shak @shak_ja · 18h The guy next to Prince William, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, sent torture videos to Epstein and is mentioned in Epstein's files. Yet, William has no issue taking millions from him for his Earthshot project while claiming to care about the victims. Unbelievable! #AbolishTheMonarchy
shak @shak_ja · 18h The guy next to Prince William, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, sent torture videos to Epstein and is mentioned in Epstein's files. Yet, William has no issue taking millions from him for his Earthshot project while claiming to care about the victims. Unbelievable! #AbolishTheMonarchy
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
To be fair the level of skill required to refurbish the Palace of Westminster (as opposed to bolting together steel and laying breeze blocks is probably 100 times more.
That’s not even starting on having everyone involved security cleared, etc. No Lithuanian builders here.
While everyone gets understandably excited at the big LD announcement (I believe they've found reserves of 20 billion barrels of oil under Ed Davey's garden but I could be wrong), we continue to salivate over a by election in Manchester in a fortnight where the lack of objective verifiable information allows speculation to run riot - and don't we call enjoy a good speculation?
Further away, it appears Sussan Ley (the equivalent of Kemi Badenoch in Australia) is going to face a challenge "in the Party room" from Angus Taylor who was quit the Shadow Cabinet. I presume only Liberal MPs are allowed to vote on the leadership - not sure if Senators have a vote.
The Liberals are now a poor third in recent polls behind Labor and One Nation polling 18-20% (sound familiar?) and Ley's lacklustre performance has raised questions especially with the former Coalition with the Nationals now in pieces.
Yes Taylor is making a challenge and has resigned from the Shadow Cabinet today, though given Ley narrowly beat him before has he got the converts to win?
A recent Sky news poll had moderate Ley more popular with Labor voters than her own Liberal voters and in a poor third place with supporters of the hard right One Nation rising in the polls.
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
They have an opportunity to do a "reset" of what is known as the Whoniverse with the manner of Ncuti Gatwa's departure and effectively wipe the slate clean.
Obviously, we'll get all the "it's gone woke" complaints from the generation which hid behind the sofa in the 1960s and 1970s but they can be ignored.
As always, the quality of the whole production will be the key but I hope this beloved British institution which has fallen on hard times (a bit like the Conservative Party) can return and enthrall new generations.
shak @shak_ja · 18h The guy next to Prince William, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, sent torture videos to Epstein and is mentioned in Epstein's files. Yet, William has no issue taking millions from him for his Earthshot project while claiming to care about the victims. Unbelievable! #AbolishTheMonarchy
shak @shak_ja · 18h The guy next to Prince William, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, sent torture videos to Epstein and is mentioned in Epstein's files. Yet, William has no issue taking millions from him for his Earthshot project while claiming to care about the victims. Unbelievable! #AbolishTheMonarchy
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
I thought the Xmas 2026 special was confirmed. You may be better informed than me on that.
I watched the first War between the land and the Sea and quite liked it but didn’t feel motivated to come back to it.
A clean break and fresh ideas and, maybe, not relying on old monsters and continuity may be what is needed
For what it's worth, I've had a look round the local council results in search of nuggets for this by-election.
Obviously, we are still quite early in the election cycle, there have been no local rounds since the general election, so the locals are less useful as a baseline than they were in the latter stages of the last parliament. After this May, it's game on.
So, surprising quite how close the 2024 round was to general election, given the absence of Reform. Really shows that the underwhelming Labour %age vote was already baked in by their NEV in May, driven by places like this.
Here we have below the 2024 round with +/- figures comparing with the General election:
Lab 54.4 (+3.6 on the GE share) WP 17.3 (+7.0 on GE) Grn 14.3 (+1.1 on GE) Con 6.9 (-1.0 on GE) LD 3.8 (unchanged on GE) Ind 3.2 (+3.2 on GE) Ref 0 (-14.1 on GE)
I've also had a quick nosey at the 2015/6 rounds at UKIP's peak. Only UKIP best shares expressed here (their NEV was 13%, taking best of 2 we'd expect a bit higher). Note Denton wards around 20% smaller than Manchester wards:
Denton S: 15.0 (+24 for an Ind) Denton NE: 28.0 Denton W: 20.0 Burnage: 12.7 Gorton N (only partially relevant): 22.0 Gorton S: 14.0 Levenshulme: Never stood (a relevant looking Ind got 12.4) Longsight: Never stood
This sort of bears out the broadly average vote share Reform got in 2024, but though the Reform vote has depth, hints at a limit to its width.
So, after all the data, it ends up back to a finger in the air. My take is this:
1. Reform will have enthusiastic voters, but in a moderately high turnout election (for this area), differential turnout won't bias too much. I suspect a ceiling on their vote slightly below their polling (deep but not wide). I think sub 30%, I wouldn't be amazed with 25, but I think 27-28 more likely.
2. Green + Labour will attain more than double the Reform vote, so whatever the split one of these 2 parties will win. Lack of WPGB also helps this a lot, though I think they would have been squeezed anyway. The balance between them is labile and I wouldn't be sure what that exact balance will be. I think Green win but Labour avoid Caerphilly style collapse and could sneak second - a minimum 20% even if Green flight does reach it's maximum extent.
In numbers, I'll predict, with the caveat on the Grn/Lab balance:
Federal Aviation Administration just closed the airspace for 10 miles around the airport there for the next 10 days, with almost no notice, causing inbound commercial flights to divert.
Posssibly related to US military operations against Mexican cartels following the killing of a dozen Canadian miners, or possibly related to deportation flights out of the US. Any other ideas?
There have been delicious rumours floating around X that Trump is going to do the Disclosure speech, confirming the existence of NHI and recovered materials
To be taken with a Himalayan-sized pinch of salt, but entertaining, nonetheless
The big problem with Trump announcing aliens is it will just look like he is off his meds again
He was ranting on TV last night
The latest brilliant scheme is the US military are going to buy coal. WTF?
There are signs though of greater resistance to his batshittery. Congress voted last night to regain authority over tariffs. They could vote to end some of them as early as today.
The DOJ tried to bring charges against the six senators that reminded the US military they should disobey illegal orders. The Grand jury told them where to shove it.
While everyone gets understandably excited at the big LD announcement (I believe they've found reserves of 20 billion barrels of oil under Ed Davey's garden but I could be wrong), we continue to salivate over a by election in Manchester in a fortnight where the lack of objective verifiable information allows speculation to run riot - and don't we call enjoy a good speculation?
Further away, it appears Sussan Ley (the equivalent of Kemi Badenoch in Australia) is going to face a challenge "in the Party room" from Angus Taylor who was quit the Shadow Cabinet. I presume only Liberal MPs are allowed to vote on the leadership - not sure if Senators have a vote.
The Liberals are now a poor third in recent polls behind Labor and One Nation polling 18-20% (sound familiar?) and Ley's lacklustre performance has raised questions especially with the former Coalition with the Nationals now in pieces.
Yes Taylor is making a challenge and has resigned from the Shadow Cabinet today, though given Ley narrowly beat him before has he got the converts to win?
A recent Sky news poll had moderate Ley more popular with Labor voters than her own Liberal voters and in a poor third place with supporters of the hard right One Nation rising in the polls.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
For what it's worth, I've had a look round the local council results in search of nuggets for this by-election.
Obviously, we are still quite early in the election cycle, there have been no local rounds since the general election, so the locals are less useful as a baseline than they were in the latter stages of the last parliament. After this May, it's game on.
So, surprising quite how close the 2024 round was to general election, given the absence of Reform. Really shows that the underwhelming Labour %age vote was already baked in by their NEV in May, driven by places like this.
Here we have below the 2024 round with +/- figures comparing with the General election:
Lab 54.4 (+3.6 on the GE share) WP 17.3 (+7.0 on GE) Grn 14.3 (+1.1 on GE) Con 6.9 (-1.0 on GE) LD 3.8 (unchanged on GE) Ind 3.2 (+3.2 on GE) Ref 0 (-14.1 on GE)
I've also had a quick nosey at the 2015/6 rounds at UKIP's peak. Only UKIP best shares expressed here (their NEV was 13%, taking best of 2 we'd expect a bit higher). Note Denton wards around 20% smaller than Manchester wards:
Denton S: 15.0 (+24 for an Ind) Denton NE: 28.0 Denton W: 20.0 Burnage: 12.7 Gorton N (only partially relevant): 22.0 Gorton S: 14.0 Levenshulme: Never stood (a relevant looking Ind got 12.4) Longsight: Never stood
This sort of bears out the broadly average vote share Reform got in 2024, but though the Reform vote has depth, hints at a limit to its width.
So, after all the data, it ends up back to a finger in the air. My take is this:
1. Reform will have enthusiastic voters, but in a moderately high turnout election (for this area), differential turnout won't bias too much. I suspect a ceiling on their vote slightly below their polling (deep but not wide). I think sub 30%, I wouldn't be amazed with 25, but I think 27-28 more likely.
2. Green + Labour will attain more than double the Reform vote, so whatever the split one of these 2 parties will win. Lack of WPGB also helps this a lot, though I think they would have been squeezed anyway. The balance between them is labile and I wouldn't be sure what that exact balance will be. I think Green win but Labour avoid Caerphilly style collapse and could sneak second - a minimum 20% even if Green flight does reach it's maximum extent.
In numbers, I'll predict:
Grn 40 Ref 28 Lab 25 the field 7
Reform got 14% at the last general election so given there national figures have doubled since 28% looks about right.
While everyone gets understandably excited at the big LD announcement (I believe they've found reserves of 20 billion barrels of oil under Ed Davey's garden but I could be wrong), we continue to salivate over a by election in Manchester in a fortnight where the lack of objective verifiable information allows speculation to run riot - and don't we call enjoy a good speculation?
Further away, it appears Sussan Ley (the equivalent of Kemi Badenoch in Australia) is going to face a challenge "in the Party room" from Angus Taylor who was quit the Shadow Cabinet. I presume only Liberal MPs are allowed to vote on the leadership - not sure if Senators have a vote.
The Liberals are now a poor third in recent polls behind Labor and One Nation polling 18-20% (sound familiar?) and Ley's lacklustre performance has raised questions especially with the former Coalition with the Nationals now in pieces.
Yes Taylor is making a challenge and has resigned from the Shadow Cabinet today, though given Ley narrowly beat him before has he got the converts to win?
A recent Sky news poll had moderate Ley more popular with Labor voters than her own Liberal voters and in a poor third place with supporters of the hard right One Nation rising in the polls.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
I assume the betting odds are the best indication and labour are on about 10%
I expect the greens to win
I notice last night's result from Wales gave a shellacking to labour and the conservatives with Paid taking the seat from labour and reform underperforming
This follows Caerphilly where Plaid won with another failed reform challenge
It seems the gloss is coming off reform here in Wales, and Plaid are on course ro win the Senedd in May with labour trounced
For what it's worth, I've had a look round the local council results in search of nuggets for this by-election.
Obviously, we are still quite early in the election cycle, there have been no local rounds since the general election, so the locals are less useful as a baseline than they were in the latter stages of the last parliament. After this May, it's game on.
So, surprising quite how close the 2024 round was to general election, given the absence of Reform. Really shows that the underwhelming Labour %age vote was already baked in by their NEV in May, driven by places like this.
Here we have below the 2024 round with +/- figures comparing with the General election:
Lab 54.4 (+3.6 on the GE share) WP 17.3 (+7.0 on GE) Grn 14.3 (+1.1 on GE) Con 6.9 (-1.0 on GE) LD 3.8 (unchanged on GE) Ind 3.2 (+3.2 on GE) Ref 0 (-14.1 on GE)
I've also had a quick nosey at the 2015/6 rounds at UKIP's peak. Only UKIP best shares expressed here (their NEV was 13%, taking best of 2 we'd expect a bit higher). Note Denton wards around 20% smaller than Manchester wards:
Denton S: 15.0 (+24 for an Ind) Denton NE: 28.0 Denton W: 20.0 Burnage: 12.7 Gorton N (only partially relevant): 22.0 Gorton S: 14.0 Levenshulme: Never stood (a relevant looking Ind got 12.4) Longsight: Never stood
This sort of bears out the broadly average vote share Reform got in 2024, but though the Reform vote has depth, hints at a limit to its width.
So, after all the data, it ends up back to a finger in the air. My take is this:
1. Reform will have enthusiastic voters, but in a moderately high turnout election (for this area), differential turnout won't bias too much. I suspect a ceiling on their vote slightly below their polling (deep but not wide). I think sub 30%, I wouldn't be amazed with 25, but I think 27-28 more likely.
2. Green + Labour will attain more than double the Reform vote, so whatever the split one of these 2 parties will win. Lack of WPGB also helps this a lot, though I think they would have been squeezed anyway. The balance between them is labile and I wouldn't be sure what that exact balance will be. I think Green win but Labour avoid Caerphilly style collapse and could sneak second - a minimum 20% even if Green flight does reach it's maximum extent.
In numbers, I'll predict:
Grn 40 Ref 28 Lab 25 the field 7
Reform got 14% at the last general election so given there national figures have doubled since 28% looks about right.
I think they start in the 20s as they capture some of the WP vote given local endorsements and then the will to kick Labour starts from there. I don't expect a UNS type situation on the left. Though note the main LE->GE swing between any two parties was WP to Reform, whether that transfer was direct or indirect.
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
I thought the Xmas 2026 special was confirmed. You may be better informed than me on that.
I watched the first War between the land and the Sea and quite liked it but didn’t feel motivated to come back to it.
A clean break and fresh ideas and, maybe, not relying on old monsters and continuity may be what is needed
I think the Xmas special is not yet confirmed.
"The War Between...": it kinda continues like the first episode. I enjoyed it: not great, but not bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
For what it's worth, I've had a look round the local council results in search of nuggets for this by-election.
Obviously, we are still quite early in the election cycle, there have been no local rounds since the general election, so the locals are less useful as a baseline than they were in the latter stages of the last parliament. After this May, it's game on.
So, surprising quite how close the 2024 round was to general election, given the absence of Reform. Really shows that the underwhelming Labour %age vote was already baked in by their NEV in May, driven by places like this.
Here we have below the 2024 round with +/- figures comparing with the General election:
Lab 54.4 (+3.6 on the GE share) WP 17.3 (+7.0 on GE) Grn 14.3 (+1.1 on GE) Con 6.9 (-1.0 on GE) LD 3.8 (unchanged on GE) Ind 3.2 (+3.2 on GE) Ref 0 (-14.1 on GE)
I've also had a quick nosey at the 2015/6 rounds at UKIP's peak. Only UKIP best shares expressed here (their NEV was 13%, taking best of 2 we'd expect a bit higher). Note Denton wards around 20% smaller than Manchester wards:
Denton S: 15.0 (+24 for an Ind) Denton NE: 28.0 Denton W: 20.0 Burnage: 12.7 Gorton N (only partially relevant): 22.0 Gorton S: 14.0 Levenshulme: Never stood (a relevant looking Ind got 12.4) Longsight: Never stood
This sort of bears out the broadly average vote share Reform got in 2024, but though the Reform vote has depth, hints at a limit to its width.
So, after all the data, it ends up back to a finger in the air. My take is this:
1. Reform will have enthusiastic voters, but in a moderately high turnout election (for this area), differential turnout won't bias too much. I suspect a ceiling on their vote slightly below their polling (deep but not wide). I think sub 30%, I wouldn't be amazed with 25, but I think 27-28 more likely.
2. Green + Labour will attain more than double the Reform vote, so whatever the split one of these 2 parties will win. Lack of WPGB also helps this a lot, though I think they would have been squeezed anyway. The balance between them is labile and I wouldn't be sure what that exact balance will be. I think Green win but Labour avoid Caerphilly style collapse and could sneak second - a minimum 20% even if Green flight does reach it's maximum extent.
In numbers, I'll predict, with the caveat on the Grn/Lab balance:
Grn 40 Ref 28 Lab 25 the field 7
As a Labour supporter I'd actually prefer a Green win to a Reform win
Simple reason
Polanski like Farage is a party based on a cult
Granted they have a deeper base but in reality it is Corbyn 2. They have been taken over by a person who has limited affinity with his Partyi
I don't expect Polanski to survive the sniff test if greater exposure.
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
They have an opportunity to do a "reset" of what is known as the Whoniverse with the manner of Ncuti Gatwa's departure and effectively wipe the slate clean.
Obviously, we'll get all the "it's gone woke" complaints from the generation which hid behind the sofa in the 1960s and 1970s but they can be ignored.
As always, the quality of the whole production will be the key but I hope this beloved British institution which has fallen on hard times (a bit like the Conservative Party) can return and enthrall new generations.
I have been generally sitting out Dr Who since the relaunch. I did enjoy the first couple of series of Torchwood and I downloaded The War Between the Land and the Sea to watch on a flight recently. Thought it started well (although did they explain why they didn't get the Doctor to sort them out? May have to watch episode 1 again) and I am now up to episode 4 which has got rather slow now our hero is snogging the lizard lady in a warehouse.
shak @shak_ja · 18h The guy next to Prince William, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, sent torture videos to Epstein and is mentioned in Epstein's files. Yet, William has no issue taking millions from him for his Earthshot project while claiming to care about the victims. Unbelievable! #AbolishTheMonarchy
It does provide part of the answer to why victims might have been scared to speak out. Billionaire into torture, who controls a tenth of the world's container fleet, and who can therefore smuggle anyone or anything wherever he wants..
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Possibly. Certainly counter-terror police are investigating.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
Agreed. It's utterly absurd to spend so much purely on symbolism.
Which is the party of pragmatists that I can vote for ?
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
I thought the Xmas 2026 special was confirmed. You may be better informed than me on that.
I watched the first War between the land and the Sea and quite liked it but didn’t feel motivated to come back to it.
A clean break and fresh ideas and, maybe, not relying on old monsters and continuity may be what is needed
For some unknown reason I watched it all. I was quite excited for it as those two big Torchwood series were brilliant (with some flaws). For something with war in the title there is precious little fighting. It's mostly people either snarling or crying at each other during summit meetings. I think they ran out of time to make it as some very major plot things happen off screens. Also RTD isn't interested in explaining anything visually anymore and just relies on declamatory statements from his characters.
For what it's worth, I've had a look round the local council results in search of nuggets for this by-election.
Obviously, we are still quite early in the election cycle, there have been no local rounds since the general election, so the locals are less useful as a baseline than they were in the latter stages of the last parliament. After this May, it's game on.
So, surprising quite how close the 2024 round was to general election, given the absence of Reform. Really shows that the underwhelming Labour %age vote was already baked in by their NEV in May, driven by places like this.
Here we have below the 2024 round with +/- figures comparing with the General election:
Lab 54.4 (+3.6 on the GE share) WP 17.3 (+7.0 on GE) Grn 14.3 (+1.1 on GE) Con 6.9 (-1.0 on GE) LD 3.8 (unchanged on GE) Ind 3.2 (+3.2 on GE) Ref 0 (-14.1 on GE)
I've also had a quick nosey at the 2015/6 rounds at UKIP's peak. Only UKIP best shares expressed here (their NEV was 13%, taking best of 2 we'd expect a bit higher). Note Denton wards around 20% smaller than Manchester wards:
Denton S: 15.0 (+24 for an Ind) Denton NE: 28.0 Denton W: 20.0 Burnage: 12.7 Gorton N (only partially relevant): 22.0 Gorton S: 14.0 Levenshulme: Never stood (a relevant looking Ind got 12.4) Longsight: Never stood
This sort of bears out the broadly average vote share Reform got in 2024, but though the Reform vote has depth, hints at a limit to its width.
So, after all the data, it ends up back to a finger in the air. My take is this:
1. Reform will have enthusiastic voters, but in a moderately high turnout election (for this area), differential turnout won't bias too much. I suspect a ceiling on their vote slightly below their polling (deep but not wide). I think sub 30%, I wouldn't be amazed with 25, but I think 27-28 more likely.
2. Green + Labour will attain more than double the Reform vote, so whatever the split one of these 2 parties will win. Lack of WPGB also helps this a lot, though I think they would have been squeezed anyway. The balance between them is labile and I wouldn't be sure what that exact balance will be. I think Green win but Labour avoid Caerphilly style collapse and could sneak second - a minimum 20% even if Green flight does reach it's maximum extent.
In numbers, I'll predict, with the caveat on the Grn/Lab balance:
Grn 40 Ref 28 Lab 25 the field 7
As a Labour supporter I'd actually prefer a Green win to a Reform win
Simple reason
Polanski like Farage is a party based on a cult
Granted they have a deeper base but in reality it is Corbyn 2. They have been taken over by a person who has limited affinity with his Partyi
I don't expect Polanski to survive the sniff test if greater exposure.
You know who else is having problems surviving the sniff test of greater exposure?
While everyone gets understandably excited at the big LD announcement (I believe they've found reserves of 20 billion barrels of oil under Ed Davey's garden but I could be wrong), we continue to salivate over a by election in Manchester in a fortnight where the lack of objective verifiable information allows speculation to run riot - and don't we call enjoy a good speculation?
Further away, it appears Sussan Ley (the equivalent of Kemi Badenoch in Australia) is going to face a challenge "in the Party room" from Angus Taylor who was quit the Shadow Cabinet. I presume only Liberal MPs are allowed to vote on the leadership - not sure if Senators have a vote.
The Liberals are now a poor third in recent polls behind Labor and One Nation polling 18-20% (sound familiar?) and Ley's lacklustre performance has raised questions especially with the former Coalition with the Nationals now in pieces.
Yes Taylor is making a challenge and has resigned from the Shadow Cabinet today, though given Ley narrowly beat him before has he got the converts to win?
A recent Sky news poll had moderate Ley more popular with Labor voters than her own Liberal voters and in a poor third place with supporters of the hard right One Nation rising in the polls.
Do you know if Senators can vote in a leadership challenge? I know they are "in the room" with MPs for regular meetings.
No
Thanks - that's what I suspected. I heard Taylor's statement following his resignation from the Shadow Cabinet. It has been widely criticised on Sky News Australia (which is no friend of Sussan Ley) for being "vacuous" and if you listen to it it's all soundbites and platitudes.
"A strong Australia needs a strong Liberal Party" - seriously? Could you imagine Badenoch coming out with "a strong Britain needs a strong Conservative Party". No, neither can I. There wasn't a single idea in Taylor's remarks or any sense of where the Liberal Party might go if he took over (and he didn't mention One Nation or the Nationals at all). At least with Badenoch you are getting policy development and proposals but the Australian Liberals seem to be taking their landslide defeat far worse than the Conservatives over here.
I can only think it was the speed and ferocity of the fall which has been psychologically damaging. At the beginning of 2025, they led Labor comfortably - almost by double digits in the primary vote - and were set for what looked like an easy win but that completely unravelled and they lost the primary vote 35-32 and the two-party preferred 55-45 which produced the astonishing landslide for Albanese.
The Conservatives here knew they were going to lose a way out from polling day and were perhaps more mentally prepared for the humiliation whereas the Australian Liberals just look shell-shocked.
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
They have an opportunity to do a "reset" of what is known as the Whoniverse with the manner of Ncuti Gatwa's departure and effectively wipe the slate clean.
Obviously, we'll get all the "it's gone woke" complaints from the generation which hid behind the sofa in the 1960s and 1970s but they can be ignored.
As always, the quality of the whole production will be the key but I hope this beloved British institution which has fallen on hard times (a bit like the Conservative Party) can return and enthrall new generations.
I have been generally sitting out Dr Who since the relaunch. I did enjoy the first couple of series of Torchwood and I downloaded The War Between the Land and the Sea to watch on a flight recently. Thought it started well (although did they explain why they didn't get the Doctor to sort them out? May have to watch episode 1 again) and I am now up to episode 4 which has got rather slow now our hero is snogging the lizard lady in a warehouse.
She's an amphibian lady, not a lizard lady.
I thought the series did dip in the middle, but pulled it back for a better ending. Overall, I think I enjoyed it more than the last series of regular Dr Who. It was different. It had some ambition. It occasionally reminded me of RTD's fantastic "The Second Coming"... but only occasionally!
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
Agreed. It's utterly absurd to spend so much purely on symbolism.
Which is the party of pragmatists that I can vote for ?
Let’s bulldoze it and replace it with a replica of the Scottish Parliament building. Job done. We could even put a few billion behind the bar for the opening party and still have spare change. What’s not to love?
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
I don't think Disney and the money was the issue, it was, as ever, the tedious woke writing. Frankly I thought Dr Who better when the Doctor had no interest in sex/relationships. He's an alien, a timelord, who in theory might be essentially immortal. His ability to rise above the mundane tedium of human interaction was part of the joy. Frankly the last few series have become fan-boy and fan-girl fiction. And don't get me started on the miss-use of tremendous villains from the old show.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
I don’t agree that rebuilding is necessarily wrong but to inflate the cost to keep everyone working there while it is ongoing is stupid.
Federal Aviation Administration just closed the airspace for 10 miles around the airport there for the next 10 days, with almost no notice, causing inbound commercial flights to divert.
Posssibly related to US military operations against Mexican cartels following the killing of a dozen Canadian miners, or possibly related to deportation flights out of the US. Any other ideas?
ALIENS!!
I've not stopped laughing after that green egg video was released...
While everyone gets understandably excited at the big LD announcement (I believe they've found reserves of 20 billion barrels of oil under Ed Davey's garden but I could be wrong), we continue to salivate over a by election in Manchester in a fortnight where the lack of objective verifiable information allows speculation to run riot - and don't we call enjoy a good speculation?
Further away, it appears Sussan Ley (the equivalent of Kemi Badenoch in Australia) is going to face a challenge "in the Party room" from Angus Taylor who was quit the Shadow Cabinet. I presume only Liberal MPs are allowed to vote on the leadership - not sure if Senators have a vote.
The Liberals are now a poor third in recent polls behind Labor and One Nation polling 18-20% (sound familiar?) and Ley's lacklustre performance has raised questions especially with the former Coalition with the Nationals now in pieces.
Yes Taylor is making a challenge and has resigned from the Shadow Cabinet today, though given Ley narrowly beat him before has he got the converts to win?
A recent Sky news poll had moderate Ley more popular with Labor voters than her own Liberal voters and in a poor third place with supporters of the hard right One Nation rising in the polls.
Do you know if Senators can vote in a leadership challenge? I know they are "in the room" with MPs for regular meetings.
No
Thanks - that's what I suspected. I heard Taylor's statement following his resignation from the Shadow Cabinet. It has been widely criticised on Sky News Australia (which is no friend of Sussan Ley) for being "vacuous" and if you listen to it it's all soundbites and platitudes.
"A strong Australia needs a strong Liberal Party" - seriously? Could you imagine Badenoch coming out with "a strong Britain needs a strong Conservative Party". No, neither can I. There wasn't a single idea in Taylor's remarks or any sense of where the Liberal Party might go if he took over (and he didn't mention One Nation or the Nationals at all). At least with Badenoch you are getting policy development and proposals but the Australian Liberals seem to be taking their landslide defeat far worse than the Conservatives over here.
I can only think it was the speed and ferocity of the fall which has been psychologically damaging. At the beginning of 2025, they led Labor comfortably - almost by double digits in the primary vote - and were set for what looked like an easy win but that completely unravelled and they lost the primary vote 35-32 and the two-party preferred 55-45 which produced the astonishing landslide for Albanese.
The Conservatives here knew they were going to lose a way out from polling day and were perhaps more mentally prepared for the humiliation whereas the Australian Liberals just look shell-shocked.
Taylor would just be a return to Dutton style politics, rightwing conservatism which lost last year.
Moderate Ley hasn't done the policy work Kemi has but has at least tried to shift the Liberals in a bit more of a centrist direction and resisted calls from the party right to scrap net zero targets completely to try and win back voters lost in upper middle class wealthy seats to the Teals.
The One Nation surge has seen the coalition vote decline even further (more so the rural Nationals than urban and suburban Liberals) though Hastie from the hard right faction is probably better able to win them back than Taylor but he has declined a run this time
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
The treasury is a blocker on growth because the green book virtually says if it’s not in London it’s not worth doing.
In reality Government spending breaks into 3 pots
Day to day spending Repairing existing infrastructure Investment in the future
I suspect if we looked at things this way we would see a lot better governing
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
Agreed. It's utterly absurd to spend so much purely on symbolism.
Which is the party of pragmatists that I can vote for ?
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
I thought the Xmas 2026 special was confirmed. You may be better informed than me on that.
I watched the first War between the land and the Sea and quite liked it but didn’t feel motivated to come back to it.
A clean break and fresh ideas and, maybe, not relying on old monsters and continuity may be what is needed
I think the Xmas special is not yet confirmed.
"The War Between...": it kinda continues like the first episode. I enjoyed it: not great, but not bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
We watched Ep 1 but never got round to carrying on. Its still there waiting for us. Just didn't grab me by the balls, in the way it should.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
So we had an Islamist terror attack at a school, leaving two boys chopped up and critically injured in hospital, and we've gotten so used to it this doesn't even get a passing mention on PB
It's this normalisation that's the truly worrying development. The country is being Ulsterised
Do we know it was an Islamist terror attack?
Counter terrorism are on the job, and it is widely reported the assailant shouted Allahu Akhbar before trying to kill everyone
"Islamist" seems a reasonable assumption, tho it is not proven, of course
Perhaps they didn’t get round to showing ‘Adolescence’ in that school ?
As somebody said once or twice....Fantastic Netflix Documentary.....
He's rumoured to be up for the job of running Dr Who.
I assumed it was dead following the collapse of the Disney deal.
Might not be a bad thing. I may start watching it again.
There are rumours. I don't know if they are correct, but the rumours say... The BBC are keen to continue with Dr Who in some form. RTD is out, although may be doing an Xmas 2026 episode as his final thing. The question is what next. RTD is supposedly pushing for Pete McTighe, who has worked on the show and on The War Between the Land and the Sea, but the BBC are more interested in Jack Thorne, who is interested.
They have an opportunity to do a "reset" of what is known as the Whoniverse with the manner of Ncuti Gatwa's departure and effectively wipe the slate clean.
Obviously, we'll get all the "it's gone woke" complaints from the generation which hid behind the sofa in the 1960s and 1970s but they can be ignored.
As always, the quality of the whole production will be the key but I hope this beloved British institution which has fallen on hard times (a bit like the Conservative Party) can return and enthrall new generations.
I have been generally sitting out Dr Who since the relaunch. I did enjoy the first couple of series of Torchwood and I downloaded The War Between the Land and the Sea to watch on a flight recently. Thought it started well (although did they explain why they didn't get the Doctor to sort them out? May have to watch episode 1 again) and I am now up to episode 4 which has got rather slow now our hero is snogging the lizard lady in a warehouse.
The Doctor isn't always available (although with a time machine, he kind of ought to be).
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
The treasury is a blocker on growth because the green book virtually says if it’s not in London it’s not worth doing.
In reality Government spending breaks into 3 pots
Day to day spending Repairing existing infrastructure Investment in the future
I suspect if we looked at things this way we would see a lot better governing
I agree but in the present news cycle it was not going to get coverage but raised expectations of a much more dramatic headline
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
I don’t agree that rebuilding is necessarily wrong but to inflate the cost to keep everyone working there while it is ongoing is stupid.
The last estimate is £9bn even if everyone leaves.
It’s time to move out of Parliament and build it elsewhere
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
So they have no understanding of the constitution and our governmental structures.
Great
This is akin to Blair abolishing the Lord Chancellor only to have to u turn within hours.
It's not quite that bad - so far this proposal hasn't yet cost any taxpayer money.
It sounds a pretty good idea to me. It splits up the functions of the current monster department, which has been accumulating power for decades. And moves a large chunk of it to Birmingham.
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
Takes a lot more than that to embarrass this Lib Dem and let's be honest given some of the ways other parties have played this game over the past few years I'm reminded of stone throwing in glasshouses.
I do agree there's little point in the current febrile atmosphere and the party should be doing what it does best - local campaigning to win seats in May.
The actual idea has a vaguely 1960s feel about it and Governments rename Departments all the time so that's not a huge issue. Having a Department of Growth within the Treasury isn't a bad idea in theory but we all know the reasons for anaemic growth are many and varied and have so far defied all attempts at resolution (and will likely continue to do so).
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
So they have no understanding of the constitution and our governmental structures.
Great
This is akin to Blair abolishing the Lord Chancellor only to have to u turn within hours.
It's not quite that bad - so far this proposal hasn't yet cost any taxpayer money.
It sounds a pretty good idea to me. It splits up the functions of the current monster department, which has been accumulating power for decades. And moves a large chunk of it to Birmingham.
The constitutional objections are risible.
Go fully remote. Require MPs to announce if they're dialing in from their constituency or not.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
Agreed. It's utterly absurd to spend so much purely on symbolism.
Which is the party of pragmatists that I can vote for ?
Let’s bulldoze it and replace it with a replica of the Scottish Parliament building. Job done. We could even put a few billion behind the bar for the opening party and still have spare change. What’s not to love?
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
Agreed. It's utterly absurd to spend so much purely on symbolism.
Which is the party of pragmatists that I can vote for ?
Let’s bulldoze it and replace it with a replica of the Scottish Parliament building. Job done. We could even put a few billion behind the bar for the opening party and still have spare change. What’s not to love?
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
Takes a lot more than that to embarrass this Lib Dem and let's be honest given some of the ways other parties have played this game over the past few years I'm reminded of stone throwing in glasshouses.
I do agree there's little point in the current febrile atmosphere and the party should be doing what it does best - local campaigning to win seats in May.
The actual idea has a vaguely 1960s feel about it and Governments rename Departments all the time so that's not a huge issue. Having a Department of Growth within the Treasury isn't a bad idea in theory but we all know the reasons for anaemic growth are many and varied and have so far defied all attempts at resolution (and will likely continue to do so).
I do not have an issue with the proposal but it's trailer was maybe a wee bit dramatic
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
I don’t agree that rebuilding is necessarily wrong but to inflate the cost to keep everyone working there while it is ongoing is stupid.
The last estimate is £9bn even if everyone leaves.
It’s time to move out of Parliament and build it elsewhere
And do what with the current building? It's part of our national heritage and one of the most iconic structures anywhere in the world. It's dreary and barbaric beyond belief to see so many people on here who want to knock it down or sell it off as a hotel rather than spend money on repairing it. We have lost so many fine and beautiful buildings that used to belong to the nation to demolition or privatisation already.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
I don’t agree that rebuilding is necessarily wrong but to inflate the cost to keep everyone working there while it is ongoing is stupid.
The last estimate is £9bn even if everyone leaves.
It’s time to move out of Parliament and build it elsewhere
And do what with the current building? It's part of our national heritage and one of the most iconic structures anywhere in the world. It's dreary and barbaric beyond belief to see so many people on here who want to knock it down or sell it off as a hotel rather than spend money on repairing it. We have lost so many fine and beautiful buildings that used to belong to the nation to demolition or privatisation already.
In fact @Leon’s stalker rants about the loss of such buildings on Twitter on the regular
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
It says a lot about our current politics that even a sensible chap like you is so much more interested in click bait headline politics than serious proposals for reform, that you think it should receive no news coverage.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The Burj Khalifa was built 16 years ago on a “green field” site, with questionable labour I suspect. It is indefinitely cheaper to build on open virgin land than to renovate national heritage assets in central London with national security implications. It’s a complete false equivalence.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
I assume the betting odds are the best indication and labour are on about 10%
I expect the greens to win
I notice last night's result from Wales gave a shellacking to labour and the conservatives with Paid taking the seat from labour and reform underperforming
This follows Caerphilly where Plaid won with another failed reform challenge
It seems the gloss is coming off reform here in Wales, and Plaid are on course ro win the Senedd in May with labour trounced
On topic, weird and wonderful things can sometimes happen.
Yesterday I got a letter from HMRC conceding that I was right in a more-than-two-year-long argument I've been having with them, one of those arguments where they are completely in the wrong, but every time I got a letter from them it was obviously from someone different who hadn't bothered to read the file from the start and therefore had to be educated again. So they finally conceded. But that wasn't the strange thing. What was strange is that they conceded with relatively good grace, admitted poor record keeping, and, unbelievably, even gave me an unsolicited apology for the stress and inconvenience caused.
So water can flow upwards, arrogant and unaccountable bureaucrats sometimes say sorry, Donald Trump can make a good decision, and maybe even catastrophically unpopular governments can win by-elections.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The problem is that restoring the current draughty pile of stone in line with current building regulations (which is the plan), without radical changes to the external structure (ie partial demolition) is going to be hideously expensive however you do it.
"Minimum required" is a very subjective term (though I agree with you).
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
It says a lot about our current politics that even a sensible chap like you is so much more interested in click bait headline politics than serious proposals for reform, that you think it should receive no news coverage.
I dont - just the ramping did not match the intrigue
Good morning all. So, does Kemi go on Mandrlson, Doyle or something else for PMQs? A big hit just before recess or a Palmer from 2 yards miss ( ha ha gfy Chelsea)?
Sienna Rodgers' Politics Home piece that the tweet refers to has this sentence in it:
"Labour sources indicated they were increasingly confident of Labour holding the constituency because the party looked like it could be a "strong second" to the Greens and Reform respectively in different wards."
That says to me that Labour don't think they are winning in any ward. A somewhat shaky basis on which to express confidence in a hold.
I assume the betting odds are the best indication and labour are on about 10%
I expect the greens to win
I notice last night's result from Wales gave a shellacking to labour and the conservatives with Paid taking the seat from labour and reform underperforming
This follows Caerphilly where Plaid won with another failed reform challenge
It seems the gloss is coming off reform here in Wales, and Plaid are on course ro win the Senedd in May with labour trounced
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The problem is that restoring the current draughty pile of stone in line with current building regulations (which is the plan), without radical changes to the external structure (ie partial demolition) is going to be hideously expensive however you do it.
"Minimum required" is a very subjective term (though I agree with you).
It's a terrible shame that Parliament doesn't have the power to exclude Westminster from those regs.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The Burj Khalifa was built 16 years ago on a “green field” site, with questionable labour I suspect. It is indefinitely cheaper to build on open virgin land than to renovate national heritage assets in central London with national security implications. It’s a complete false equivalence.
I’m not disagreeing, just trying to give some context to the cost.
How and why it costs ten or twenty times the price to renovate a building in London is the problem. It’s easily possible to do it for a fraction of the prices quoted, if the scope was reduced to what’s actually required to be done.
Lib Dems would scrap Treasury in favour of Department for Growth
Thats it
Unless they also have a Department for balanced budgets looks a bit dangerously Liz Truss?
If that is the big announcement then I would be very embarrased if I were a Lib Dem and how Cooper thought that would get news coverage with the present news agenda is beyond me
It says a lot about our current politics that even a sensible chap like you is so much more interested in click bait headline politics than serious proposals for reform, that you think it should receive no news coverage.
I dont - just the ramping did not match the intrigue
The proposal seems sensible
The ramping was, like, one skeet. That we here got a bit carried with it isn't the party's fault!
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The Burj Khalifa was built 16 years ago on a “green field” site, with questionable labour I suspect. It is indefinitely cheaper to build on open virgin land than to renovate national heritage assets in central London with national security implications. It’s a complete false equivalence.
I’m not disagreeing, just trying to give some context to the cost.
How and why it costs ten or twenty times the price to renovate a building in London is the problem. It’s easily possible to do it for a fraction of the prices quoted, if the scope was reduced to what’s actually required to be done.
Who’s doing the labour? Indian nationals with their passports confiscated?
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
They happily pay the interest, if they work abroad for five years and come back with £50k in savings.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
They happily pay the interest, if they work abroad for five years and come back with £50k in savings.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
Not just interest. You also get significant penalties. You’ll be no better off than just paying it monthly from abroad like you’re supposed to. These people are just tax avoiding essentially and it shouldn’t be celebrated.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
They happily pay the interest, if they work abroad for five years and come back with £50k in savings.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The Burj Khalifa was built 16 years ago on a “green field” site, with questionable labour I suspect. It is indefinitely cheaper to build on open virgin land than to renovate national heritage assets in central London with national security implications. It’s a complete false equivalence.
I’m not disagreeing, just trying to give some context to the cost.
How and why it costs ten or twenty times the price to renovate a building in London is the problem. It’s easily possible to do it for a fraction of the prices quoted, if the scope was reduced to what’s actually required to be done.
Who’s doing the labour? Indian nationals with their passports confiscated?
This is Dubai, not Qatar. Labour law here got fixed about two decades ago, and they don’t just throw unskilled labourers at building buildings any more. The construction methodology is similar to what you’d see in the West.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
They happily pay the interest, if they work abroad for five years and come back with £50k in savings.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
When it was EU students, because the ECJ told us to. (We did not originally). This has stopped, at least for undergraduates.
The Telegraph article is pretty useless, since it doesn't answer your question.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The Burj Khalifa was built 16 years ago on a “green field” site, with questionable labour I suspect. It is indefinitely cheaper to build on open virgin land than to renovate national heritage assets in central London with national security implications. It’s a complete false equivalence.
I’m not disagreeing, just trying to give some context to the cost.
How and why it costs ten or twenty times the price to renovate a building in London is the problem. It’s easily possible to do it for a fraction of the prices quoted, if the scope was reduced to what’s actually required to be done.
Who’s doing the labour? Indian nationals with their passports confiscated?
This is Dubai, not Qatar. Labour law here got fixed about two decades ago, and they don’t just throw unskilled labourers at building buildings any more. The construction methodology is similar to what you’d see in the West.
Outside of the UK because we have the least efficient builders outside of Romania (and I suspect I’m insulting Romania).
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The Burj Khalifa was built 16 years ago on a “green field” site, with questionable labour I suspect. It is indefinitely cheaper to build on open virgin land than to renovate national heritage assets in central London with national security implications. It’s a complete false equivalence.
I’m not disagreeing, just trying to give some context to the cost.
How and why it costs ten or twenty times the price to renovate a building in London is the problem. It’s easily possible to do it for a fraction of the prices quoted, if the scope was reduced to what’s actually required to be done.
Who’s doing the labour? Indian nationals with their passports confiscated?
This is Dubai, not Qatar. Labour law here got fixed about two decades ago, and they don’t just throw unskilled labourers at building buildings any more. The construction methodology is similar to what you’d see in the West.
That may be true but it will still be indefinitely cheaper to employ construction labour in Dubai than in central London. And again you’re ignoring the additional costs of national security clearance and the fact refurbishment is more expensive than new build.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
They happily pay the interest, if they work abroad for five years and come back with £50k in savings.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
When it was EU students, because the ECJ told us to. (We did not originally). This has stopped, at least for undergraduates.
The Telegraph article is pretty useless, since it doesn't answer your question.
Yeah, student loans are (post-Brexit) only available for UK citizens, and only those who have been resident in the UK for the last 3 years. UK citizens who have been living overseas don't even get them.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
You get the loan paid in instalments and you only get the instalments if you’re still enrolled so that is unlikely to account for loads of it.
A student can be enrolled on a course but not necessarily spending any time doing the course and even if they are turning up only once or twice a month some courses have very few formal hours and eve lower actual attendances.
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
AIUI the cost is because they want to rebuild the entire building while leaving only the facade in place, but everyone working there stays in place working there during the works.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
It would be ridiculous to not take this opportunity to remove asbestos and fix M&E. That would be completely shortsighted.
That’s what they should be doing, the absolute minimum scope to fix what’s broken.
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
They're not. The Restoration and Renewal Committee has agreed in two options to be put to a vote. One is a full decant which will cost somewhere around 10 billion. One is a partial decant with the Lords buggering off and the Commons moving into the Lords chamber. That is estimated to cost around 20 billion. The 40 billion option that was REJECTED by the Committee was for both Chambers to stay in while building work is done.
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
Ooh okay.
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
The problem is that restoring the current draughty pile of stone in line with current building regulations (which is the plan), without radical changes to the external structure (ie partial demolition) is going to be hideously expensive however you do it.
"Minimum required" is a very subjective term (though I agree with you).
Yes.
I’ve not dug into it too much, but I suspect that there’s only so much renovation you can do before every room needs to be ‘accessible’ by law, which means putting in new lifts and stairs, corridor and door widths and clearances etc to modern building codes, inside the existing structure. All of which basically means they keep the facade and build a totally new building behind it.
Would be a fun research project for a PBer with some time on their hands to make into a header.
I assume the betting odds are the best indication and labour are on about 10%
I expect the greens to win
I notice last night's result from Wales gave a shellacking to labour and the conservatives with Paid taking the seat from labour and reform underperforming
This follows Caerphilly where Plaid won with another failed reform challenge
It seems the gloss is coming off reform here in Wales, and Plaid are on course ro win the Senedd in May with labour trounced
Yes - there is a trend in Wales to Plaid over reform
I never like to over analyse any individual result but to dip into Fishguard last night, it wss a pretty 'on trend' result compared to Nowcasts (experimental) current ward by ward estimates from polling - both Plaid and Ref underperformed a bit but there were two indies added in to the mix and Lab and LD were on trend if you split the green estimated share between them (as the greens didnt stand) it has the Tories on 9.2% versus an actual.... 9.2%! As i said, ovrranalysis, but Fishguard went very much to plan versus current polling.
Its possible that some of them don't even bother doing the course but take out the loan, get a job and then disappear into the black economy.
There’s definitely still plenty of fake colleges around, but I don’t know if the students there can get loans. It does appear to look an awful lot like the Quality Learing Center in Minneapolis.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Except you can’t get away from it and the SLC will chase you for the money when you return with fees and penalties.
They happily pay the interest, if they work abroad for five years and come back with £50k in savings.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
Not just interest. You also get significant penalties. You’ll be no better off than just paying it monthly from abroad like you’re supposed to. These people are just tax avoiding essentially and it shouldn’t be celebrated.
Good morning all. So, does Kemi go on Mandrlson, Doyle or something else for PMQs? A big hit just before recess or a Palmer from 2 yards miss ( ha ha gfy Chelsea)?
I think if she goes Epstein, Doyle, Mandy she basically switches off 90% of the electorate.
It's not so much factored in now as cemented in. Those who are going to consider it when voting will, those who won't orvwho are bored with it will ignore it.
Any event has a shelf life.
I hope she does go with it
I hope she repeats her lies that the Government is in paralysis, it clearly isnt
Big announcements each day, spending, policy, aspiration. A big update today from Bridget on SEND and an interim writing off if 5bn council debt allegedly.
Thats not doing nothing things happening daily
She's going to be increasing seen as a moaner a whine an agitate a glorified student debater
Very light on policy, very light on new ideas and at historic low opinion poll polling levels.
I'd suggest she'd be very well advised to optimise her next 8birv8 PMQ outings. Odds on they will be her last.
If anybody wants to help Ukrainians but doesn't have any military experience, spare cash or a spare room, this organisation is a group of volunteers who give English lessons on Google Meet to residents or citizens overseas of that heroic country, though understandably they prioritise soldiers and voluntary workers as students.
If you volunteer an hour a week or more you can share our language with them and hopefully make them more employable or even just provide a shaft of light in a very bleak time. And maybe hear some interesting if doubtless tragic stories.
I assume the betting odds are the best indication and labour are on about 10%
I expect the greens to win
I notice last night's result from Wales gave a shellacking to labour and the conservatives with Paid taking the seat from labour and reform underperforming
This follows Caerphilly where Plaid won with another failed reform challenge
It seems the gloss is coming off reform here in Wales, and Plaid are on course ro win the Senedd in May with labour trounced
Yes - there is a trend in Wales to Plaid over reform
I never like to over analyse any individual result but to dip into Fishguard last night, it wss a pretty 'on trend' result compared to Nowcasts (experimental) current ward by ward estimates from polling - both Plaid and Ref underperformed a bit but there were two indies added in to the mix and Lab and LD were on trend if you split the green estimated share between them (as the greens didnt stand) it has the Tories on 9.2% versus an actual.... 9.2%! As i said, ovrranalysis, but Fishguard went very much to plan versus current polling.
P.s. if Thursdays by elections also go 'to plan' then comfortable Ref gain in Peterborough and equally comfortable Tory hold in Bradford (not my predictions necessarily)
Comments
I see the currently proposed cost of the latest "Restore the Palace of Westminster" proposal is up to £40 billion over up to 61 years.
Article: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/feb/05/restoring-the-palace-of-westminster-could-cost-eye-watering-40bn
Website: https://www.restorationandrenewal.uk/about-us/recommended-way-forward
Some MPs need to smell some coffee. Does anyone know the detail on this to write a header?
This is ticking towards £500k per square metre of space. (40 billion, 110k sqm of space).
That is, around one hundred times the cost of building top quality office space in London.
shak
@shak_ja
·
18h
The guy next to Prince William, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, sent torture videos to Epstein and is mentioned in Epstein's files. Yet, William has no issue taking millions from him for his Earthshot project while claiming to care about the victims. Unbelievable! #AbolishTheMonarchy
https://x.com/shak_ja/status/2021237335900201355?s=20
So if Labour are saying they are now ahead and the Greens are only saying they are second then Labour may be able to squeeze the Green vote to beat Reform
https://findoutnow.co.uk/blog/gorton-and-denton-by-election-poll/
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/revealed-4bn-annual-cost-of-loans-to-foreign-students/
Thats it
That’s not even starting on having everyone involved security cleared, etc. No Lithuanian builders here.
* Not autocorrect's fault, mine.
Great
This is akin to Blair abolishing the Lord Chancellor only to have to u turn within hours.
A recent Sky news poll had moderate Ley more popular with Labor voters than her own Liberal voters and in a poor third place with supporters of the hard right One Nation rising in the polls.
She did narrowly lead conservative Taylor by a mere 1% with Coalition voters but trailed populist right Hastie who has decided he does not have the numbers to run this time
https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/australians-favour-andrew-hastie-over-sussan-ley-and-angus-taylor-as-liberal-party-braces-for-leadership-spill/news-story/b1fb0deaf08d0f23932ab19a94088419
Obviously, we'll get all the "it's gone woke" complaints from the generation which hid behind the sofa in the 1960s and 1970s but they can be ignored.
As always, the quality of the whole production will be the key but I hope this beloved British institution which has fallen on hard times (a bit like the Conservative Party) can return and enthrall new generations.
Wills is really there for the photo ops with chopper up of journalists and capital punisher MBS.
You heard it here first
Off to bag the Web domain
I watched the first War between the land and the Sea and quite liked it but didn’t feel motivated to come back to it.
A clean break and fresh ideas and, maybe, not relying on old monsters and continuity may be what is needed
For what it's worth, I've had a look round the local council results in search of nuggets for this by-election.
Obviously, we are still quite early in the election cycle, there have been no local rounds since the general election, so the locals are less useful as a baseline than they were in the latter stages of the last parliament. After this May, it's game on.
So, surprising quite how close the 2024 round was to general election, given the absence of Reform. Really shows that the underwhelming Labour %age vote was already baked in by their NEV in May, driven by places like this.
Here we have below the 2024 round with +/- figures comparing with the General election:
Lab 54.4 (+3.6 on the GE share)
WP 17.3 (+7.0 on GE)
Grn 14.3 (+1.1 on GE)
Con 6.9 (-1.0 on GE)
LD 3.8 (unchanged on GE)
Ind 3.2 (+3.2 on GE)
Ref 0 (-14.1 on GE)
I've also had a quick nosey at the 2015/6 rounds at UKIP's peak. Only UKIP best shares expressed here (their NEV was 13%, taking best of 2 we'd expect a bit higher). Note Denton wards around 20% smaller than Manchester wards:
Denton S: 15.0 (+24 for an Ind)
Denton NE: 28.0
Denton W: 20.0
Burnage: 12.7
Gorton N (only partially relevant): 22.0
Gorton S: 14.0
Levenshulme: Never stood (a relevant looking Ind got 12.4)
Longsight: Never stood
This sort of bears out the broadly average vote share Reform got in 2024, but though the Reform vote has depth, hints at a limit to its width.
So, after all the data, it ends up back to a finger in the air. My take is this:
1. Reform will have enthusiastic voters, but in a moderately high turnout election (for this area), differential turnout won't bias too much. I suspect a ceiling on their vote slightly below their polling (deep but not wide). I think sub 30%, I wouldn't be amazed with 25, but I think 27-28 more likely.
2. Green + Labour will attain more than double the Reform vote, so whatever the split one of these 2 parties will win. Lack of WPGB also helps this a lot, though I think they would have been squeezed anyway. The balance between them is labile and I wouldn't be sure what that exact balance will be. I think Green win but Labour avoid Caerphilly style collapse and could sneak second - a minimum 20% even if Green flight does reach it's maximum extent.
In numbers, I'll predict, with the caveat on the Grn/Lab balance:
Grn 40
Ref 28
Lab 25
the field 7
He was ranting on TV last night
The latest brilliant scheme is the US military are going to buy coal. WTF?
There are signs though of greater resistance to his batshittery. Congress voted last night to regain authority over tariffs. They could vote to end some of them as early as today.
The DOJ tried to bring charges against the six senators that reminded the US military they should disobey illegal orders. The Grand jury told them where to shove it.
It could be done in less than a decade for something like £5bn if everyone moved out. It could be done in even less time and for even less money if they reduced the scope to what’s actually required in terms of asbestos removal and redoing utilities.
The Greens only got 13% and Labour 51% so unless a far bigger swing in Gorton from Labour to Green than nationally those numbers look out
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/uk/constituencies/E14001251
I assume the betting odds are the best indication and labour are on about 10%
I expect the greens to win
I notice last night's result from Wales gave a shellacking to labour and the conservatives with Paid taking the seat from labour and reform underperforming
This follows Caerphilly where Plaid won with another failed reform challenge
It seems the gloss is coming off reform here in Wales, and Plaid are on course ro win the Senedd in May with labour trounced
https://x.com/i/status/2021368971023229297
"The War Between...": it kinda continues like the first episode. I enjoyed it: not great, but not bad. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Simple reason
Polanski like Farage is a party based on a cult
Granted they have a deeper base but in reality it is Corbyn 2. They have been taken over by a person who has limited affinity with his Partyi
I don't expect Polanski to survive the sniff test if greater exposure.
Billionaire into torture, who controls a tenth of the world's container fleet, and who can therefore smuggle anyone or anything wherever he wants..
It's utterly absurd to spend so much purely on symbolism.
Which is the party of pragmatists that I can vote for ?
"A strong Australia needs a strong Liberal Party" - seriously? Could you imagine Badenoch coming out with "a strong Britain needs a strong Conservative Party". No, neither can I. There wasn't a single idea in Taylor's remarks or any sense of where the Liberal Party might go if he took over (and he didn't mention One Nation or the Nationals at all). At least with Badenoch you are getting policy development and proposals but the Australian Liberals seem to be taking their landslide defeat far worse than the Conservatives over here.
I can only think it was the speed and ferocity of the fall which has been psychologically damaging. At the beginning of 2025, they led Labor comfortably - almost by double digits in the primary vote - and were set for what looked like an easy win but that completely unravelled and they lost the primary vote 35-32 and the two-party preferred 55-45 which produced the astonishing landslide for Albanese.
The Conservatives here knew they were going to lose a way out from polling day and were perhaps more mentally prepared for the humiliation whereas the Australian Liberals just look shell-shocked.
I thought the series did dip in the middle, but pulled it back for a better ending. Overall, I think I enjoyed it more than the last series of regular Dr Who. It was different. It had some ambition. It occasionally reminded me of RTD's fantastic "The Second Coming"... but only occasionally!
Instead they’re rebuilding the whole building while everyone keeps working inside it.
Moderate Ley hasn't done the policy work Kemi has but has at least tried to shift the Liberals in a bit more of a centrist direction and resisted calls from the party right to scrap net zero targets completely to try and win back voters lost in upper middle class wealthy seats to the Teals.
The One Nation surge has seen the coalition vote decline even further (more so the rural Nationals than urban and suburban Liberals) though Hastie from the hard right faction is probably better able to win them back than Taylor but he has declined a run this time
In reality Government spending breaks into 3 pots
Day to day spending
Repairing existing infrastructure
Investment in the future
I suspect if we looked at things this way we would see a lot better governing
That everyone is fixated on this 40 billion figure is an example of click bate headlines and people not reading the detail.
It’s time to move out of Parliament and build it elsewhere
It splits up the functions of the current monster department, which has been accumulating power for decades.
And moves a large chunk of it to Birmingham.
The constitutional objections are risible.
I do agree there's little point in the current febrile atmosphere and the party should be doing what it does best - local campaigning to win seats in May.
The actual idea has a vaguely 1960s feel about it and Governments rename Departments all the time so that's not a huge issue. Having a Department of Growth within the Treasury isn't a bad idea in theory but we all know the reasons for anaemic growth are many and varied and have so far defied all attempts at resolution (and will likely continue to do so).
The numbers still make no sense though, the Burj Khalifa cost just over £1bn to build and it’s half a mile high.
What should be done is the minimum required renovations, to remove asbestos and redo utilities, which would cost a few hundred million and be done in a couple of years if everyone moved out.
There’s a lot of twentysomething Brits in my part of the world at the moment, and one of the reasons to emigrate for a few years as a new graduate is to get away from the student loan burden and save money for a house deposit.
Running dogs, the lot of them.
Yesterday I got a letter from HMRC conceding that I was right in a more-than-two-year-long argument I've been having with them, one of those arguments where they are completely in the wrong, but every time I got a letter from them it was obviously from someone different who hadn't bothered to read the file from the start and therefore had to be educated again. So they finally conceded. But that wasn't the strange thing. What was strange is that they conceded with relatively good grace, admitted poor record keeping, and, unbelievably, even gave me an unsolicited apology for the stress and inconvenience caused.
So water can flow upwards, arrogant and unaccountable bureaucrats sometimes say sorry, Donald Trump can make a good decision, and maybe even catastrophically unpopular governments can win by-elections.
"Minimum required" is a very subjective term (though I agree with you).
The proposal seems sensible
So, does Kemi go on Mandrlson, Doyle or something else for PMQs? A big hit just before recess or a Palmer from 2 yards miss ( ha ha gfy Chelsea)?
"Labour sources indicated they were increasingly confident of Labour holding the constituency because the party looked like it could be a "strong second" to the Greens and Reform respectively in different wards."
That says to me that Labour don't think they are winning in any ward. A somewhat shaky basis on which to express confidence in a hold.
There’s a building under construction about 200m from where I’m sitting right now, the world’s second tallest tower, which will cost $1.5bn on a brownfield and physically constrained site.
https://www.designboom.com/architecture/dubai-breaks-ground-worlds-second-tallest-tower-7-star-hotel-burj-azizi-01-23-2024/
How and why it costs ten or twenty times the price to renovate a building in London is the problem. It’s easily possible to do it for a fraction of the prices quoted, if the scope was reduced to what’s actually required to be done.
The more important point is the foreign students who take loans and then leave the country, never to return.
Why does the system even allow loans to foreigners in the first place?
The Telegraph article is pretty useless, since it doesn't answer your question.
I’ve not dug into it too much, but I suspect that there’s only so much renovation you can do before every room needs to be ‘accessible’ by law, which means putting in new lifts and stairs, corridor and door widths and clearances etc to modern building codes, inside the existing structure. All of which basically means they keep the facade and build a totally new building behind it.
Would be a fun research project for a PBer with some time on their hands to make into a header.
As i said, ovrranalysis, but Fishguard went very much to plan versus current polling.
It's not so much factored in now as cemented in. Those who are going to consider it when voting will, those who won't orvwho are bored with it will ignore it.
Any event has a shelf life.
I hope she does go with it
I hope she repeats her lies that the Government is in paralysis, it clearly isnt
Big announcements each day, spending, policy, aspiration. A big update today from Bridget on SEND and an interim writing off if 5bn council debt allegedly.
Thats not doing nothing things happening daily
She's going to be increasing seen as a moaner a whine an agitate a glorified student debater
Very light on policy, very light on new ideas and at historic low opinion poll polling levels.
I'd suggest she'd be very well advised to optimise her next 8birv8 PMQ outings. Odds on they will be her last.
https://balakun.org/
If you volunteer an hour a week or more you can share our language with them and hopefully make them more employable or even just provide a shaft of light in a very bleak time. And maybe hear some interesting if doubtless tragic stories.
Glory to Ukraine.