Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
Almost at the fiftieth anniversary of Blame Thatcher. How long can they drag it out? I assume this is aimed at the Party Faithful.
The blame attaches more to her successors who adopted bits of her dogma blindly (which obviously includes the Blair/Brown era).
Thatcher undoubtedly made mistakes. Her policies which directly disastrous for the north of England.
But she also did quite a lot of necessary stuff, and I don't think she did all that much which wasn't capable of remediation, had her successors diagnosed and addressed where she went wrong. The reason it can still be "dragged out" is that they have never been addressed.
Then there is the difference between Thatcher the reality and Thatcher the myth.
Industrial areas of 1970s northern England were a lot closer to Kes than the 'new Jerusalem'.
Again with the strawmanning. No one is saying they were; I was rather pointing out the dramatic economic decline of the north relative to the south east, since the 1980s.
That process had started in the 1880s not the 1980s.
Coal mining in the UK had been in absolute decline from 1913.
Followed by other industrial sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding.
The BBC was making documentaries about deindustrialisation and unemployment in the early 1960s:
HARTLEPOOL 1963. DOCUMENTARY. WAITING FOR WORK. PART 1
The US is getting huge data centres up and running as quickly as six months after acquiring the sites.
Um no - they can get the sites up but they can’t get the power to actually switch them on.
Which is why the backlog for large gas turbines is currently 5+ years and various companies are looking at finding anything they can re-enable.
As I’ve pointed out in the past the biggest AI hurdle at the moment is actually getting a large enough power supply to meet the energy demands
It's even worse than that. There are stories of companies hoarding wafers, that is they can't get them cut, tested, packaged, and assembled into boards they can put in a rack. Given how rapidly the hardware depreciates, spending maybe tens of billions of dollars on hardware that is going to sit idle is incredibly wasteful. I guess the logic is that the competition will run into cash flow problems first, and then you "win".
The AI bros have convinced themselves the critical factor in who wins the market is compute power. If you have significantly more compute than the competition then you win, because you can scale and they can't. Accepting that, the logical course is, as you point out, to buy as much compute as possible even if you can't use it right now it still deprives the competition.
But the people behind this are deeply stupid. Capturing the market is worthless if you can't make money. AI is currently not profitable outside of a few niches, and each new model needs more and more compute, costs more per query than the last one. The economics don't work.
OpenAI for example is trying to build one of the biggest technology infrastructure projects in history with revenue not much higher than Spotify.
A familiar pattern, if you've been following police shootings in the US since... a long time back*
That is, a spray of bullets, initially. What seems to happen is that they start blasting without thinking or getting a sight picture etc. Then 1-2 shots that actually kill - after a second or so, they actually start aiming.
*My eldest daughter asked why I had Rage Against The Machine in my music library since the 90s....
I have often mused over the actual effectiveness of giving every copper a pistol like the U.S. does. Assuming they don’t focus all of their training on marksmanship, their effective range with it will look a lot like mine. 20ft max, in controlled conditions. So all you’re really using it for is close in self defence, and you can forget about it helping you with properly tooled up criminals. Basically, you might as well just have CS spray and tasers, and that way you will kill fewer people in error.
See Norther Ireland and the PSNI
Who despite being routinely armed and in a situation where there is real violence about, manage shoot nearly nobody.
A familiar pattern, if you've been following police shootings in the US since... a long time back*
That is, a spray of bullets, initially. What seems to happen is that they start blasting without thinking or getting a sight picture etc. Then 1-2 shots that actually kill - after a second or so, they actually start aiming.
*My eldest daughter asked why I had Rage Against The Machine in my music library since the 90s....
I have often mused over the actual effectiveness of giving every copper a pistol like the U.S. does. Assuming they don’t focus all of their training on marksmanship, their effective range with it will look a lot like mine. 20ft max, in controlled conditions. So all you’re really using it for is close in self defence, and you can forget about it helping you with properly tooled up criminals. Basically, you might as well just have CS spray and tasers, and that way you will kill fewer people in error.
See Norther Ireland and the PSNI
Who despite being routinely armed and in a situation where there is real violence about, manage shoot nearly nobody.
What’s this story about the NI soldiers legislation, is Starmer going to try and throw a bunch of pensioner former soldiers under the bus again, but Gerry Adams remains free?
Tory MP Simon Hoare has given a very vivid quote about Donald Trump's comments on Nato allies, which could actually be used in many contexts about the US president:
"Frankly Trump makes my flesh creep and my stomach turn. Where are his advisors? Where is his nurse? Where is his sense of shame?"
'Makes my flesh creep.....' as do his sycophants. Everyone everywhere is talking about Mark Carney. That's good for Canada. Starmer is just another flunky
The other day we were talking about Neville Chamberlain. My view - which I think others share - is that when Neville Chamberlain made his speech following the Munich agreement, he had a very clear and accurate idea of the sort of person Hitler was and his likely plans; he knew his 'piece of paper' was worthless. He believed (possibly wrongly, it turned out, but that takes nothing away from him) that Germany's ability to fight a war was in 1938 streets ahead of that of France and Britain. He took the (in my view, heroic) decision to sacrifice his reputation to buy the allis another 12-18 months to prepare for the war he knew was coming. But the point is, what was said and known about publicly was very different to what was going on behind the scenes.
The point here is that we - rightly - don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We would hope that Starmer's palliative public pronouncements are being accompanied by a shedload of behind the scenes work to prepare for what comes when the USA leaves NATO. It's not particularly to Britain's advantage to hurry this along by having our elected leaders saying what we really think of Donald Trump. Donald Trupm is saying what he really thinks of other countries, and it's not really gaining America any benefits.
The evidence from diaries etc was that Chamberlain thought that "Giving Peace A Chance" was worth it, even if it was an absurdly long shot.
After the Anschluss -
"It is perfectly evident now that force is the only argument Germany understands and that "collective security" cannot offer any prospect of preventing such events until it can show a visible force of overwhelming strength backed by the determination to use it. ... Heaven knows I don't want to get back to alliances but if Germany continues to behave as she has done lately she may drive us to it."
And the dynamics are different, we already have v the alliance we are coordinating with closely.
The question why doesn't Starmer talk like Carney misses that the members of the Mid Power Alliance have different roles and at different times, plus they also have to represent national interest.
Sometimes it is Starmer who brings Trump in to face the Mid-Power collective. When we put boots on the ground in Greenland (unless our soldier is one legged), and got tariffs threatened and acted one of the harsh voices, Meloni, who was outside the tariff threat, played the role. Macron did it a few years ago with Putin. All got slagged but sometimes you take one for the team and Starmer seems to be good at that here.
On trade talks, you know, we actually voted to deal with Donald Trump separately and Brexiteers slagging Starmer off for doing just that rather than being in the collective are the most elephantine hypocrites. When it falls through because Trump spins in another direction then, yes, with Trump this shit happens all the time, put a new set of baby reins on him for a bit till he slips them again.
Starmer isn't Carney and if he tried doing the Carney role it wouldn't land. If you want that from a British PM there's always Hilary Benn.
Off Topic but you know all those bikes that get nicked. Well the DWP have noticed.
1. This Upper Tribunal appeal, in a nutshell, is about whether a claimant who buys and sells stolen bikes on ‘an industrial scale’ is entitled to income-related employment and support allowance (ESA). More specifically, the questions raised by the appeal are whether, for the purposes of a claim for income-related ESA, (i) the activity of buying and selling stolen bikes counts as ‘work’; and (ii) the moneys received from that activity qualify as ‘income’.
2. Putting it another way, as did the District Tribunal Judge when giving the Secretary of State permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal, “these appeals essentially turn on the issue as to whether a person engaged in criminal activity (handling stolen goods) which is fuelled by substance abuse and addiction issues can be said to be self-employed for the purposes of permitted work whilst in receipt of Income Related Employment and Support Allowance.”
3. The position of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was that the claimant was still engaged in a trade, albeit an illicit one, and so was to all intents and purposes a self-employed person. Furthermore, the DWP argued, the cash payments he received qualified as ‘income’ under the ESA regime. In short, however, the First-tier Tribunal (FTT) found that the claimant’s criminal activity did not amount to ‘work’ and neither did his cash receipts count as ‘income’ under the relevant regulations.
To be filed under Bureaucracy empire strikes back. They agreed he was self-employed and the income did count for benefit calculation purposes. Not sure of the HMRC's position yet.
Tory MP Simon Hoare has given a very vivid quote about Donald Trump's comments on Nato allies, which could actually be used in many contexts about the US president:
"Frankly Trump makes my flesh creep and my stomach turn. Where are his advisors? Where is his nurse? Where is his sense of shame?"
'Makes my flesh creep.....' as do his sycophants. Everyone everywhere is talking about Mark Carney. That's good for Canada. Starmer is just another flunky
The other day we were talking about Neville Chamberlain. My view - which I think others share - is that when Neville Chamberlain made his speech following the Munich agreement, he had a very clear and accurate idea of the sort of person Hitler was and his likely plans; he knew his 'piece of paper' was worthless. He believed (possibly wrongly, it turned out, but that takes nothing away from him) that Germany's ability to fight a war was in 1938 streets ahead of that of France and Britain. He took the (in my view, heroic) decision to sacrifice his reputation to buy the allis another 12-18 months to prepare for the war he knew was coming. But the point is, what was said and known about publicly was very different to what was going on behind the scenes.
The point here is that we - rightly - don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We would hope that Starmer's palliative public pronouncements are being accompanied by a shedload of behind the scenes work to prepare for what comes when the USA leaves NATO. It's not particularly to Britain's advantage to hurry this along by having our elected leaders saying what we really think of Donald Trump. Donald Trupm is saying what he really thinks of other countries, and it's not really gaining America any benefits.
That would be nice to believe, but what evidence there is regarding defence procurement is that no such thing is happening. Since last summer's defence review, for example, this is about the only major capital project announced (an much needed upgrade to the radar of 40 Typhoons). And re-announced.
Glad to see ECRS Mk2 moving forward, but this is the second time in six months that a minister has been to Edinburgh to announce funding for this radar (this latest contract includes the funding from the last announcement, BTW). Really hope the government has more to offer than perpetually reannouncing this radar upgrade... https://x.com/GarethJennings3/status/2014387351695298991
The tone of the PR guff was notable with the overwhelming focus on how many jobs this would "support". It's an exercise in corporate welfare with any increase in defence capability being a bonus if it eventuates.
This will be the most expensive fast jet radar ever produced by a considerable margin because the production run is tiny. It will end up being 4-6x the price of the F-35 radar.
As I mentioned earlier borrowing was well down in December as well and sales were up in December, albeit still down on the quarter. It is a fairly consistent strand of better economic data. I went for 1.1% growth this year in the competition. Already beginning to wonder if that is a tad low...
Tory MP Simon Hoare has given a very vivid quote about Donald Trump's comments on Nato allies, which could actually be used in many contexts about the US president:
"Frankly Trump makes my flesh creep and my stomach turn. Where are his advisors? Where is his nurse? Where is his sense of shame?"
'Makes my flesh creep.....' as do his sycophants. Everyone everywhere is talking about Mark Carney. That's good for Canada. Starmer is just another flunky
The other day we were talking about Neville Chamberlain. My view - which I think others share - is that when Neville Chamberlain made his speech following the Munich agreement, he had a very clear and accurate idea of the sort of person Hitler was and his likely plans; he knew his 'piece of paper' was worthless. He believed (possibly wrongly, it turned out, but that takes nothing away from him) that Germany's ability to fight a war was in 1938 streets ahead of that of France and Britain. He took the (in my view, heroic) decision to sacrifice his reputation to buy the allis another 12-18 months to prepare for the war he knew was coming. But the point is, what was said and known about publicly was very different to what was going on behind the scenes.
The point here is that we - rightly - don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We would hope that Starmer's palliative public pronouncements are being accompanied by a shedload of behind the scenes work to prepare for what comes when the USA leaves NATO. It's not particularly to Britain's advantage to hurry this along by having our elected leaders saying what we really think of Donald Trump. Donald Trupm is saying what he really thinks of other countries, and it's not really gaining America any benefits.
That would be nice to believe, but what evidence there is regarding defence procurement is that no such thing is happening. Since last summer's defence review, for example, this is about the only major capital project announced (an much needed upgrade to the radar of 40 Typhoons). And re-announced.
Glad to see ECRS Mk2 moving forward, but this is the second time in six months that a minister has been to Edinburgh to announce funding for this radar (this latest contract includes the funding from the last announcement, BTW). Really hope the government has more to offer than perpetually reannouncing this radar upgrade... https://x.com/GarethJennings3/status/2014387351695298991
Just doing 40 all suggests another instance of the British disease of fleets within fleets of aircraft.
It's rather that the older airframes aren't worth the expense of upgrading. Which is a LOT of money.
I don't think it's widely appreciated just how little money there is for procurement (absent increases in the defence budget).
The MOD has the largest capital budget of any single government department (£23bn), but once you strip out the nuclear deterrent, defence R&D, and "other" costs (war pension benefits programme costs, the costs of non-departmental public bodies, and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund), only 30% of that is available for new weapons.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
Almost at the fiftieth anniversary of Blame Thatcher. How long can they drag it out? I assume this is aimed at the Party Faithful.
The blame attaches more to her successors who adopted bits of her dogma blindly (which obviously includes the Blair/Brown era).
Thatcher undoubtedly made mistakes. Her policies which directly disastrous for the north of England.
But she also did quite a lot of necessary stuff, and I don't think she did all that much which wasn't capable of remediation, had her successors diagnosed and addressed where she went wrong. The reason it can still be "dragged out" is that they have never been addressed.
Then there is the difference between Thatcher the reality and Thatcher the myth.
Industrial areas of 1970s northern England were a lot closer to Kes than the 'new Jerusalem'.
Again with the strawmanning. No one is saying they were; I was rather pointing out the dramatic economic decline of the north relative to the south east, since the 1980s.
That process had started in the 1880s not the 1980s.
Coal mining in the UK had been in absolute decline from 1913.
Followed by other industrial sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding.
The BBC was making documentaries about deindustrialisation and unemployment in the early 1960s:
HARTLEPOOL 1963. DOCUMENTARY. WAITING FOR WORK. PART 1
Yes, I think many of our problems stem from being the first country to industrialise, thus we did it in a particularly brutal and chaotic way, we got locked into old technologies and we relied too heavily on the Empire as a captive market. As a result we have been in a period of relative industrial decline since the late 19th century. The 1980s were just one episode in that sorry story, albeit a particularly painful one. It's a sad story and there is no easy solution.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
There is much to not like about privatisation, but there was very much not to like about the state of state run stuff before the 1980's revolution. But you have to be older generation with a decent memory to remember how bad it could be.
You can't consider deindustrialisation without also considering the areas of economic activity that grew at the same time. It's like farming which is only a tiny % of GDP but still essential but we have grown rich in other ways. Industry remains essential and we have grown in other ways.
Austerity: State spending remains, and remained during the so called austerity period, gigantic; as did and does borrowing.
Brexit: The vote to leave left the future open to parliament to steer. If Burnham's party had focussed on joining with moderates to get a Norway/Swiss type deal, out of the political but in the economic union, things would be different.
The notion that we’d be better off if millions were still employed in mining, and low value manufacturing, competing against low wage economies, with nationalised industries sucking up massive subsidies, is for the birds.
I think it's only Farage who is actively in favour of returning to coal mining.
Presumably Farage is in favour of it because Trump is in favour of it.
Have you seen Coalie, the new US cartoon mascot for the fossil fuel industry?
But, maybe, US energy policy shouldn't be determined by the failing memories of a demented rapist.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard A China-Europe energy alliance could deliver a new world order
"China and Europe are reaching a modus vivendi of sorts over tariffs on electric vehicles. Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng was in Davos this week making sweet overtures to the Europeans and denouncing “the law of the jungle, where the strong bully the weak.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s hubristic cabinet was in nearby rooms acting like a pack of hyenas, dishing out insults, ridiculing all efforts to cut CO2 emissions and proclaiming the gospel of coal."
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
Almost at the fiftieth anniversary of Blame Thatcher. How long can they drag it out? I assume this is aimed at the Party Faithful.
The blame attaches more to her successors who adopted bits of her dogma blindly (which obviously includes the Blair/Brown era).
Thatcher undoubtedly made mistakes. Her policies which directly disastrous for the north of England.
But she also did quite a lot of necessary stuff, and I don't think she did all that much which wasn't capable of remediation, had her successors diagnosed and addressed where she went wrong. The reason it can still be "dragged out" is that they have never been addressed.
Then there is the difference between Thatcher the reality and Thatcher the myth.
Industrial areas of 1970s northern England were a lot closer to Kes than the 'new Jerusalem'.
Again with the strawmanning. No one is saying they were; I was rather pointing out the dramatic economic decline of the north relative to the south east, since the 1980s.
That process had started in the 1880s not the 1980s.
Coal mining in the UK had been in absolute decline from 1913.
Followed by other industrial sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding.
The BBC was making documentaries about deindustrialisation and unemployment in the early 1960s:
HARTLEPOOL 1963. DOCUMENTARY. WAITING FOR WORK. PART 1
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
We should be investing billions in Ukranian companies and technologies. There’s an actual war going on right now, but we are still talking about how to fight the last one.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
We should be investing billions in Ukranian companies and technologies. There’s an actual war going on right now, but we are still talking about how to fight the last one.
Or even the one before. We should be asking them for licences paid with a part of our production for their latest designs and develop these week by week as they seem to.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
We should be investing billions in Ukranian companies and technologies. There’s an actual war going on right now, but we are still talking about how to fight the last one.
Or even the one before. We should be asking them for licences paid in a part of our production for their latest designs and develop these week by week as they seem to.
Lol, as if the MoD would countenance such a thing.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
She suggests that the privatisation program just doesn't work. In order to make the services attractive to the private sector requires long contracts (greater than the electoral cycle) and once privatised, the companies are free to be late/inadequate/corrupt, and there is no workable command-and-control system any more. At this point Governments are reduced to begging (she calls this "bargaining games") the companies to just work pleeeeze.
She illustrates this by comparing the deteriorating of Government in the UK to the deterioration under the Soviet Union. This is provocative (and makes the book much longer than it needs to be) but it is a commanding analogy and illustrates one of the many problems of Thatcherism.
The right has not yet internalised that Thatcherism (privatisation, globalisation, deindustrialisation) really did fuck up the country and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It may have had its advantages at the time (let's concede that to show good faith) but the inheritance has broken the country.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
The curious bit is that much of it could have been done decades ago. But Doctrine.
See the BAe proposal for an anti tank rocket on a stand with a camera and a vehicle recognition system. The idea was a hidden, off route mine system that would only attack specified vehicles. 1986, IIRC
Just reading about the secret US effort to base hundreds of nuclear missiles in Greenland in the 1960s.
Although it didn't go ahead in the end for practical reasons, the US kept Denmark in ignorance of the plan for thirty years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm ..According to the documents published by Denmark in 1997, the U.S. Army's "Iceworm" missile network was outlined in a 1960 Army report titled "Strategic Value of the Greenland Icecap". If fully implemented, the project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles (130,000 km2), roughly three times the size of Denmark. The launch complex floors would be 28 feet (8.5 m) below the surface, with the missile launchers even deeper. Clusters of missile launch centers would be spaced 4 miles (6.4 km) apart. New tunnels were to be dug every year, so that after five years there would be thousands of firing positions, among which the several hundred missiles could be rotated. The US Army intended to deploy a shortened, two-stage version of the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman missile, a variant the Army proposed calling the Iceman...
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
She suggests that the privatisation program just doesn't work. In order to make the services attractive to the private sector requires long contracts (greater than the electoral cycle) and once privatised, the companies are free to be late/inadequate/corrupt, and there is no workable command-and-control system any more. At this point Governments are reduced to begging (she calls this "bargaining games") the companies to just work pleeeeze.
She illustrates this by comparing the deteriorating of Government in the UK to the deterioration under the Soviet Union. This is provocative (and makes the book much longer than it needs to be) but it is a commanding analogy and illustrates one of the many problems of Thatcherism.
The right has not yet internalised that Thatcherism (privatisation, globalisation, deindustrialisation) really did fuck up the country and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It may have had its advantages at the time (let's concede that to show good faith) but the inheritance has broken the country.
Does she distinguish between privatisation that worked and that which absolutely didn't ?
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
We should be investing billions in Ukranian companies and technologies. There’s an actual war going on right now, but we are still talking about how to fight the last one.
Or even the one before. We should be asking them for licences paid with a part of our production for their latest designs and develop these week by week as they seem to.
Since Germany massively stepped up its military aid to Ukraine, they have been doing quite a lot of that.
I don't think similar UK efforts are entirely absent, but the difference in resources is rather large.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
We should be investing billions in Ukranian companies and technologies. There’s an actual war going on right now, but we are still talking about how to fight the last one.
Or even the one before. We should be asking them for licences paid with a part of our production for their latest designs and develop these week by week as they seem to.
I think the MoD is doing quite well in terms of cooperating with the Ukrainians.
We've started manufacturing some of their drones in Britain, which gives us an in to that technology and its developments.
Britain has done a lot of work in bodging together and rapidly developing new systems for Ukraine - the new Raven air defence system appears to be performing well and there are various other examples.
The training programme for new Ukrainian recruits, and for Ukrainian officers seems to be working well also as a way for British trainers to learn from Ukrainian soldiers with recent battlefield experience.
The Treasury should be stumping up more money, but the response of the MoD and the military more broadly to the war is very reassuring in comparison to ongoing procurement, manpower and maintenance issues (though the fighter programme doesn't seem to be all that problematic).
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
The curious bit is that much of it could have been done decades ago. But Doctrine.
See the BAe proposal for an anti tank rocket on a stand with a camera and a vehicle recognition system. The idea was a hidden, off route mine system that would only attack specified vehicles. 1986, IIRC
I was more thinking terminator but yes. Give these things an AI program and the ability to make their own decisions and the day of the human on the battlefield is over (other than as prey of course).
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
We should be investing billions in Ukranian companies and technologies. There’s an actual war going on right now, but we are still talking about how to fight the last one.
Or even the one before. We should be asking them for licences paid with a part of our production for their latest designs and develop these week by week as they seem to.
I think the MoD is doing quite well in terms of cursing with the Ukrainians.
We've started manufacturing some of their drones in Britain, which gives us an in to that technology and its developments.
Britain has done a lot of work in bidding together and rapidly developing new systems for Ukraine - the new Raven air defence system appears to be performing well and there are various other examples.
The training programme for new Ukrainian recruits, and for Ukrainian officers seems to be working well also as a way for British trainers to learn from Ukrainian soldiers with recent battlefield experience.
The Treasury should be stumping up more money, but the response of the MoD and the military more broadly to the war is very reassuring in comparison to ongoing procurement, manpower and maintenance issues (though the fighter programme doesn't seem to be all that problematic).
There’s an awful lot going on behind the scenes which we don’t know about, but it puts the priorities into perspective.
There are university robotics labs up and down the country that could be secretly induced into prototyping this stuff with the right grants without even knowing they're doing so.
Tory MP Simon Hoare has given a very vivid quote about Donald Trump's comments on Nato allies, which could actually be used in many contexts about the US president:
"Frankly Trump makes my flesh creep and my stomach turn. Where are his advisors? Where is his nurse? Where is his sense of shame?"
'Makes my flesh creep.....' as do his sycophants. Everyone everywhere is talking about Mark Carney. That's good for Canada. Starmer is just another flunky
The other day we were talking about Neville Chamberlain. My view - which I think others share - is that when Neville Chamberlain made his speech following the Munich agreement, he had a very clear and accurate idea of the sort of person Hitler was and his likely plans; he knew his 'piece of paper' was worthless. He believed (possibly wrongly, it turned out, but that takes nothing away from him) that Germany's ability to fight a war was in 1938 streets ahead of that of France and Britain. He took the (in my view, heroic) decision to sacrifice his reputation to buy the allis another 12-18 months to prepare for the war he knew was coming. But the point is, what was said and known about publicly was very different to what was going on behind the scenes.
The point here is that we - rightly - don't know what's going on behind the scenes. We would hope that Starmer's palliative public pronouncements are being accompanied by a shedload of behind the scenes work to prepare for what comes when the USA leaves NATO. It's not particularly to Britain's advantage to hurry this along by having our elected leaders saying what we really think of Donald Trump. Donald Trupm is saying what he really thinks of other countries, and it's not really gaining America any benefits.
The evidence from diaries etc was that Chamberlain thought that "Giving Peace A Chance" was worth it, even if it was an absurdly long shot.
After the Anschluss -
"It is perfectly evident now that force is the only argument Germany understands and that "collective security" cannot offer any prospect of preventing such events until it can show a visible force of overwhelming strength backed by the determination to use it. ... Heaven knows I don't want to get back to alliances but if Germany continues to behave as she has done lately she may drive us to it."
And the dynamics are different, we already have v the alliance we are coordinating with closely.
The question why doesn't Starmer talk like Carney misses that the members of the Mid Power Alliance have different roles and at different times, plus they also have to represent national interest.
Sometimes it is Starmer who brings Trump in to face the Mid-Power collective. When we put boots on the ground in Greenland (unless our soldier is one legged), and got tariffs threatened and acted one of the harsh voices, Meloni, who was outside the tariff threat, played the role. Macron did it a few years ago with Putin. All got slagged but sometimes you take one for the team and Starmer seems to be good at that here.
On trade talks, you know, we actually voted to deal with Donald Trump separately and Brexiteers slagging Starmer off for doing just that rather than being in the collective are the most elephantine hypocrites. When it falls through because Trump spins in another direction then, yes, with Trump this shit happens all the time, put a new set of baby reins on him for a bit till he slips them again.
Starmer isn't Carney and if he tried doing the Carney role it wouldn't land. If you want that from a British PM there's always Hilary Benn.
This seems a very plausible explanation. We should give Sir Keir the benefit. Maintaining a line to Trump is something the UK is well-placed to do, while the French and Germans apply pressure in other ways, as best they can. Carney's commentary provides an interesting and possibly useful perspective.
Farage's reaction - "Greenland would be better off with the USA" - just shows how his hatred of the EU, and his immersion in MAGA-world, makes him utterly unfit to look after Britain's interests.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
Something along the lines of the NEC initially blocking Burnham's candidacy, being forced to back down in the face of internal revolt, and then Burnham finishing third behind the Greens and Reform in the by-election itself is a contender.
But it might be funnier for Burnham to make his way into Parliament only to lose the subsequent Labour leadership election for the third time.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
I agree with his diagnosis but simply attacking the oppo without a forward looking vision isn’t going to win. It turns into an argument about who fucked up rather than how to fix what’s fucked up. This is for the faithful
Presumably he's on about the bad Thatcherite deindustrialisation, not the good Net Zero deindustrialisation.
There are university robotics labs up and down the country that could be secretly induced into prototyping this stuff with the right grants without even knowing they're doing so.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
There are university robotics labs up and down the country that could be secretly induced into prototyping this stuff with the right grants without even knowing they're doing so.
The BBC played its part with Robot Wars.
Quite a lot of people in drone/remote control aircraft clubs/hobby groups are actively working with Ukranians. For example a friend was working on using optical recognition to create a drone autonomous hedge hopping capability - so a drone would fly itself a foot or two off the ground, avoiding obstacles itself.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
She suggests that the privatisation program just doesn't work. In order to make the services attractive to the private sector requires long contracts (greater than the electoral cycle) and once privatised, the companies are free to be late/inadequate/corrupt, and there is no workable command-and-control system any more. At this point Governments are reduced to begging (she calls this "bargaining games") the companies to just work pleeeeze.
She illustrates this by comparing the deteriorating of Government in the UK to the deterioration under the Soviet Union. This is provocative (and makes the book much longer than it needs to be) but it is a commanding analogy and illustrates one of the many problems of Thatcherism.
The right has not yet internalised that Thatcherism (privatisation, globalisation, deindustrialisation) really did fuck up the country and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It may have had its advantages at the time (let's concede that to show good faith) but the inheritance has broken the country.
Does she distinguish between privatisation that worked and that which absolutely didn't ?
I can't remember: it's long and dense and I didn't take notes.
With a right wing Lab stodge 6/1 is a great price.
In the unlikely event that Burnham stands Lab will likely hold the seat.
Is Burnham potentially in a Zugswang in which his ambitions are finished if he doesn't stand, as he can't become an MP, and finished if he stands because if he wins he is doing a Jenrick/Heseltine and if he loses he is finished.
If that's right, Starmer's faction (and all other non Burnham factions, which are legion) are better off allowing him to decide and should not stand in his way.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
We're supposedly spending many billions on developing a next gen stealth aircraft with Japan and Italy. It's not entirely apparent to me where the money is coming from given existing budgets.
Wow. Donald's comments about British servicemen has left him rather friendless.
I'm sure Farage will be around soon to explain away Trump's comments as not that offensive really, not if you consider [insert whataboutery here].
Tbh I've heard different but arguably worse complaints that in Iraq, Afghanistan and even ww2, Americans had to dig British troops out from holes of our own making. And for all that we were in Afghanistan, we stayed about five minutes once America pulled out.
Speaking of Afghanistan, it was remarked at the time that we were burning through the defence budget firing our stocks of American-made missiles at American-selected targets, and that it would be cheaper to cut out the middleman.
I’m pretty sure that there’ve been occasions when US soldiers have owed their lives to British soldiers.
The notion that the US is the only country that fights has no basis in reality.
Last week I was listening to accounts around a couple of Danish people who did not listen to Trump's speech because he asserted that Danes had done little for the USA. In Afghanistan they had the highest casualty rate of any supporting country. The people felt they might not be able to control their reactions to Trump BS.
Indeedy. But 90-95% of what Trump and his minions assert has no basis in reality.
He's not interested, and I don't think it will not stop him trying to implement in practice what he is told by the voices in his head. He's already been repeating the failed economic playbook of the 1930s, simply lying to all and sundry, including himself, about the likely outcome.
And he & his regime only believe in "hard power". Having burnt down all their soft power it is essentially all they have left.
So he needs to be convinced that his hard power move will hurt too much for the possible benefit. So continuing bootlicking and public fluffing in response to threats can only be a delaying tactic, which becomes gradually more threadbare.
If I am listening correctly, the heads of NATO have offered to hand over bits of Greenland without consulting either Greenland or Denmark. That sounds to be a bit of a strategy headed for failure.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
Has Farage said anything about his pals disgraceful comments or is he “ sick again “ and can’t do any media interviews?
There's a long way to travel but this particular road ahead has no other destination: Farage's PM ambitions are finished. I think probably Trump and Trumpism is now on the downhill half. These are, from Farage's point of view, as the bookies say 'linked contingencies'.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
Burnham stands and loses.
A Burnham, Gallaway, Reform, Gaza Independent, Polanski by election would be one of the greatest (for anoraks) shows on earth.
Just reading about the secret US effort to base hundreds of nuclear missiles in Greenland in the 1960s.
Although it didn't go ahead in the end for practical reasons, the US kept Denmark in ignorance of the plan for thirty years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm ..According to the documents published by Denmark in 1997, the U.S. Army's "Iceworm" missile network was outlined in a 1960 Army report titled "Strategic Value of the Greenland Icecap". If fully implemented, the project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles (130,000 km2), roughly three times the size of Denmark. The launch complex floors would be 28 feet (8.5 m) below the surface, with the missile launchers even deeper. Clusters of missile launch centers would be spaced 4 miles (6.4 km) apart. New tunnels were to be dug every year, so that after five years there would be thousands of firing positions, among which the several hundred missiles could be rotated. The US Army intended to deploy a shortened, two-stage version of the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman missile, a variant the Army proposed calling the Iceman...
Just reading about the secret US effort to base hundreds of nuclear missiles in Greenland in the 1960s.
Although it didn't go ahead in the end for practical reasons, the US kept Denmark in ignorance of the plan for thirty years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm ..According to the documents published by Denmark in 1997, the U.S. Army's "Iceworm" missile network was outlined in a 1960 Army report titled "Strategic Value of the Greenland Icecap". If fully implemented, the project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles (130,000 km2), roughly three times the size of Denmark. The launch complex floors would be 28 feet (8.5 m) below the surface, with the missile launchers even deeper. Clusters of missile launch centers would be spaced 4 miles (6.4 km) apart. New tunnels were to be dug every year, so that after five years there would be thousands of firing positions, among which the several hundred missiles could be rotated. The US Army intended to deploy a shortened, two-stage version of the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman missile, a variant the Army proposed calling the Iceman...
From following a bunch of Americans, it does appear that there’s quite a lot of “Greenland” history from the past few decades since WWII, which most of us have only discovered in the past few weeks.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
Almost at the fiftieth anniversary of Blame Thatcher. How long can they drag it out? I assume this is aimed at the Party Faithful.
The blame attaches more to her successors who adopted bits of her dogma blindly (which obviously includes the Blair/Brown era).
Thatcher undoubtedly made mistakes. Her policies which directly disastrous for the north of England.
But she also did quite a lot of necessary stuff, and I don't think she did all that much which wasn't capable of remediation, had her successors diagnosed and addressed where she went wrong. The reason it can still be "dragged out" is that they have never been addressed.
Then there is the difference between Thatcher the reality and Thatcher the myth.
Industrial areas of 1970s northern England were a lot closer to Kes than the 'new Jerusalem'.
Again with the strawmanning. No one is saying they were; I was rather pointing out the dramatic economic decline of the north relative to the south east, since the 1980s.
That process had started in the 1880s not the 1980s.
Coal mining in the UK had been in absolute decline from 1913.
Followed by other industrial sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding.
The BBC was making documentaries about deindustrialisation and unemployment in the early 1960s:
HARTLEPOOL 1963. DOCUMENTARY. WAITING FOR WORK. PART 1
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
1) Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the House? 28 2) Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the Senate? 3 3) Number of MSPs won by the SNP at the Holyrood election? 58 4) Number of AMs won by Plaid Cymru at the Senedd election? 35 5) UK Party recording the largest poll lead during 2026 and by what percentage? (British Polling Council registered pollsters only). Ref +14 6) Labour’s Projected National Share of the vote based on the 2026 local elections according to the BBC? 23.00% 7) Number of Reform MPs on the 31st December 2026? 12 8) The name of the UK Prime Minister on 31st December 2026? Starmer 9) Will Andy Burnham will be an MP on 31st December 2026? No 10) UK borrowing in the financial year to November 2026 (£132.3bn to November 2025). £124B 11) UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2026 (1.1% to October 2025). 1.70% 12) Winners of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Brazil
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
Burnham stands and loses.
And because of the Labour rules about Mayors not standing for parliament has no job....
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
Almost at the fiftieth anniversary of Blame Thatcher. How long can they drag it out? I assume this is aimed at the Party Faithful.
The blame attaches more to her successors who adopted bits of her dogma blindly (which obviously includes the Blair/Brown era).
Thatcher undoubtedly made mistakes. Her policies which directly disastrous for the north of England.
But she also did quite a lot of necessary stuff, and I don't think she did all that much which wasn't capable of remediation, had her successors diagnosed and addressed where she went wrong. The reason it can still be "dragged out" is that they have never been addressed.
Then there is the difference between Thatcher the reality and Thatcher the myth.
Industrial areas of 1970s northern England were a lot closer to Kes than the 'new Jerusalem'.
Again with the strawmanning. No one is saying they were; I was rather pointing out the dramatic economic decline of the north relative to the south east, since the 1980s.
That process had started in the 1880s not the 1980s.
Coal mining in the UK had been in absolute decline from 1913.
Followed by other industrial sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding.
The BBC was making documentaries about deindustrialisation and unemployment in the early 1960s:
HARTLEPOOL 1963. DOCUMENTARY. WAITING FOR WORK. PART 1
Again the strawmanning. Do you not understand what relative decline means ?
Do you not understand that mining has been in relative decline since the 19th century and in absolute decline since 1913 ?
Likewise for other industries associated with the first industrial revolution such as textiles and shipbuilding.
Now during the 20th century this decline was replaced by newer manufacturing sectors such as vehicles and consumer electricals.
But then those started to decline in the 1970s.
Which meant that places dependent upon manufacturing were going to decline in relative terms to those which weren't.
Manufacturing has been in decline as a proportion of UK GDP since about 1950 falling from 50% then to 30% in 1970 to 20% in 1990 to less than 10% now.
Yes. Whether that is a good or a bad thing... China has lots of factories and no-one over there can afford a mobile phone, let alone a car. Maybe our problem is we are better at retiring old industries than replacing them.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
We're supposedly spending many billions on developing a next gen stealth aircraft with Japan and Italy. It's not entirely apparent to me where the money is coming from given existing budgets.
If Britain was increasing its defence budget by the 10+% a year that our more serious allies are doing then we would have the money to properly resource that programme, the maintenance of existing hardware (like the Astute subs) and a bunch of other priority needs besides.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
Burnham stands and loses.
That brings out my inner Kevin Keegan. I’d love it, just love it….
Why smash ‘n’ grab thieves are targeting this £200 car part London drivers are falling victim to a bizarre crime wave as bicycle-mounted criminals snatch parcel shelves https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1740bc47a1a5d924
Gift link so paywall-free if PBers want to get in on the parcel shelf racket. The MO seems to be pay someone to nick a load of parcel shelves, then sell parcel shelves on the used market, presumably to the people who had their parcel shelves stolen. My theory is the Telegraph has fallen for the cover story of the rear-window replacement firms.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
Burnham stands and loses.
A Burnham, Gallaway, Reform, Gaza Independent, Polanski by election would be one of the greatest (for anoraks) shows on earth.
Meanwhile Your Party will still be arguing over candidate selection well after nominations closed.
By-elections are a barometer of public opinion in which governments always operate at a handicap in that the opposition is more motivated. Given how unpopular Starmer is any by-election will be a disaster for him, but it's striking just how many different ways in which this by-election could be a disaster and hilarious that one of those ways involves the election of a Labour MP (which in normal unpopular government circumstances would be regarded as a triumph).
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
It's hard to know what would be the funniest outcome.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
Why smash ‘n’ grab thieves are targeting this £200 car part London drivers are falling victim to a bizarre crime wave as bicycle-mounted criminals snatch parcel shelves https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1740bc47a1a5d924
Gift link so paywall-free if PBers want to get in on the parcel shelf racket. The MO seems to be pay someone to nick a load of parcel shelves, then sell parcel shelves on the used market, presumably to the people who had their parcel shelves stolen. My theory is the Telegraph has fallen for the cover story of the rear-window replacement firms.
I love the journalistic demonstration of their understanding of high end criminal finance.
"In theory, selling even a dozen at £100 per go could net a thief more than £1,000 in profit."
Just reading about the secret US effort to base hundreds of nuclear missiles in Greenland in the 1960s.
Although it didn't go ahead in the end for practical reasons, the US kept Denmark in ignorance of the plan for thirty years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm ..According to the documents published by Denmark in 1997, the U.S. Army's "Iceworm" missile network was outlined in a 1960 Army report titled "Strategic Value of the Greenland Icecap". If fully implemented, the project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles (130,000 km2), roughly three times the size of Denmark. The launch complex floors would be 28 feet (8.5 m) below the surface, with the missile launchers even deeper. Clusters of missile launch centers would be spaced 4 miles (6.4 km) apart. New tunnels were to be dug every year, so that after five years there would be thousands of firing positions, among which the several hundred missiles could be rotated. The US Army intended to deploy a shortened, two-stage version of the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman missile, a variant the Army proposed calling the Iceman...
So The Iceman Never Cometh?
Very good.
They did though create useful data on the difficulties of constructing bases below the ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Century ..Both snow trimming required to maintain the trenches and sewage disposal were ongoing problems with the facility. The sewage sump was 150 feet (46 m) from the nearest building and initially, was not vented. As a result, the odor of sewage became almost unbearable in the nearest quarters after the first year of operation. Subsequent venting of the sump reduced the odor, but did not eliminate the fundamental condition. In 1962, core samples were taken in the areas near the sump and found that liquid wastes had permeated up to 170 feet (52 meters) horizontally. Thus, this accelerated trench deformation and odor from the sump affected nearby trenches containing sleeping quarters...
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
If Labour are to win the next election we MUST rejoin the EU. Starmer or Burnham must batter it through. No Referendums. Just a huge parlianentary majority. The full fat version including Schengen. We must put ourselves at the centre of Europe.
Labour have nothing to lose. They are sleepwalking to possible defeat at the hands of Farage. There is no form of REJOIN that would be a worse fate for this country than that.
Rejoin plus Euro means zero chance of Labour re election
Nobody is suggesting the Euro
Roger is (“…full fat version…”) in the comment HYUFD is replying to!
The reality of Rejoin is
1) We would be asked to follow the process that all applicants to the are do. The politics of Europe will not slow a special exemption - too many countries would get upset 2) So we would be signing up to “full fat” Europe 3) This means signing up for the Euro. Since this would remove a huge chunk of the mucking around with the economy the politicians love, this would be a matter of I) Signing up to the Euro joining process II) Never actually meeting he requirements and joining
The number of countries that want Britain to join the Euro is zero. They've got enough problems already without adding a country with a weird housing thing going on that's not really into it.
It's perfectly possible that the application would just get held up forever, and it's also possible that some countries would say they don't think it'll last and they're not going to play the hokey cokey but the Euro wouldn't be the blocker.
It would also be in the US and Russian interests to stop the UK from rejoining so Orban might put the blockers on it (and maybe Fico too) and then you get down to the usual EU shenanigans of wanting a pound of flesh from the UK for cooperation even when it’s in the EU’s benefit to cooperate so no doubt the French making silly fishing demands and Spain wanting to change Gibraltar’s status.
This is the greatest tragedy of Brexit: that rejoining will be much more difficult and painful than it would have been to remain. No taking it back to the shop if it didn't fit.
It won’t be difficult, it will be impossible
I’ve been through this before, but one more time
It needs a government to sell Rejoin in an election and then win the election with that mandate. Then they must call the referendum, and win that. All this time very awkward questions about the euro and Schengen and fisheries and the City and much else will crop up, making that referendum suddenly seem a lot more difficult to win than first appeared. An unpopular government will lose it. A popular government will think “why bother taking the risk, we’re popular, why spend all that time and capital, let’s forget the referendum, thing”
So we won’t even get as far as a referendum. And even if we did and it was won, we would then have 5-10 years of painful painful negotiation with the EU to establish terms, during which any of 28 countries could simply veto, just for the fuck of it. This would consume a decade of British politics, with no guarantee of success at the end. The Rejoiners who glibly say “oh they want us back” are as foolishly complacent as the Brexiteers who farcically claimed “it will be the easiest deal in the world”
No sane UK government will ever attempt Rejoin, an insane government would fuck it up. Ergo, it is never going to happen
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
I'd hope so but to list some of the difficulties that come to mind:
Spending lots more on defence when we're strapped for cash is a hard sell to the public. A party opposing it might prosper mightily.
Throwing big sums of money in a compressed period at MoD procurement will likely lead to corruption and waste.
Close co-operation with Europe on military matters triggers talk of "European Army" - anathema to that prominent aspect of our national mood/character that led to the 2016 Leave vote.
Europe itself is prone to nationalisms getting in the way of the collective interest. This is especially so with the rise of hard right parties in several influential countries.
We are (iiuc) totally enmeshed with the US on defence and security. Have been for over 50 years. Weapons, logistics, intelligence, all of it. We'd have to break that, not just physically but psychologically too. There'd be serious withdrawal symptoms, some of which you wouldn't know about until they happen.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
For example, I think this is a £1bn of Boeing P8 Poseidon's in a £1bn row of sitting ducks at RAF Lossiemouth, about 1km from the Scottish Coast at Elgin. If the identity is correct, it is 4 from the 9 we have. The piccie is from Google Satellite View, and I think is 2026.
Powerful and much needed framing from Andy Burnham in the Guardian..should be repeated every day by ministers or they will find they are blamed for ‘broken Britain’: “If the question at the centre of British politics is “who broke Britain?”, let’s be clear and unequivocal. The four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse are deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In my time in politics, there has been a tendency for too many in Labour to accept too much of the framing of the right, but we must firmly reject its narrative and call it out in no uncertain terms. Figures on the British right talk of taking back control, but people can see that they are the ones who gave it away.”
She suggests that the privatisation program just doesn't work. In order to make the services attractive to the private sector requires long contracts (greater than the electoral cycle) and once privatised, the companies are free to be late/inadequate/corrupt, and there is no workable command-and-control system any more. At this point Governments are reduced to begging (she calls this "bargaining games") the companies to just work pleeeeze.
She illustrates this by comparing the deteriorating of Government in the UK to the deterioration under the Soviet Union. This is provocative (and makes the book much longer than it needs to be) but it is a commanding analogy and illustrates one of the many problems of Thatcherism.
The right has not yet internalised that Thatcherism (privatisation, globalisation, deindustrialisation) really did fuck up the country and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It may have had its advantages at the time (let's concede that to show good faith) but the inheritance has broken the country.
I am not sure you can blame Thatcherism for the faults of globalisation and deindustrialisation. These were happening anyway in every country and were no worse in the UK than in any of the other indistrialised first world countries. It was the way the world was moving and there was little appetite in the 80s and 90s for protectionism - which is the only way it would have been possible to reverse the trend.
In terms of manufacturing, in 1973 the UK accounted for 3.4% of world output. In 1997 it was 4%. So the great Thatcherite revolution doesn't seem to have had much impact on our share of world manufacturing.
By 2010 that share had dropped to 2.1%, mostly because of the growth of China. Germany, Italy and France also dropped substantially as China grew
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
The problem is too big - see Herman Kahn on Big Problems. The classic is that if you raise a Big enough Problem, you (the person raising it) become the problem.
For aircraft, the problem is that, to build a shelter, you need a specification, a project code etc etc. Multiple zillions per shelter. And then they are vulnerable to full fat smart bombs.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated that the following is simple - you build a concrete box - pour a slab, build walls of slabs. You stabilise the walls by interlocking slabs. Bury it by piling earth round it. The roof is a bit harder. The doors are the only bit that are really tricky. Costs peanuts. And raises the required weapon to destroy to a direct hit with a full fat smart bomb.
Hell, sandbags with a roof of timber is a start.
"But, during the Gulf War, the Americans destroyed nuke proof shelters with smart bombs. So shelters are obsolete"
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
The problem is too big - see Herman Kahn on Big Problems. The classic is that if you raise a Big enough Problem, you (the person raising it) become the problem.
For aircraft, the problem is that, to build a shelter, you need a specification, a project code etc etc. Multiple zillions per shelter. And then they are vulnerable to full fat smart bombs.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated that the following is simple - you build a concrete box - pour a slab, build walls of slabs. You stabilise the walls by interlocking slabs. Bury it by piling earth round it. The roof is a bit harder. The doors are the only bit that are really tricky. Costs peanuts. And raises the required weapon to destroy to a direct hit with a full fat smart bomb.
Hell, sandbags with a roof of timber is a start.
"But, during the Gulf War, the Americans destroyed nuke proof shelters with smart bombs. So shelters are obsolete"
So no-one does anything.
The Ukrainians seem to have reinvented the Anderson shelter, installed in people's gardens during the second world war. Vulnerable to a direct hit (as were many shelters) but the corrugated iron and earth protected from sideways blast forces.
Polanski vs Galloway? That would be fun. With both Reform and Advance standing candidates claiming to be best placed to banish the islamist invaders? Great fun! With a non-Burnham Labour candidate claiming to be relevant? Top hole.
On a personal note I am sitting out 2026 elections. Which means I can say what I think for a change...
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
The problem is too big - see Herman Kahn on Big Problems. The classic is that if you raise a Big enough Problem, you (the person raising it) become the problem.
For aircraft, the problem is that, to build a shelter, you need a specification, a project code etc etc. Multiple zillions per shelter. And then they are vulnerable to full fat smart bombs.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated that the following is simple - you build a concrete box - pour a slab, build walls of slabs. You stabilise the walls by interlocking slabs. Bury it by piling earth round it. The roof is a bit harder. The doors are the only bit that are really tricky. Costs peanuts. And raises the required weapon to destroy to a direct hit with a full fat smart bomb.
Hell, sandbags with a roof of timber is a start.
"But, during the Gulf War, the Americans destroyed nuke proof shelters with smart bombs. So shelters are obsolete"
So no-one does anything.
That of course is the exact problem. Any why it is even more important to start the process of eating the elephant one piece at a time.
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
Without being too cynical, and being one of the 10% who pays for prescriptions, I bet Sainsburys/Tesco/Waitrose/Lidl etc have plenty.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
The problem is too big - see Herman Kahn on Big Problems. The classic is that if you raise a Big enough Problem, you (the person raising it) become the problem.
For aircraft, the problem is that, to build a shelter, you need a specification, a project code etc etc. Multiple zillions per shelter. And then they are vulnerable to full fat smart bombs.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated that the following is simple - you build a concrete box - pour a slab, build walls of slabs. You stabilise the walls by interlocking slabs. Bury it by piling earth round it. The roof is a bit harder. The doors are the only bit that are really tricky. Costs peanuts. And raises the required weapon to destroy to a direct hit with a full fat smart bomb.
Hell, sandbags with a roof of timber is a start.
"But, during the Gulf War, the Americans destroyed nuke proof shelters with smart bombs. So shelters are obsolete"
So no-one does anything.
The Ukrainians seem to have reinvented the Anderson shelter, installed in people's gardens during the second world war. Vulnerable to a direct hit (as were many shelters) but the corrugated iron and earth protected from sideways blast forces.
During both Iraq and Afghanistan, American and other forces repeatedly reinvented the Buried Shipping Container shelter. Despite the best efforts of Mangelment.
It's just what it sounds like - take a shipping container. Bulldoze sand/and/or earth around and over it.
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
Without being too cynical, and being one of the 10% who pays for prescriptions, I bet Sainsburys/Tesco/Waitrose/Lidl etc have plenty.
Afaik these can be ordered online at about 10p per tablet from your favourite supermarket.
(I use Paracetamol not Aspirin - medical reasons - and I just buy OTC because they are so cheap, even though I get free prescriptions.)
There may be a limit on OTC quantity, but it will be relatively high unless you are using oodles of them.
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
Without being too cynical, and being one of the 10% who pays for prescriptions, I bet Sainsburys/Tesco/Waitrose/Lidl etc have plenty.
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
For example, I think this is a £1bn of Boeing P8 Poseidon's in a £1bn row of sitting ducks at RAF Lossiemouth, about 1km from the Scottish Coast at Elgin. If the identity is correct, it is 4 from the 9 we have. The piccie is from Google Satellite View, and I think is 2026.
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
Without being too cynical, and being one of the 10% who pays for prescriptions, I bet Sainsburys/Tesco/Waitrose/Lidl etc have plenty.
Actually, I'm not sure. Last week I did not see any in the painkiller section of my local supermarket. But the other issue is that anyone prescribed daily aspirin is probably also on half a dozen other drugs so it is less useful to send patients to a number of different outlets.
So many of the issues discussed on here are about to be rendered spectacularly irrelevant by advances in technology - eg robotics
We are 1-3 years from advanced humanoid robots entering the market at scale. Think what that does to, say, defence
Eg look at the latest Unitree robot (from China). Imagine taking on that, on the battlefield. It will be tireless and relentless and be equipped with 100% accurate weapons
With the US president saying Nato/British troops stayed "off the front line" in Afghanistan, Nigel Farage won't want British voters being reminded that he called Donald Trump "the bravest man I have ever met."
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
The problem is too big - see Herman Kahn on Big Problems. The classic is that if you raise a Big enough Problem, you (the person raising it) become the problem.
For aircraft, the problem is that, to build a shelter, you need a specification, a project code etc etc. Multiple zillions per shelter. And then they are vulnerable to full fat smart bombs.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated that the following is simple - you build a concrete box - pour a slab, build walls of slabs. You stabilise the walls by interlocking slabs. Bury it by piling earth round it. The roof is a bit harder. The doors are the only bit that are really tricky. Costs peanuts. And raises the required weapon to destroy to a direct hit with a full fat smart bomb.
Hell, sandbags with a roof of timber is a start.
"But, during the Gulf War, the Americans destroyed nuke proof shelters with smart bombs. So shelters are obsolete"
So no-one does anything.
The Ukrainians seem to have reinvented the Anderson shelter, installed in people's gardens during the second world war. Vulnerable to a direct hit (as were many shelters) but the corrugated iron and earth protected from sideways blast forces.
During both Iraq and Afghanistan, American and other forces repeatedly reinvented the Buried Shipping Container shelter. Despite the best efforts of Mangelment.
It's just what it sounds like - take a shipping container. Bulldoze sand/and/or earth around and over it.
So many of the issues discussed on here are about to be rendered spectacularly irrelevant by advances in technology - eg robotics
We are 1-3 years from advanced humanoid robots entering the market at scale. Think what that does to, say, defence
Eg look at the latest Unitree robot (from China). Imagine taking on that, on the battlefield. It will be tireless and relentless and be equipped with 100% accurate weapons
It is genuinely scary how rapidly the battlefield is changing. I look at the MOD still trying to get fighters updated after 20 years and I despair. Our armed forces are dangerously close to not being fit for purpose.
Scarier is that we haven't really defined what their future purpose will be. Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway, (The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
Building a European defence capability (inc us) that can operate effectively without the US is so challenging on every level that there must be a temptation to hold off and hope America pivots back to being an ally once the closing credits run on the Trump Show.
I don't think it's quite so difficult as that, particularly if we act in concert with Europe. The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
True but we know that we will already be looking at the next generation of aircraft and we shoudl take the opportunity to look towards non-US sources, whether that is Sweden, France or South Korea.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
Actually, a simple start would be building a solid fuel rocket with the mould line of Trident.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
There are many other simple starts, but I don't get the impression that enough of them are being taken very seriously. TBF, some are being taken seriously.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
For example, I think this is a £1bn of Boeing P8 Poseidon's in a £1bn row of sitting ducks at RAF Lossiemouth, about 1km from the Scottish Coast at Elgin. If the identity is correct, it is 4 from the 9 we have. The piccie is from Google Satellite View, and I think is 2026.
So many of the issues discussed on here are about to be rendered spectacularly irrelevant by advances in technology - eg robotics
We are 1-3 years from advanced humanoid robots entering the market at scale. Think what that does to, say, defence
Eg look at the latest Unitree robot (from China). Imagine taking on that, on the battlefield. It will be tireless and relentless and be equipped with 100% accurate weapons
It will also go into factories and the like. Vast wealth will be created
And that is just one example
It's not going to change the issues we talk about.
There will still be arguments over how to distribute wealth - particularly land. There will still be arguments over who gets to be in the club (neighborhood, country, whatever), and who doesn't.
Defence is still going to take a willingness to fight, to invest, to innovate.
Everything will be different (I mean - robots! - how could it not be), but everything will be the same, regardless (I mean - humans! - how could it not be).
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
Without being too cynical, and being one of the 10% who pays for prescriptions, I bet Sainsburys/Tesco/Waitrose/Lidl etc have plenty.
Actually, I'm not sure. Last week I did not see any in the painkiller section of my local supermarket. But the other issue is that anyone prescribed daily aspirin is probably also on half a dozen other drugs so it is less useful to send patients to a number of different outlets.
I did check a couple of supermarkets online, and there were no prominent "out of stock" indicators.
Comments
Coal mining in the UK had been in absolute decline from 1913.
Followed by other industrial sectors such as textiles and shipbuilding.
The BBC was making documentaries about deindustrialisation and unemployment in the early 1960s:
HARTLEPOOL 1963. DOCUMENTARY. WAITING FOR WORK. PART 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxAKfnbFWe0
But the people behind this are deeply stupid. Capturing the market is worthless if you can't make money. AI is currently not profitable outside of a few niches, and each new model needs more and more compute, costs more per query than the last one. The economics don't work.
OpenAI for example is trying to build one of the biggest technology infrastructure projects in history with revenue not much higher than Spotify.
Who despite being routinely armed and in a situation where there is real violence about, manage shoot nearly nobody.
The question why doesn't Starmer talk like Carney misses that the members of the Mid Power Alliance have different roles and at different times, plus they also have to represent national interest.
Sometimes it is Starmer who brings Trump in to face the Mid-Power collective. When we put boots on the ground in Greenland (unless our soldier is one legged), and got tariffs threatened and acted one of the harsh voices, Meloni, who was outside the tariff threat, played the role. Macron did it a few years ago with Putin. All got slagged but sometimes you take one for the team and Starmer seems to be good at that here.
On trade talks, you know, we actually voted to deal with Donald Trump separately and Brexiteers slagging Starmer off for doing just that rather than being in the collective are the most elephantine hypocrites. When it falls through because Trump spins in another direction then, yes, with Trump this shit happens all the time, put a new set of baby reins on him for a bit till he slips them again.
Starmer isn't Carney and if he tried doing the Carney role it wouldn't land. If you want that from a British PM there's always Hilary Benn.
Better get some untaxed income.
Better pick a pocket or two.
This will be the most expensive fast jet radar ever produced by a considerable margin because the production run is tiny. It will end up being 4-6x the price of the F-35 radar.
Which is a LOT of money.
I don't think it's widely appreciated just how little money there is for procurement (absent increases in the defence budget).
The MOD has the largest capital budget of any single government department (£23bn), but once you strip out the nuclear deterrent, defence R&D, and "other" costs (war pension benefits programme costs, the costs of non-departmental public bodies, and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund), only 30% of that is available for new weapons.
https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/2014634820962255204
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
A China-Europe energy alliance could deliver a new world order
"China and Europe are reaching a modus vivendi of sorts over tariffs on electric vehicles. Chinese vice-premier He Lifeng was in Davos this week making sweet overtures to the Europeans and denouncing “the law of the jungle, where the strong bully the weak.”
Meanwhile, Trump’s hubristic cabinet was in nearby rooms acting like a pack of hyenas, dishing out insults, ridiculing all efforts to cut CO2 emissions and proclaiming the gospel of coal."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/01/23/china-europe-energy-alliance-deliver-new-world-orde/
Do you not understand what relative decline means ?
discontinuity?
https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-39633603
Throw money at those fighting today’s war.
Last year's defence review is already half-obsolete, and nearly seven months on later barely started to do anything practical about it anyway,
(The Typhoon upgrade actually makes sense, despite its hefty price tag.)
She suggests that the privatisation program just doesn't work. In order to make the services attractive to the private sector requires long contracts (greater than the electoral cycle) and once privatised, the companies are free to be late/inadequate/corrupt, and there is no workable command-and-control system any more. At this point Governments are reduced to begging (she calls this "bargaining games") the companies to just work pleeeeze.
She illustrates this by comparing the deteriorating of Government in the UK to the deterioration under the Soviet Union. This is provocative (and makes the book much longer than it needs to be) but it is a commanding analogy and illustrates one of the many problems of Thatcherism.
The right has not yet internalised that Thatcherism (privatisation, globalisation, deindustrialisation) really did fuck up the country and now the chickens are coming home to roost. It may have had its advantages at the time (let's concede that to show good faith) but the inheritance has broken the country.
https://youtu.be/d74lpFaV97g?si=AoKKmExEL1mXrDVe
The curious bit is that much of it could have been done decades ago. But Doctrine.
See the BAe proposal for an anti tank rocket on a stand with a camera and a vehicle recognition system. The idea was a hidden, off route mine system that would only attack specified vehicles. 1986, IIRC
Although it didn't go ahead in the end for practical reasons, the US kept Denmark in ignorance of the plan for thirty years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Iceworm
..According to the documents published by Denmark in 1997, the U.S. Army's "Iceworm" missile network was outlined in a 1960 Army report titled "Strategic Value of the Greenland Icecap". If fully implemented, the project would cover an area of 52,000 square miles (130,000 km2), roughly three times the size of Denmark. The launch complex floors would be 28 feet (8.5 m) below the surface, with the missile launchers even deeper. Clusters of missile launch centers would be spaced 4 miles (6.4 km) apart. New tunnels were to be dug every year, so that after five years there would be thousands of firing positions, among which the several hundred missiles could be rotated. The US Army intended to deploy a shortened, two-stage version of the U.S. Air Force's Minuteman missile, a variant the Army proposed calling the Iceman...
It is most entertaining, and made all the more so by the fact that Starmer's putative nemesis is himself a flawed two-time leadership election loser well capable of falling flat on his face.
I don't think similar UK efforts are entirely absent, but the difference in resources is rather large.
We've started manufacturing some of their drones in Britain, which gives us an in to that technology and its developments.
Britain has done a lot of work in bodging together and rapidly developing new systems for Ukraine - the new Raven air defence system appears to be performing well and there are various other examples.
The training programme for new Ukrainian recruits, and for Ukrainian officers seems to be working well also as a way for British trainers to learn from Ukrainian soldiers with recent battlefield experience.
The Treasury should be stumping up more money, but the response of the MoD and the military more broadly to the war is very reassuring in comparison to ongoing procurement, manpower and maintenance issues (though the fighter programme doesn't seem to be all that problematic).
With a right wing Lab stodge 6/1 is a great price.
In the unlikely event that Burnham stands Lab will likely hold the seat.
Farage's reaction - "Greenland would be better off with the USA" - just shows how his hatred of the EU, and his immersion in MAGA-world, makes him utterly unfit to look after Britain's interests.
The biggest problem is the sunk cost capabilities like F35, which depend entirely on US cooperation for their ongoing utility.
But it might be funnier for Burnham to make his way into Parliament only to lose the subsequent Labour leadership election for the third time.
At any given point we will always be beholden to the US for some of our military hardware until we make the decision to source elsewhere so that, in a decade or more, we know longer have that reliance.
Hell, we could even start building our own weapons again.
If that's right, Starmer's faction (and all other non Burnham factions, which are legion) are better off allowing him to decide and should not stand in his way.
It's not entirely apparent to me where the money is coming from given existing budgets.
Indeedy. But 90-95% of what Trump and his minions assert has no basis in reality.
He's not interested, and I don't think it will not stop him trying to implement in practice what he is told by the voices in his head. He's already been repeating the failed economic playbook of the 1930s, simply lying to all and sundry, including himself, about the likely outcome.
And he & his regime only believe in "hard power". Having burnt down all their soft power it is essentially all they have left.
So he needs to be convinced that his hard power move will hurt too much for the possible benefit. So continuing bootlicking and public fluffing in response to threats can only be a delaying tactic, which becomes gradually more threadbare.
If I am listening correctly, the heads of NATO have offered to hand over bits of Greenland without consulting either Greenland or Denmark. That sounds to be a bit of a strategy headed for failure.
Winding a carbon fibre hulls is fairly straightforward and fuel itself is fairly straightforward. The tricks are in casting large motors without voids.
The probable end result would be a rocket with less range than Trident, but given the massive downloading, since the arms reduction treaties, it only needs to carry 1 or 2 warheads.
Likewise for other industries associated with the first industrial revolution such as textiles and shipbuilding.
Now during the 20th century this decline was replaced by newer manufacturing sectors such as vehicles and consumer electricals.
But then those started to decline in the 1970s.
Which meant that places dependent upon manufacturing were going to decline in relative terms to those which weren't.
Manufacturing has been in decline as a proportion of UK GDP since about 1950 falling from 50% then to 30% in 1970 to 20% in 1990 to less than 10% now.
#Competition
1) Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the House? 28
2) Number of net gains (or losses -ve) for the Dems in the Senate? 3
3) Number of MSPs won by the SNP at the Holyrood election? 58
4) Number of AMs won by Plaid Cymru at the Senedd election? 35
5) UK Party recording the largest poll lead during 2026 and by what percentage? (British Polling Council registered pollsters only). Ref +14
6) Labour’s Projected National Share of the vote based on the 2026 local elections according to the BBC? 23.00%
7) Number of Reform MPs on the 31st December 2026? 12
8) The name of the UK Prime Minister on 31st December 2026? Starmer
9) Will Andy Burnham will be an MP on 31st December 2026? No
10) UK borrowing in the financial year to November 2026 (£132.3bn to November 2025). £124B
11) UK GDP growth in the 12 months to October 2026 (1.1% to October 2025). 1.70%
12) Winners of the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup. Brazil
That looks quite depressing. Several minutes of cloud, maybe even an hour
Still, it looks like it brightens up again afterwards so it’s swings and roundabouts
London drivers are falling victim to a bizarre crime wave as bicycle-mounted criminals snatch parcel shelves
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/1740bc47a1a5d924
Gift link so paywall-free if PBers want to get in on the parcel shelf racket. The MO seems to be pay someone to nick a load of parcel shelves, then sell parcel shelves on the used market, presumably to the people who had their parcel shelves stolen. My theory is the Telegraph has fallen for the cover story of the rear-window replacement firms.
Second funniest: Burnham stands and wins.
One blatant example is how many of our £50-250m aircraft have the type of hardened shelters that means they can't be taken out by £500 drones. We know that any damaged aircraft would make a hole in our capability that would take many months, or several years to recover. This is a known issue for years and years.
One effective flight of drones from a container on a ship, and our air force is significantly crippled.
"In theory, selling even a dozen at £100 per go could net a thief more than £1,000 in profit."
They did though create useful data on the difficulties of constructing bases below the ice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Century
..Both snow trimming required to maintain the trenches and sewage disposal were ongoing problems with the facility. The sewage sump was 150 feet (46 m) from the nearest building and initially, was not vented. As a result, the odor of sewage became almost unbearable in the nearest quarters after the first year of operation. Subsequent venting of the sump reduced the odor, but did not eliminate the fundamental condition. In 1962, core samples were taken in the areas near the sump and found that liquid wastes had permeated up to 170 feet (52 meters) horizontally. Thus, this accelerated trench deformation and odor from the sump affected nearby trenches containing sleeping quarters...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1evvx89559o
I’ve been through this before, but one more time
It needs a government to sell Rejoin in an election and then win the election with that mandate. Then they must call the referendum, and win that. All this time very awkward questions about the euro and Schengen and fisheries and the City and much else will crop up, making that referendum suddenly seem a lot more difficult to win than first appeared. An unpopular government will lose it. A popular government will think “why bother taking the risk, we’re popular, why spend all that time and capital, let’s forget the referendum, thing”
So we won’t even get as far as a referendum. And even if we did and it was won, we would then have 5-10 years of painful painful negotiation with the EU to establish terms, during which any of 28 countries could simply veto, just for the fuck of it. This would consume a decade of British politics, with no guarantee of success at the end. The Rejoiners who glibly say “oh they want us back” are as foolishly complacent as the Brexiteers who farcically claimed “it will be the easiest deal in the world”
No sane UK government will ever attempt Rejoin, an insane government would fuck it up. Ergo, it is never going to happen
Sorry
Spending lots more on defence when we're strapped for cash is a hard sell to the public. A party opposing it might prosper mightily.
Throwing big sums of money in a compressed period at MoD procurement will likely lead to corruption and waste.
Close co-operation with Europe on military matters triggers talk of "European Army" - anathema to that prominent aspect of our national mood/character that led to the 2016 Leave vote.
Europe itself is prone to nationalisms getting in the way of the collective interest. This is especially so with the rise of hard right parties in several influential countries.
We are (iiuc) totally enmeshed with the US on defence and security. Have been for over 50 years. Weapons, logistics, intelligence, all of it. We'd have to break that, not just physically but psychologically too. There'd be serious withdrawal symptoms, some of which you wouldn't know about until they happen.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/mG2vLkTSt5By8YwD9
In terms of manufacturing, in 1973 the UK accounted for 3.4% of world output. In 1997 it was 4%. So the great Thatcherite revolution doesn't seem to have had much impact on our share of world manufacturing.
By 2010 that share had dropped to 2.1%, mostly because of the growth of China. Germany, Italy and France also dropped substantially as China grew
For aircraft, the problem is that, to build a shelter, you need a specification, a project code etc etc. Multiple zillions per shelter. And then they are vulnerable to full fat smart bombs.
The Ukrainians have demonstrated that the following is simple - you build a concrete box - pour a slab, build walls of slabs. You stabilise the walls by interlocking slabs. Bury it by piling earth round it. The roof is a bit harder. The doors are the only bit that are really tricky. Costs peanuts. And raises the required weapon to destroy to a direct hit with a full fat smart bomb.
Hell, sandbags with a roof of timber is a start.
"But, during the Gulf War, the Americans destroyed nuke proof shelters with smart bombs. So shelters are obsolete"
So no-one does anything.
Scarcity of drug used to prevent heart attack and strokes due to manufacturing delay is ‘incredibly worrying’, says chemists’ boss
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/01/23/pharmacies-aspirin-shortages/ (£££)
The pharmacy I use had run out last week. I hope they've got some next week as I've only got a few days left. The national shortage causes the price to rise above the reimbursement rate for prescriptions, which does not help as it means Rishi's dear old mum loses money on each packet.
On a personal note I am sitting out 2026 elections. Which means I can say what I think for a change...
It's just what it sounds like - take a shipping container. Bulldoze sand/and/or earth around and over it.
(I use Paracetamol not Aspirin - medical reasons - and I just buy OTC because they are so cheap, even though I get free prescriptions.)
There may be a limit on OTC quantity, but it will be relatively high unless you are using oodles of them.
Elgin is over 5 miles inland
We are 1-3 years from advanced humanoid robots entering the market at scale. Think what that does to, say, defence
Eg look at the latest Unitree robot (from China). Imagine taking on that, on the battlefield. It will be tireless and relentless and be equipped with 100% accurate weapons
https://x.com/wevolverapp/status/2013956331611324883?s=61&t=GGp3Vs1t1kTWDiyA-odnZg
It will also go into factories and the like. Vast wealth will be created
And that is just one example
With the US president saying Nato/British troops stayed "off the front line" in Afghanistan, Nigel Farage won't want British voters being reminded that he called Donald Trump "the bravest man I have ever met."
Vast wealth would need to be created to fund the UBI likely required for the jobs they displace
I have a friend who used to run a shop there called the Fochabers Framer.
There will still be arguments over how to distribute wealth - particularly land. There will still be arguments over who gets to be in the club (neighborhood, country, whatever), and who doesn't.
Defence is still going to take a willingness to fight, to invest, to innovate.
Everything will be different (I mean - robots! - how could it not be), but everything will be the same, regardless (I mean - humans! - how could it not be).
For the little ones, eg Tesco
https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/310125442