon as possible and without caveats
(Chris Packham. Very good on Radio 4. Definitely one of the good guys)
The shocking thing about the China birth rate is it is still higher than South Korea.
The population chart there from 1950-2100 is going to look insane
That's to assume it doesn't change over the next decade. My own guess (and it is a guess) is that immigration will increasingly be used by S Korea as a solution to the problem - which of course will bring a few other problems along with it.
If this were true, it would seem the height of folly to publicise that the sting had worked on French TV.
Ukraine and US have both officially denied the story, blaming Russian propaganda aimed at sabotaging the peace process, adding that intelligence co-operation is unaffected.
Yes but even so you would hardly expect either to come out and say Mea Culpa
“Across Westminster, people are desperately talking up Badenoch. This simply isn’t reflected in polls on voting intention, and the party is heading towards oblivion.”
Comments
Lads- if your plan is nefarious, keep it in your head until you are ready to enact it.
These things used to be done really in secret, very few people involved, no phones, messages passed physically via couriers, meetings in random houses arriving in unusual cars, so no-one knew what was happening until it was officially announced. Douglas Carswell wrote half a book about it.
Iberia will stiff you too.
Jenrick fits that archetype, but do the others?
I've travelled that line on one of those.
That for decades they had a one child policy, but the population was somehow growing at an average of more than three children per woman.
But my news feed, even my PB, is utterly obsessed with the insane buffoon in the White House. I do not remember anything even close to it. All US Presidents can lead the news, especially when they are invading places. But this is utterly incessant. It's unhealthy, not just for Trump whose narcissism is out of control, but for our entire political discourse. We need this to stop. Maybe we should just try ignoring him for a while?
https://conservativehome.com/2026/01/19/david-gauke-i-got-on-with-robert-jenrick-personally-but-his-departure-gives-the-conservatives-an-opportunity/
If you’re flying Emirates First Class, you won’t see any passengers who aren’t also flying First Class or have Platinum status, from when their car drops you at the set down point on the road outside the airport until you’re on the plane. Totally segregated through the whole process.
While any given Chinese announcement or statistic has to be treated with a large pinch of salt, there seems to be a school of thought that China's massive economic development can be downplayed because their numbers are untrustworthy.
That's just delusion.
I'm assuming your suggestion is satirical rather than serious.
Visit Davos and Klosters in the summer. It is much warmer and there's no snow about, so you can enjoy some hill walking.
It's much more likely that the one-child policy was only ever applied unevenly, and open to corruption, plus of course people not understanding things like the lag between births and population growth, particularly when you also have rapidly improving life expectancy.
The Praetorian guard need to act.
But the empty cities are real, and there’s dozens of them. One explanation would be that the population stats were wrong and the builders never knew, they just kept building towers to generate economic activity.
We know they’ve been doing serious currency manipulation for decades, printing money seemingly at will while not formally devaluing the currency, and relying on very few imports priced in dollars beyond O&G.
I don't think it fanciful to think that's likely where we are all over again.
If it was about one man, as it largely was during his first administration, you might have a point.
That, though, is no longer the case.
You now have an entire US administration apparently committed to remaking the world order.
If anything, it's under reported.
Makes Spoons look upmarket.
It's depressing and exhausting. I just want to natter about by-elections, damn it!
You're kinda suggesting that the market operated perfectly - with the only exception that the population statistics were fiddled. That's not very plausible.
It has now fallen below 8 million, and continues to fall quickly.
The large population fall follows this as surely as day follows night from here.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/researcher-questions-chinas-population-data-says-it-may-be-lower-2021-12-03/
https://www.newsweek.com/china-hiding-population-secret-1926834
https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3018829/chinas-population-numbers-are-almost-certainly-inflated-hide
More recent analysis of the suggestion: did a former premier let slip that the population is a lot less than reported?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRVaBkLEkh0
It is not just Trump.
So, possibly more babies born in the US + EU + UK than in China.
And chair lifts that hoist you to 10,000 feet so you can walk downhill all day.
The fact that they are now reporting record low birth levels is of far more significance.
https://bsky.app/profile/monovoce.bsky.social/post/3mcqhrpskks2h
https://unn.ua/en/news/did-ukraine-allegedly-provide-the-us-with-distorted-intelligence-the-gur-rejected-fakes-from-kremlin-bot-farms
Featuring an overnight lorry demolishing a pedestrian bridge across a highway.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/2012985741689655365
But the population of China is not half the reported figure. Not yet, anyway. Give it a few decades and it will get there via the population crash that is gathering pace.
As in you'll be jailed, arrested or worse unless you have at least one child.
You'd have to do something like only let women go to university once they'd had a child, and pay their tuition fees if they'd had two.
The population chart there from 1950-2100 is going to look insane
Even Emirates economy is some orders of magnitude away from the experience of Ryanair or Wizzair.
Actually i only half believe that. But i enjoy the Pratchett quote which is like how the poor are not better than the rich and powerful they just don't have wealth and power (duh) hence trying to be on their side.
The EU deciding to have an 'emergency' response on Thursday is, as you say, three days too late.
Remember when Trump was imposing tariffs like crazy last year, changing them by the hour. Eventually. the EU reacted but rowed back after Trump 'cancelled' them. Which of course he didn't. He'd simply rowed back the latest (third?) announcement whilst the EU was still reacting to the first.
The EU needs an answer before lunchtime, which they can't do because they're too bureacratic and slow. They're announcing a meeting to have a meeting next Thursday, meanwhile Trump has already moved on and is planning to move the 11th Airborne to......... (Minnesota or Greenland)?
The EU is so far behind the curve here.
https://x.com/nickschifrin/status/2013107018081489006
Or on Elon Musk's twitter feed.
It will be the third largest economy and pulling far away from its nearest rivals before long.
I expect it will be its own geopolitical sphere of influence, rather than tied to another.
NEW THREAD
We are probably just a couple of decades off countries competing for immigrants rather than trying to exclude them. The countries unable to attract immigrants will decline even faster due to net emmigration.
Kemi Badenoch must seize one-nation opportunity
Nobody sane ever loved the Conservative Party and nobody sane ever should. But over many decades conservatism had found a place in the popular imagination — deserved or not — as businesslike and unsentimental, prudent with taxpayers’ money, competent to make the economy tick, suspicious of wild ideas and unafraid of boring common sense. “Steady on” was an eminently Tory instinct.
https://www.thetimes.com/article/26e735be-88f3-4c3f-9439-d9e943e6e534?shareToken=e8c9478e715570b08df729958952d541
Well this is embarrassing! We need to think about a new Labour leader and Prime Minister. He's a decent man but we need an altogether different approach. We need someone who is saying the things Ed Davey is saying. We're being blown around like a kite in a hurricane. The only Labour figure who has the bottle and the brain is Emily Thornberry. Starmer can be reassigned the job of sorting out the detail of the UK rejoining the EU which must happen as soon as possible and without caveats
(Chris Packham. Very good on Radio 4. Definitely one of the good guys)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F39M2mqm7og
My own guess (and it is a guess) is that immigration will increasingly be used by S Korea as a solution to the problem - which of course will bring a few other problems along with it.
“Across Westminster, people are desperately talking up Badenoch. This simply isn’t reflected in polls on voting intention, and the party is heading towards oblivion.”
https://x.com/jamesjohnson252/status/2013081004085219394?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q