I think the Greens drugs policy is a step too far and say that as someone very pro legalising cannabis .
It would have been good if we had someone here who lives in the Gorton and Denton constituency to give an idea as to what campaign leaflets are dropping through doors and if they’d had visits from the parties and what their messaging is.
Reform trailing Yusufs presser this morning as his first as 'Shadow Home Secretary' Hows he supposed to shadow anyone as an unelected nobody? Hang about outside parliament with a megaphone like Steve Bray?
Shadow Home Secretary is from the official opposition not a party with 5 MPs !
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
I've twice lived in seats where Labour had no chance of winning.
South Staffs Patrick Cormack a decent man but a dyed in the wool Tory, so I voted LD. His replacement was Gavin Williamson.
My Brixham Constituency, even though I look across the Bay to Torquay is linked to Totnes.
Both were Tory, Steve Darling, guide dog guy won Torbay from Kevin Foster. My MP is Caroline Voaden, intellectually challenged and shrill. I did vote for her to get the Tory out, but she's next to useless.
Interesting here is the rumour is Foster may jump to Reform. A number of Tory Councillors have resigned and gone independent and one prominent one, Jason Hutching has not denied he wants the MP nomination, whether it's Tory or Reform who knows.
I have a number of friends down here who are lifelong Tories, some voted Reform in 2024 others LD, one Tory, none will be returning to the Tories any time soon.
The trend seems increasingly to vote out who you don't want, rather than who you do. Something Labour as incumbent will clearly face in 2029.
I’d go with a ladder of UK gilts timed (the extent possible) to match the payment schedule. You’d make 3+ percent.
But you could probably also get that from a series of fixed term deposits at your bank which might be easier
Royal London Short Term Money Market will get you north of 4% and very simple and you can cash in easily
If ethical investment is important to your Church, consider The Reliance Bank. Their fixed term bonds have decent rates and profits go to good causes. My Church has some reserves invested with them.
Thanks. It’s money held under a will trust. I thought I could purchase National Savings Income Bonds, which give 3.75%, only to discover they refuse charity beneficiaries.
My wife has an account with Ford Money, they pay 3.79% and it has no restrictions.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
Once again, a few on here have no real idea how politics and political campaigning works.
Starting from sixth place with less than 4% of the vote and, I suspect, little or no organisation or even members isn't usually the way to win an election. Put a name on the paper, get a few votes, accept the lost deposit and move on.
As for the Conservatives, they polled almost double the LD vote in 2024 but that still left them fifth, behind the Workers' Party. I'd have thought keeping the deposit and finishing in the first six would be satisfactory but of course the pro-Conservative parts of the media talk her up, is there any actual evidence of Conservative campaigning in the seat?
I'm more surprised the Workers' Party aren't seeking to build on their 10% and fourth place from last time so that leaves fourth up for grabs and the Conservatives are probably going to inherit.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
The old Bank of Scotland data centre that has been there since the 70s has more noom than this pic
Leon is very easily pleased, it looks like any modern distribution centre, large factory etc. All that travel and a scabby factory building impresses him, says it all.
Reform trailing Yusufs presser this morning as his first as 'Shadow Home Secretary' Hows he supposed to shadow anyone as an unelected nobody? Hang about outside parliament with a megaphone like Steve Bray?
Shadow Home Secretary is from the official opposition not a party with 5 MPs !
Didn't St Vince go around calling himself Shadow Chancellor at one point?
No, it was a brief thing the LD team did after 1997 - I think once they occupied the Opposition frontbench when all the Conservatives were outside the Commons Chamber - probably electing a new leader or something similar.
Just a little bit of harmless political knockabout - glad to see it still sticks in your memory.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
For your sake, I hope your next assignment isn’t to South Gyle Business Park.
I heartily recommend a visit to the great Fabs of South Taiwan. They are an incredible mix of the mundane and the mindblowingly scary
It’s a bit like visiting Chessington World of Adventure crossed with Auschwitz
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
Reform trailing Yusufs presser this morning as his first as 'Shadow Home Secretary' Hows he supposed to shadow anyone as an unelected nobody? Hang about outside parliament with a megaphone like Steve Bray?
Shadow Home Secretary is from the official opposition not a party with 5 MPs !
Didn't St Vince go around calling himself Shadow Chancellor at one point?
The point with Yusuf, irrespective of whether you agree with his policies or not, or whether you like him or not, is he has never held any elected position.
The fact I find his policies repulsive and his demeanor repugnant and arrogant is not the issue.
He has effectively bought himself a political role.
You could argue that genuine entrepreneurs like Digby-Jones, Sugar and John Caldwell have held roles and positions unelected but nothing like that of Yusuf.
He is an utter contradiction I'm every respect and highly dangerous in my opinion.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
For your sake, I hope your next assignment isn’t to South Gyle Business Park.
I heartily recommend a visit to the great Fabs of South Taiwan. They are an incredible mix of the mundane and the mindblowingly scary
It’s a bit like visiting Chessington World of Adventure crossed with Auschwitz
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
I agree. I think we should be focusing much more on Mandelson. Andrew was never at the centre of government in the way that Mandy was - he was just an embarrassment that they gave jobs to to keep him busy. Mandelson otoh had various senior government roles and was even more influential behind the scenes.
Also, while we're about it, Blair who, though not directly implicated by the Epstein files as I understand it, has somehow raked in tens of millions from dodgy foreign dictatorships since losing power - a bit of transparency about the sources of his vast wealth would be very welcome.
The first tranche of Mandy docs are due to be released 'asap' after parliament reopens today. So, jam today?
I am slightly surprised that the police have not got a shift on and got charges libelled against Mandelson (if appropriate) based on documents that are likely to be made public today. It is unusual for the evidence to be in the public domain before charges are brought. They may not be, of course.
'Charges libelled'! Scottish lawyer. No-one in England knows this Pictish lingo.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
The country could do with some Heseltine Tories with LD sympathies now. Better than anything we’ve currently got.
It's been the traditional route back to power for Conservatives - over the corpses of Liberal and LD MPs - it was in 1970, 1979 and 2015.
It took three big defeats to get from Major to Cameron and you could argue a similar thing happened with Labour to get from Brown to Starmer.
For all the positive guff we heard last year from some Tories, there's still the question as to whether Conservatives have actually come to terms with the new political reality - what if they finish third or fourth in terms of seats in 2029? The LDs are used to it - they've survived with 6-8 seats over the years but what would a Conservative Party with 40-50 seats in the new Parliament do or look like?
Oddly enough, I suspect there will be a renewed convergence between Conservatives and LDs in the coming years.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
Andrew has not been arrested for anything to do with Giuffre, only for leaking info as a trade envoy, so that is not relevant at the moment.
As I told you at the weekend a civil settlement also has a much lower burden of proof than a criminal case. In any case while the late Queen definitely paid most of the pay off as did the estate of Philip it is not clear whether King Charles made any contribution to it at all
AMW is being investigated by the Met Police for very serious offences and as part of that investigation questions are being asked about the late Queen and Charles involvement in paying off Virginia Guiffre
It is irrelevant that it was a civil matter, but if Charles and others are able to prove they were not aware of the reason for the payoff then that is important
As I said this is a slow burning fuse for the royals
I've never had a case where the circumstantial evidence involved a £12m payment for something that allegedly didn't happen but if I did I would think it was Heineken level. It might well be thought that a reasonable inference was capable of being drawn.
Have you had many cases where the person concerned comes from such a high-profile and wealthy family? US settlements are generally far higher than UK ones. Also, it was said at the time that AMW opposed the settlement for the reasons you give, and that the Palace/RF overruled him to avoid the Queen's Jubilee being overshadowed. That seems to me a very reasonable inference to draw.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
The noom may be severe, but the news is olds. From 2022
"...In 2018, TSMC broke ground on Fab 18 near Tainan City in the south of Taiwan. Fab 18 is a monster. It sits on 103 acres and has a total floor space of 950,000 square meters (10.2 million square feet). That is about 3 times the size of AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas - home of the Dallas Cowboys. In total, across all of its phases, Fab 18 will cost TSMC nearly $20 billion to build and operate. More than the cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy's most advanced aircraft carrier. In this video, we are going to look at why TSMC's fabs are getting bigger and more expensive than ever before. And why that makes a lot of economic sense for the Taiwanese chip maker..."
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
What's your evidence that the king contributed to the settlement? The palace, in a very rare act of clarifying the record, has stated that the King made no contribution to the settlement.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
Reform trailing Yusufs presser this morning as his first as 'Shadow Home Secretary' Hows he supposed to shadow anyone as an unelected nobody? Hang about outside parliament with a megaphone like Steve Bray?
Shadow Home Secretary is from the official opposition not a party with 5 MPs !
Didn't St Vince go around calling himself Shadow Chancellor at one point?
No, it was a brief thing the LD team did after 1997 - I think once they occupied the Opposition frontbench when all the Conservatives were outside the Commons Chamber - probably electing a new leader or something similar.
Just a little bit of harmless political knockabout - glad to see it still sticks in your memory.
You under-promote the Lib Dems. Has that ever happened before?
The Official House of Commons website was calling it a "Lib Dem Shadow Cabinet" as far back as 2008, for example:
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Good morning everyone.
To be fair the royals haven't, over the years, been noted for marital fidelity. I believe the late Queen was, although Andrew looks nothing like anyone else in the family but I've no idea what Philip's relations looked like. There were occasional tales about Philip. AFAIK there were no scandals associated with George VI and the Queen Mum, but we all know about his elder brother and, of course his grandfather. And that's just last century.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Plenty of Kings had mistresses through history, as do plenty of Presidents and PMs, it is not that unusual.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Good morning everyone.
To be fair the royals haven't, over the years, been noted for marital fidelity. I believe the late Queen was, although Andrew looks nothing like anyone else in the family but I've no idea what Philip's relations looked like. There were occasional tales about Philip. AFAIK there were no scandals associated with George VI and the Queen Mum, but we all know about his elder brother and, of course his grandfather. And that's just last century.
It would be mischievous to create a Private Eye style pair of images of Lord Porchester and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, for instance.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Plenty of Kings had mistresses through history, as do plenty of Presidents and PMs, it is not that unusual.
Not great but not criminal either
I'm not aware of any specifically criminal acts that AMW has been accused of. Being a sleazeball - yes. Knowing a sleazeball - yes. Misconduct in public office - arrested but not charged.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Good morning everyone.
To be fair the royals haven't, over the years, been noted for marital fidelity. I believe the late Queen was, although Andrew looks nothing like anyone else in the family but I've no idea what Philip's relations looked like. There were occasional tales about Philip. AFAIK there were no scandals associated with George VI and the Queen Mum, but we all know about his elder brother and, of course his grandfather. And that's just last century.
It would be mischievous to create a Private Eye style pair of images of Lord Porchester and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, for instance.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
The noom may be severe, but the news is olds. From 2022
"...In 2018, TSMC broke ground on Fab 18 near Tainan City in the south of Taiwan. Fab 18 is a monster. It sits on 103 acres and has a total floor space of 950,000 square meters (10.2 million square feet). That is about 3 times the size of AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas - home of the Dallas Cowboys. In total, across all of its phases, Fab 18 will cost TSMC nearly $20 billion to build and operate. More than the cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy's most advanced aircraft carrier. In this video, we are going to look at why TSMC's fabs are getting bigger and more expensive than ever before. And why that makes a lot of economic sense for the Taiwanese chip maker..."
Is indeed numbingly huge, and numbingly expensive. And when you learn exactly what happens inside, the profundity of the technology,. From Wired:
"Fab 18 is a factory where dust is treated like disaster. The air is scrubbed until contamination becomes almost theoretical, and floors float to kill vibration. Silicon wafers move through hundreds of steps over weeks, carried by silent robots and watched by dense networks of sensors. A single defect can destroy thousands of chips, so the entire building behaves like a machine designed to eliminate chance.
"At its core, EUV lithography fires lasers at molten tin to create plasma hotter than the sun, producing a wavelength of light that must travel through a vacuum and reflect off mirrors polished to near atomic perfection. That light etches patterns smaller than viruses onto silicon, placing tens of billions of transistors on a single chip. A city’s worth of infrastructure exists just to arrange matter at a scale where reality itself starts to blur."
There is a lof of noom, dark and light. There is also an inhuman horror. The Inuit have a word for this: "Ilira"
ILIRA
A beautiful word for an ominous thing. It means "the fear that accompanies awe"
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
If the LDs have the balance of power in a hung parliamant of course they would back Labour rather than put Farage in No 10
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Good morning everyone.
To be fair the royals haven't, over the years, been noted for marital fidelity. I believe the late Queen was, although Andrew looks nothing like anyone else in the family but I've no idea what Philip's relations looked like. There were occasional tales about Philip. AFAIK there were no scandals associated with George VI and the Queen Mum, but we all know about his elder brother and, of course his grandfather. And that's just last century.
It would be mischievous to create a Private Eye style pair of images of Lord Porchester and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, for instance.
If there were anything in the Porchy/Andrew or Hewitt/Harry claims then the papers would have proof by now, given the number of DNA-test by post services.
Apart from more evidence on what a horrible, wee prick this guy is, do I detect a rising note of hysteria in the tone of Lab campaigning?
Mike Tapp MP @MikeTappTweets With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
The old Bank of Scotland data centre that has been there since the 70s has more noom than this pic
Leon is very easily pleased, it looks like any modern distribution centre, large factory etc. All that travel and a scabby factory building impresses him, says it all.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
The old Bank of Scotland data centre that has been there since the 70s has more noom than this pic
Leon is very easily pleased, it looks like any modern distribution centre, large factory etc. All that travel and a scabby factory building impresses him, says it all.
It is a very big shed. But the interesting stuff is inside.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
The King as then Prince of Wales in 2001 advised against Andrew being appointed as a trade envoy in the first place but his late mother overruled him and Mandelson got him the job anyway. To be fair to the King both he and the current Prince of Wales come out reasonably unscathed by the Andrew affair, the late Queen though despite a great life of service overall sadly made some errors in relation to Andrew and the New Labour government of Blair, Brown and Mandelson also has serious questions to answer over Andrew and Epstein
Good morning
The problem Charles has is he also contributed to the pay off, so it is naive to think he wasn't aware of the detail and there is a real prospect both he and other royals could be drawn into this scandal
This is a very slow burning fuse for the royals
I’m sure that Charles has long known that his brother is a piece of shit.
I don’t consider that contributing towards the settlement was a wrongful act on Charles’ part. Many of us have contributed towards the black sheep who are close to us, when they need to pay off those that they have wronged.
Charles isn't exactly squeaky clean either. He is, after all, married to his mistress after he drove his wife away.
Good morning everyone.
To be fair the royals haven't, over the years, been noted for marital fidelity. I believe the late Queen was, although Andrew looks nothing like anyone else in the family but I've no idea what Philip's relations looked like. There were occasional tales about Philip. AFAIK there were no scandals associated with George VI and the Queen Mum, but we all know about his elder brother and, of course his grandfather. And that's just last century.
It would be mischievous to create a Private Eye style pair of images of Lord Porchester and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, for instance.
If there were anything in the Porchy/Andrew or Hewitt/Harry claims then the papers would have proof by now, given the number of DNA-test by post services.
Harry and James Hewitt seem to have got away with it... There is no interest in going after the beloved late Queen's reputation.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
AI will take your job too, don’t worry
If you thought about it for a second, you'd realise this is wrong
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
If the LDs have the balance of power in a hung parliamant of course they would back Labour rather than put Farage in No 10
Are you suggesting that the next (hung )Parliament will have Lab and Reform as the two largest parties with the Tories too small to enable a Reform government?
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
It certainly isn't clear, and at the next election it might be a case of not just voting for a government or trying to stop Reform but trying to facilitate an advantageous coalition. I believe that before the election that elected Cameron, Nick Clegg said the LDs would consider backing whichever party won the most seats, and then people got upset when they did just that.
In my constituency it's Tory or LibDem with everyone else nowhere. However I would have to be convinced the Tories had recovered significantly from the ludicrousness of their last Government to be convinced to vote for them. If they *might* back Reform that would put me off.
I could always vote OMRLP on the basis that I know the party leader well enough to have a pint with him.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
The old Bank of Scotland data centre that has been there since the 70s has more noom than this pic
Leon is very easily pleased, it looks like any modern distribution centre, large factory etc. All that travel and a scabby factory building impresses him, says it all.
lol
He's right though. Get a self-driving taxi down to (say) Canning Town in East London and look at the datacentres around Telehouse.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
AI will take your job too, don’t worry
If you thought about it for a second, you'd realise this is wrong
Well quite - retirement beckons for the ageing hack
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
And this is why I get paid to go to these places and write about them. And you, to be brutally frank, do not
For your sake, I hope your next assignment isn’t to South Gyle Business Park.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
If the LDs have the balance of power in a hung parliamant of course they would back Labour rather than put Farage in No 10
Are you suggesting that the next (hung )Parliament will have Lab and Reform as the two largest parties with the Tories too small to enable a Reform government?
You are talking about an ex-web developer. It's not Kemi's fault she is a dud and makes up stories about herself. She was elected by the Party membership - a group of individuals with an excellent track record in selecting previous leaders and PM's. Excellent, if you are in an opposing party. The Conservatives demise will continue until they find a way of sorting their membership vote system.
As an aside, Nigel has set May as the time limit for those that wish to cross the floor to his 'shadow cabinet'. After that we could refer to the rump of the Conservatives as Reform's Rejects.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
If the LDs have the balance of power in a hung parliamant of course they would back Labour rather than put Farage in No 10
You need to think through this and nuance it a little.
Not supporting Reform doesn't necessarily equate to supporting Labour. It's quite conceivable to have a position where the LDs (and perhaps the Conservatives) will neither support Labour nor Reform.
That will mean each individual piece of legislation will be judged on its merits - would the LDs vote down a Reform King's Speech? Probably - would the Conservatives vote down a Reform King's Speech? I suspect, as they did in 1974 when they could have voted against a Labour Queen's Speech and forced a second election, they won't and will abstain.
Turn the question round - would the Conservatives vote down a Labour King's Speech? Would the Liberal Democrats support it?
At the same time, I suspect both (and indeed all) parties would be preparing for a second election within 12-18 months.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
The old Bank of Scotland data centre that has been there since the 70s has more noom than this pic
Leon is very easily pleased, it looks like any modern distribution centre, large factory etc. All that travel and a scabby factory building impresses him, says it all.
It is a very big shed. But the interesting stuff is inside.
But, of course
That's the whole bloody point, it would indeed be one great ugly shed with a weird lack of windows, but inside is wot makes it scary, impressive, foreboding and worth a slightly desolate pilgrimage (plus the death pit of 5000 year old decapitated women and kids underneath, which delayed construction, I mean: OMG)
I've only ever had this complex mix of emotions when confronted with tech, once before. This exhilaration of noom, plus a large dash of Ilira
Unfortunately, it was when I went to see the ICBM Titan Nuclear Missile Silo in Arizona. The only place in the world you can see a city-killing nuclear weapon in situ, almost ready to go. A terrifying place
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Because “Andrew” is a massive dead cat to distract from all the other Establishment figures involved with Epstein, as well at the lack of government action on the similar subject that we can’t discuss, and gets Iran and Chagos off the front pages for a few days.
Apart from more evidence on what a horrible, wee prick this guy is, do I detect a rising note of hysteria in the tone of Lab campaigning?
Mike Tapp MP @MikeTappTweets With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
Apart from more evidence on what a horrible, wee prick this guy is, do I detect a rising note of hysteria in the tone of Lab campaigning?
Mike Tapp MP @MikeTappTweets With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
As generally a political centrist, very dull One Nation Tory it seems to me that one of the weakest spots in mainstream politics is drugs policy. The Green approach is, in general, by some way the most intelligent and plausible.
Nothing ever said by the broad centre ground ever sounds as if they believe a word of it.
Tapp's effort is a nice example of the nonsensical genre.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
It certainly isn't clear, and at the next election it might be a case of not just voting for a government or trying to stop Reform but trying to facilitate an advantageous coalition. I believe that before the election that elected Cameron, Nick Clegg said the LDs would consider backing whichever party won the most seats, and then people got upset when they did just that.
In my constituency it's Tory or LibDem with everyone else nowhere. However I would have to be convinced the Tories had recovered significantly from the ludicrousness of their last Government to be convinced to vote for them. If they *might* back Reform that would put me off.
I could always vote OMRLP on the basis that I know the party leader well enough to have a pint with him.
MY recollection might be off - it is ancient history - but I think Clegg was going to talk to the party which got the most votes first rather than the most seats.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
If the LDs have the balance of power in a hung parliamant of course they would back Labour rather than put Farage in No 10
You need to think through this and nuance it a little.
Not supporting Reform doesn't necessarily equate to supporting Labour. It's quite conceivable to have a position where the LDs (and perhaps the Conservatives) will neither support Labour nor Reform.
That will mean each individual piece of legislation will be judged on its merits - would the LDs vote down a Reform King's Speech? Probably - would the Conservatives vote down a Reform King's Speech? I suspect, as they did in 1974 when they could have voted against a Labour Queen's Speech and forced a second election, they won't and will abstain.
Turn the question round - would the Conservatives vote down a Labour King's Speech? Would the Liberal Democrats support it?
At the same time, I suspect both (and indeed all) parties would be preparing for a second election within 12-18 months.
Very much what i think will happen in Wales in the event of Ref plus Con being 48plus, Con will let Reform run a minority and collapse them at a convenient polling juncture. Labour will be looking to do the same to Plaid (possibly from within govt)
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Because “Andrew” is a massive dead cat to distract from all the other Establishment figures involved with Epstein, as well at the lack of government action on the similar subject that we can’t discuss, and gets Iran and Chagos off the front pages for a few days.
Which other Establishment figures is Andrew distracting us from? Donald Trump? Howard Lutnick? Alexander Acosta? Elon Musk?
Apart from more evidence on what a horrible, wee prick this guy is, do I detect a rising note of hysteria in the tone of Lab campaigning?
Mike Tapp MP @MikeTappTweets With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
As generally a political centrist, very dull One Nation Tory it seems to me that one of the weakest spots in mainstream politics is drugs policy. The Green approach is, in general, by some way the most intelligent and plausible.
Nothing ever said by the broad centre ground ever sounds as if they believe a word of it.
Tapp's effort is a nice example of the nonsensical genre.
Things have moved on since the days when legalisation could be presented as both radical and sensible. Now it's a policy that's been tried in many places but has failed.
I think the Greens drugs policy is a step too far and say that as someone very pro legalising cannabis .
It would have been good if we had someone here who lives in the Gorton and Denton constituency to give an idea as to what campaign leaflets are dropping through doors and if they’d had visits from the parties and what their messaging is.
The Manchester Evening News just did a "We asked these 4 questions to every candidate" piece.
For "What's the biggest priority for Gorton and Denton voters right now - and how would you help address it as MP?", the Communist candidate's answer is about Cuba.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
The noom may be severe, but the news is olds. From 2022
"...In 2018, TSMC broke ground on Fab 18 near Tainan City in the south of Taiwan. Fab 18 is a monster. It sits on 103 acres and has a total floor space of 950,000 square meters (10.2 million square feet). That is about 3 times the size of AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas - home of the Dallas Cowboys. In total, across all of its phases, Fab 18 will cost TSMC nearly $20 billion to build and operate. More than the cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy's most advanced aircraft carrier. In this video, we are going to look at why TSMC's fabs are getting bigger and more expensive than ever before. And why that makes a lot of economic sense for the Taiwanese chip maker..."
That's almost exactly the same size as the main Amazon distribution centre in the Flatlands, which is 960,000 square metres according to my GIS. Which is, to be fair, massive. When they were putting it up the diggers were totally dwarfed by the steel structure.
[Edit, oops, factor of 10 out! OK, that really is BIG]
However, I'm kind of with Leon here. The local Amazon building stores Chinese Tat piled 5 stories high, whereas the stuff in there is powering the biggest Tulip bubble since, well, Tulips. And also a Brave New World. At the same time.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
It certainly isn't clear, and at the next election it might be a case of not just voting for a government or trying to stop Reform but trying to facilitate an advantageous coalition. I believe that before the election that elected Cameron, Nick Clegg said the LDs would consider backing whichever party won the most seats, and then people got upset when they did just that.
In my constituency it's Tory or LibDem with everyone else nowhere. However I would have to be convinced the Tories had recovered significantly from the ludicrousness of their last Government to be convinced to vote for them. If they *might* back Reform that would put me off.
I could always vote OMRLP on the basis that I know the party leader well enough to have a pint with him.
MY recollection might be off - it is ancient history - but I think Clegg was going to talk to the party which got the most votes first rather than the most seats.
Maybe, and probably likely given the LibDem support for PR rather than FPTP, but it was still "we're the centre party and could support either of them".
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War, until he was 30 his life was actually quite pointful
I do wonder if his life would have taken a more positive turn if he had been allowed to marry Koo Stark.
Andrew, like many others, aged out of military aviation in his 30s and, again like many others, went even further off the rails when they get given comparatively dull ground jobs. The US keeps senior officers flying until their mid 50s.
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Because “Andrew” is a massive dead cat to distract from all the other Establishment figures involved with Epstein, as well at the lack of government action on the similar subject that we can’t discuss, and gets Iran and Chagos off the front pages for a few days.
Which other Establishment figures is Andrew distracting us from? Donald Trump? Howard Lutnick? Alexander Acosta? Elon Musk?
Mandelson. Mildly surprised his name didn't spring to your mind.
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War, until he was 30 his life was actually quite pointful
I do wonder if his life would have taken a more positive turn if he had been allowed to marry Koo Stark.
Andrew, like many others, aged out of military aviation in his 30s and, again like many others, went even further off the rails when they get given comparatively dull ground jobs. The US keeps senior officers flying until their mid 50s.
And he definitely didn’t have the option of turning up at BA or EasyJet for an interview on Civvy St.
Apart from more evidence on what a horrible, wee prick this guy is, do I detect a rising note of hysteria in the tone of Lab campaigning?
Mike Tapp MP @MikeTappTweets With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
These Labour accounts attacking Green drug policy are going to be shocked when they hear about the very similar positions advocated by the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform. That'd be Labour's Jeff Smith, the MP for neighbouring Manchester Withington.
I think the Greens drugs policy is a step too far and say that as someone very pro legalising cannabis .
It would have been good if we had someone here who lives in the Gorton and Denton constituency to give an idea as to what campaign leaflets are dropping through doors and if they’d had visits from the parties and what their messaging is.
The Manchester Evening News just did a "We asked these 4 questions to every candidate" piece.
For "What's the biggest priority for Gorton and Denton voters right now - and how would you help address it as MP?", the Communist candidate's answer is about Cuba.
The Libertarian focuses on combatting fly-tipping... which doesn't seem very libertarian!
The Rejoin EU candidate says rejoining the EU, which feels strongly on message.
The MRLP candidate replied, "I believe the biggest concern to local residents is Trump's attempted take over of Iceland’s packing factory in Gorton."
Green, Labour and SDP give complete non-answers.
The other questions are also good, which great answers like, "Gorton and Denton has a proud history of making hats and building locomotives but we need to imagine a new future." No more hat making for Gorton and Denton!
I think the Greens drugs policy is a step too far and say that as someone very pro legalising cannabis .
It would have been good if we had someone here who lives in the Gorton and Denton constituency to give an idea as to what campaign leaflets are dropping through doors and if they’d had visits from the parties and what their messaging is.
The Manchester Evening News just did a "We asked these 4 questions to every candidate" piece.
For "What's the biggest priority for Gorton and Denton voters right now - and how would you help address it as MP?", the Communist candidate's answer is about Cuba.
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Because “Andrew” is a massive dead cat to distract from all the other Establishment figures involved with Epstein, as well at the lack of government action on the similar subject that we can’t discuss, and gets Iran and Chagos off the front pages for a few days.
Which other Establishment figures is Andrew distracting us from? Donald Trump? Howard Lutnick? Alexander Acosta? Elon Musk?
Mandelson. Mildly surprised his name didn't spring to your mind.
New Labour and newer Labour in general and all its dodgy links and activities are in the firing line through Mandy. Hence St Gordon trying to get ahead of the story with his dossiers of dodginess
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Because “Andrew” is a massive dead cat to distract from all the other Establishment figures involved with Epstein, as well at the lack of government action on the similar subject that we can’t discuss, and gets Iran and Chagos off the front pages for a few days.
Which other Establishment figures is Andrew distracting us from? Donald Trump? Howard Lutnick? Alexander Acosta? Elon Musk?
Mandelson. Mildly surprised his name didn't spring to your mind.
I hadn't noticed attention particularly moving on from Mandelson.
LOL, that Russian oil pumping station that experienced an unexpected conflagration last night, was one of the key nodes in the West Russian pipeline structure, responsible for 25% of all Russian exports!
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War, until he was 30 his life was actually quite pointful
I do wonder if his life would have taken a more positive turn if he had been allowed to marry Koo Stark.
Andrew, like many others, aged out of military aviation in his 30s and, again like many others, went even further off the rails when they get given comparatively dull ground jobs. The US keeps senior officers flying until their mid 50s.
With sometimes mixed results - General Bond, Lt-Col Holland....
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
Apart from more evidence on what a horrible, wee prick this guy is, do I detect a rising note of hysteria in the tone of Lab campaigning?
Mike Tapp MP @MikeTappTweets With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War, until he was 30 his life was actually quite pointful
I do wonder if his life would have taken a more positive turn if he had been allowed to marry Koo Stark.
Andrew, like many others, aged out of military aviation in his 30s and, again like many others, went even further off the rails when they get given comparatively dull ground jobs. The US keeps senior officers flying until their mid 50s.
And he definitely didn’t have the option of turning up at BA or EasyJet for an interview on Civvy St.
From what I can gather from old shipmates commercial aviation has all of the drawbacks of military aviation (shit money, disrupted home life) and none of the benefits (comradeship, excitement, being part of something bigger than yourself, immense challenge). Plenty of them do it because they don't what the fuck else to do.
FAB 18, of the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. in the South Taiwan Science Park, Tainan
Just completed, so they can make the most advanced silicon chips in the world
It’s vast. It’s mind bogglingly vast. No windows. High security. A trillion scooters for the workers. And it’s erection was delayed by the discovery of an enormous Neolithic death pit, 5000 years old ,containing the decapitated victims - women and children - of Taiwan’s ancient head hunting tribes
What a place. The brutal darkness of the distant past and the beautiful darkness of the terrifying future. Colliding here on a faintly bleak pasture on a smallish island in the South China Sea
The noom is severe
Getting a bit of a South Gyle Business Park vibe tbh.
The old Bank of Scotland data centre that has been there since the 70s has more noom than this pic
Leon is very easily pleased, it looks like any modern distribution centre, large factory etc. All that travel and a scabby factory building impresses him, says it all.
It is a very big shed. But the interesting stuff is inside.
But, of course
That's the whole bloody point, it would indeed be one great ugly shed with a weird lack of windows, but inside is wot makes it scary, impressive, foreboding and worth a slightly desolate pilgrimage (plus the death pit of 5000 year old decapitated women and kids underneath, which delayed construction, I mean: OMG)
I've only ever had this complex mix of emotions when confronted with tech, once before. This exhilaration of noom, plus a large dash of Ilira
Unfortunately, it was when I went to see the ICBM Titan Nuclear Missile Silo in Arizona. The only place in the world you can see a city-killing nuclear weapon in situ, almost ready to go. A terrifying place
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Spent too much time wanting to be Jeffrey Archer. There's an industry growing up around kicking the Royal Family at the moment which is quite grating and very English. They asked William what he thought of 'Hamnet' and he said he 'needed to be in a calm mood to watch it .....' which I thought was a great answer
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
They must be a tad concerned that they have lost the status of NOTA protest party to the Greens.
And for the official opposition not to be bothering in a by-election against an unpopular government is also very telling.
As an LD voter, I’d like to see the Greens win, but, for the reason you give, it’s in the LD’s strategic interest for Labour to hold. Therefore there isn’t much incentive to spend anything on the campaign there, with the hope that stepping back might have Labour return the favour if a decent LD target comes up in a by-election seat held by the right
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
Some more facts on Fab 18, Tainan, and why it’s a tiny bit different to “South Gyle Business Park”
“TSMC’s Fab 18, located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan, is often described as the "beating heart" of the modern digital economy.
It isn't just a factory; it is a GIGAFAB® - a facility of such immense scale and technical sophistication that it essentially dictates the pace of global technological progress.
As of 2026, here is why Fab 18 remains a remarkable feat of human engineering and economic strategy:
1. The Global Epicenter of 3nm and 5nm Production Fab 18 is the primary production base for the world’s most advanced chips. While other fabs handle older "legacy" nodes, Fab 18 specializes in: • **5nm (N5) Family: The chips that powered the first wave of 5G smartphones and high-end laptops.
• 3nm (N3) Family: Currently the most advanced logic technology in volume production. These chips offer up to 15% higher speed or 30% lower power consumption compared to the 5nm generation.
Every flagship iPhone, high-end NVIDIA AI GPU, and Apple Silicon Mac chip likely spent its "infancy" inside the cleanrooms of Fab 18.
2. Mind-Boggling Scale (The GIGAFAB® Concept) The term "Gigafab" isn't just marketing; it refers to a facility capable of producing more than 100,000 12-inch wafers per month.
• Physical Size: The total cleanroom area exceeds 160,000 square meters - equivalent to about 25 standard soccer pitches.
• Investment: The total investment for all phases of Fab 18 exceeds NT$1.86 trillion (roughly $60 billion USD), making it arguably the most expensive construction project in human history.
3. Precision Engineering at the Atomic Level
To manufacture chips at 3nm, Fab 18 utilizes Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. These machines, made by ASML, are the most complex tools ever built. • They use light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers to "print" circuits. • The environment must be so stable that even a slight vibration from a nearby truck or a microscopic dust particle could ruin a multi-million dollar batch of wafers.
4. Economic and Geopolitical Weight Fab 18 is the crown jewel of Taiwan's "Silicon Shield." Its importance to the global economy is so high that its operational status directly affects global GDP.
• The "3nm Multiplier": TSMC estimates that 3nm technology alone will power products with a market value of $1.5 trillion within five years of mass production.
However, if production at Fab 18 was ever stopped, for more than a few days, much of the world economy would slowly but surely grind to a halt, as we know it.”
That's surprisingly interesting. Lewis comes off well. Badenoch gets her facts wrong and seems evasive at times, but broadly gets a strong message over. Is she, however, going to listen to what Lewis is saying and tweak her policy?
If its going to be a flagship offer to the youth vote, visible engagement with Lewis woukd be a sensible move
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
It's a debate which does both credit, IMO (and I'm not much of a Kemi fan).
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates. And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
Actually, I think you CAN assume the LibDems would put Labour into Number 10. Inconceivable that Ed Davey would back the Tories, expecially after their last experience in Govt (he lost his seat after that experiment).
Since 2010 the LibDems have moved left, and the Tories have moved right. In 2010 there really wasn't all that much difference between the Orange Bookers (Clegg, David Laws, et al) and the Cameroons. Between Kemi and Sir Ed? - it's a gulf.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
The biggest change, for my daughter's course, from when I went to university, is the collapse in individual engagement. The amount of face to face time for students and their teachers seems to be hitting rock bottom.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
UCL recently paid out £21 million to students unhappy with their teaching during COVID-19 and another 36 universities face claims: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6qge7rmm1o One of the main complaints was that teaching was purely or largely online. The idea that we can just switch to online materials is simplistic.
Look, if everyone was happy at the time surely that is the end of it? Why on earth is this being stroked up now?
Andrew is an incredibly stupid, self entitled prat who has lived a largely pointless life. I really don't want to start feeling sorry for him.
Andrew flew helicopters in the Falklands War, until he was 30 his life was actually quite pointful
I do wonder if his life would have taken a more positive turn if he had been allowed to marry Koo Stark.
Andrew, like many others, aged out of military aviation in his 30s and, again like many others, went even further off the rails when they get given comparatively dull ground jobs. The US keeps senior officers flying until their mid 50s.
And he definitely didn’t have the option of turning up at BA or EasyJet for an interview on Civvy St.
From what I can gather from old shipmates commercial aviation has all of the drawbacks of military aviation (shit money, disrupted home life) and none of the benefits (comradeship, excitement, being part of something bigger than yourself, immense challenge). Plenty of them do it because they don't what the fuck else to do.
BA and Easy Captains are in the £150k-£200k range for gross earnings. Not sure His Majesty pays close to that much. Stay on short haul and you’ll work 3-4 days a week and be home almost every night.
Some more facts on Fab 18, Tainan, and why it’s a tiny bit different to “South Gyle Business Park”
“TSMC’s Fab 18, located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan, is often described as the "beating heart" of the modern digital economy.
It isn't just a factory; it is a GIGAFAB® - a facility of such immense scale and technical sophistication that it essentially dictates the pace of global technological progress.
As of 2026, here is why Fab 18 remains a remarkable feat of human engineering and economic strategy:
1. The Global Epicenter of 3nm and 5nm Production Fab 18 is the primary production base for the world’s most advanced chips. While other fabs handle older "legacy" nodes, Fab 18 specializes in: • **5nm (N5) Family: The chips that powered the first wave of 5G smartphones and high-end laptops.
• 3nm (N3) Family: Currently the most advanced logic technology in volume production. These chips offer up to 15% higher speed or 30% lower power consumption compared to the 5nm generation.
Every flagship iPhone, high-end NVIDIA AI GPU, and Apple Silicon Mac chip likely spent its "infancy" inside the cleanrooms of Fab 18.
2. Mind-Boggling Scale (The GIGAFAB® Concept) The term "Gigafab" isn't just marketing; it refers to a facility capable of producing more than 100,000 12-inch wafers per month.
• Physical Size: The total cleanroom area exceeds 160,000 square meters - equivalent to about 25 standard soccer pitches.
• Investment: The total investment for all phases of Fab 18 exceeds NT$1.86 trillion (roughly $60 billion USD), making it arguably the most expensive construction project in human history.
3. Precision Engineering at the Atomic Level
To manufacture chips at 3nm, Fab 18 utilizes Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. These machines, made by ASML, are the most complex tools ever built. • They use light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers to "print" circuits. • The environment must be so stable that even a slight vibration from a nearby truck or a microscopic dust particle could ruin a multi-million dollar batch of wafers.
4. Economic and Geopolitical Weight Fab 18 is the crown jewel of Taiwan's "Silicon Shield." Its importance to the global economy is so high that its operational status directly affects global GDP.
• The "3nm Multiplier": TSMC estimates that 3nm technology alone will power products with a market value of $1.5 trillion within five years of mass production.
However, if production at Fab 18 was ever stopped, for more than a few days, much of the world economy would slowly but surely grind to a halt, as we know it.”
Can you tell us something we don't all know ? For example, shed some light on the problems to be addressed in achieving a decent production yield with the 3nm process.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
She has raised the issue of Plan2 which hasn't been sold off and her comments seem to suggest she'll reduce the rate. Why?
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
Radio 4 discussing whether jugears, with form for accepting carrier bags of cash, was well-served by his advisors. Tugendhat throwing about lurid allegations of child prostitutes being trafficked via RAF bases to Royal residences. Not sure what he's basing that on.
Edit. Apologies, that should be children
Tugenhadt is face becoming a joke figure with allegations, lies and denial about decisions he made as a Minister and generally it seems frustrated at being yesterday's man.
A move to Rupes Team would not be a surprise.
It must be utterly demoralising for him to see nonentities like Pritti and Cartlidge in roles he'd covet.
There's more chance of me eating a pizza with pineapple on it than Tom Tugendhat defecting to Rupert Lowe's mob or Reform.
He's more One Nation than me and that's saying something.
Are you One Nation? I always understood One Nation to be the economic left of the party - e.g. Macmillan - while I understood you to be very much of the Thatcherite right. I don't want to be placing you somewhere you are not, however, so please read this as a question rather than a confident statement.
(Edit: Agree with you on Tugendhat not defecting though.)
I am One Nation of social matters, I am a fiscal Conservative.
One Nation needs to be stop being seen as Wets in a Thatcher context but back to the likes of SuperMac.
You are Thatcherite on economics but Cameron/Clegg on social matters and being anti Brexit.
Hence you have more in common with Orange Book LDs than Reform, probably about 1/3 of Tories are similar to you on that.
SuperMac though was pretty wet even on economics, he said Thatcher's privatisations were 'selling off the family silver' and would probably have become a Heseltine Tory with some LD sympathies
I'm similar to TSE surely there's a lot of us. Both positions - social and economic - relate to personal freedom. I regard myself as both socially and economically Liberal.
I do indeed sometimes vote LibDem - quite often in local elections, twice in General Elections including the last one. However for national elections the socialist wing of the LibDem puts me off more than the conservative wing of the Tories
However I am now fairly disgusted by the spiv wing which seems to believe that capitalism means guaranteed excess profit and personal riches at taxpayer expense so I may indeed find myself making a more permanent move to the LibDems. At the moment I would likely vote for them at the next election
Fine if you live in a LD held seat but otherwise if you live in a Tory held seat they are still the best option to beat Labour or Reform and if you are in a Labour held seat you will probably have to choose between them and Reform at present in most of them
You are right, I do (now) live in a LibDem held seat, but only since the last election. At one time it was the largest Tory majority in the country.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Yes but you and I both know the national picture is far from clear at this point. The notion the likes of @HYUFD put about as a political ploy is that the LDs will side with Labour if there is a Hung Parliament next time. I don't think you can assume that at all.
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
Actually, I think you CAN assume the LibDems would put Labour into Number 10. Inconceivable that Ed Davey would back the Tories, expecially after their last experience in Govt (he lost his seat after that experiment).
Since 2010 the LibDems have moved left, and the Tories have moved right. In 2010 there really wasn't all that much difference between the Orange Bookers (Clegg, David Laws, et al) and the Cameroons. Between Kemi and Sir Ed? - it's a gulf.
It's also pretty inconceivable that the LbDems would have the option of putting the Tories into No. 10! When was the last poll that predicted that Con + LD would have a majority in the Commons?
Some more facts on Fab 18, Tainan, and why it’s a tiny bit different to “South Gyle Business Park”
“TSMC’s Fab 18, located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan, is often described as the "beating heart" of the modern digital economy.
It isn't just a factory; it is a GIGAFAB® - a facility of such immense scale and technical sophistication that it essentially dictates the pace of global technological progress.
As of 2026, here is why Fab 18 remains a remarkable feat of human engineering and economic strategy:
1. The Global Epicenter of 3nm and 5nm Production Fab 18 is the primary production base for the world’s most advanced chips. While other fabs handle older "legacy" nodes, Fab 18 specializes in: • **5nm (N5) Family: The chips that powered the first wave of 5G smartphones and high-end laptops.
• 3nm (N3) Family: Currently the most advanced logic technology in volume production. These chips offer up to 15% higher speed or 30% lower power consumption compared to the 5nm generation.
Every flagship iPhone, high-end NVIDIA AI GPU, and Apple Silicon Mac chip likely spent its "infancy" inside the cleanrooms of Fab 18.
2. Mind-Boggling Scale (The GIGAFAB® Concept) The term "Gigafab" isn't just marketing; it refers to a facility capable of producing more than 100,000 12-inch wafers per month.
• Physical Size: The total cleanroom area exceeds 160,000 square meters - equivalent to about 25 standard soccer pitches.
• Investment: The total investment for all phases of Fab 18 exceeds NT$1.86 trillion (roughly $60 billion USD), making it arguably the most expensive construction project in human history.
3. Precision Engineering at the Atomic Level
To manufacture chips at 3nm, Fab 18 utilizes Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. These machines, made by ASML, are the most complex tools ever built. • They use light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers to "print" circuits. • The environment must be so stable that even a slight vibration from a nearby truck or a microscopic dust particle could ruin a multi-million dollar batch of wafers.
4. Economic and Geopolitical Weight Fab 18 is the crown jewel of Taiwan's "Silicon Shield." Its importance to the global economy is so high that its operational status directly affects global GDP.
• The "3nm Multiplier": TSMC estimates that 3nm technology alone will power products with a market value of $1.5 trillion within five years of mass production.
However, if production at Fab 18 was ever stopped, for more than a few days, much of the world economy would slowly but surely grind to a halt, as we know it.”
If Ed Conway's book Material World is correct, all these facilities are rigged up with explosives to detonate on the event of a Chinese invasion. That may hamper production a tad.
America deciding to offshore its high tech chip production to Taiwan must count as one of the stupidest unforced errors in history
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As Martin Lewis says - its easy for him as he doesn't have to get elected and then make hard choices.
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
IMHO if ever there was an industry rife for disruption by technology it’s higher education.
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
That was always the case. For most students (and hence graduates) university is a finishing school, not a trade school. Our resident travel writer does not have combined honours in English and geography. If we did not count schoolteachers, there'd be even less of a vocational element to most degrees. As a corollary, the reason Oxford is better than Oxford Brookes is not that they have a different speed of light or more precise value of π but for its networking opportunities.
Comments
Oh, they've also got a copy of the infamous illegal Reform UK one: https://electionleaflets.org/leaflets/21783/
South Staffs Patrick Cormack a decent man but a dyed in the wool Tory, so I voted LD. His replacement was Gavin Williamson.
My Brixham Constituency, even though I look across the Bay to Torquay is linked to Totnes.
Both were Tory, Steve Darling, guide dog guy won Torbay from Kevin Foster. My MP is Caroline Voaden, intellectually challenged and shrill. I did vote for her to get the Tory out, but she's next to useless.
Interesting here is the rumour is Foster may jump to Reform. A number of Tory Councillors have resigned and gone independent and one prominent one, Jason Hutching has not denied he wants the MP nomination, whether it's Tory or Reform who knows.
I have a number of friends down here who are lifelong Tories, some voted Reform in 2024 others LD, one Tory, none will be returning to the Tories any time soon.
The trend seems increasingly to vote out who you don't want, rather than who you do. Something Labour as incumbent will clearly face in 2029.
F
Once again, a few on here have no real idea how politics and political campaigning works.
Starting from sixth place with less than 4% of the vote and, I suspect, little or no organisation or even members isn't usually the way to win an election. Put a name on the paper, get a few votes, accept the lost deposit and move on.
As for the Conservatives, they polled almost double the LD vote in 2024 but that still left them fifth, behind the Workers' Party. I'd have thought keeping the deposit and finishing in the first six would be satisfactory but of course the pro-Conservative parts of the media talk her up, is there any actual evidence of Conservative campaigning in the seat?
I'm more surprised the Workers' Party aren't seeking to build on their 10% and fourth place from last time so that leaves fourth up for grabs and the Conservatives are probably going to inherit.
You are also right that I would vote tactically as an anti-Reform vote. But as the two times I have voted LD in a GE it has facilitated a Labour government, it's not too big a step to actually vote Labour if they were best placed to stop Reform
Just a little bit of harmless political knockabout - glad to see it still sticks in your memory.
It’s a bit like visiting Chessington World of Adventure crossed with Auschwitz
The fact I find his policies repulsive and his demeanor repugnant and arrogant is not the issue.
He has effectively bought himself a political role.
You could argue that genuine entrepreneurs like Digby-Jones, Sugar and John Caldwell have held roles and positions unelected but nothing like that of Yusuf.
He is an utter contradiction I'm every respect and highly dangerous in my opinion.
Also, while we're about it, Blair who, though not directly implicated by the Epstein files as I understand it, has somehow raked in tens of millions from dodgy foreign dictatorships since losing power - a bit of transparency about the sources of his vast wealth would be very welcome.
It took three big defeats to get from Major to Cameron and you could argue a similar thing happened with Labour to get from Brown to Starmer.
For all the positive guff we heard last year from some Tories, there's still the question as to whether Conservatives have actually come to terms with the new political reality - what if they finish third or fourth in terms of seats in 2029? The LDs are used to it - they've survived with 6-8 seats over the years but what would a Conservative Party with 40-50 seats in the new Parliament do or look like?
Oddly enough, I suspect there will be a renewed convergence between Conservatives and LDs in the coming years.
"...In 2018, TSMC broke ground on Fab 18 near Tainan City in the south of Taiwan. Fab 18 is a monster. It sits on 103 acres and has a total floor space of 950,000 square meters (10.2 million square feet). That is about 3 times the size of AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Texas - home of the Dallas Cowboys. In total, across all of its phases, Fab 18 will cost TSMC nearly $20 billion to build and operate. More than the cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy's most advanced aircraft carrier. In this video, we are going to look at why TSMC's fabs are getting bigger and more expensive than ever before. And why that makes a lot of economic sense for the Taiwanese chip maker..."
- Asianometry, 7 March 2022, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvEk6QsNuRA
You could ask the Conservatives if they would support a minority Reform Government after the next election - you won't get anything approaching a straight answer from Badenoch or anyone in the Conservative Party.
In my constituency, the likely choice for me is Labour or the Newham Independents - now, the latter aren't a national political force and I have no clue how they might jump in a Hung Parliament - I can't see them backing either Reform or Labour. Should I vote Labour - I'm not a supporter of Labour so that leaves Green and I'm no fan of their current trajectory? It therefore looks like I shall do my best to help save the LD deposit - so be it.
The Official House of Commons website was calling it a "Lib Dem Shadow Cabinet" as far back as 2008, for example:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmwib/wb081206/libdem.htm
I've no idea if it was a one off.
To be fair the royals haven't, over the years, been noted for marital fidelity. I believe the late Queen was, although Andrew looks nothing like anyone else in the family but I've no idea what Philip's relations looked like. There were occasional tales about Philip. AFAIK there were no scandals associated with George VI and the Queen Mum, but we all know about his elder brother and, of course his grandfather. And that's just last century.
Not great but not criminal either
"Fab 18 is a factory where dust is treated like disaster. The air is scrubbed until contamination becomes almost theoretical, and floors float to kill vibration. Silicon wafers move through hundreds of steps over weeks, carried by silent robots and watched by dense networks of sensors. A single defect can destroy thousands of chips, so the entire building behaves like a machine designed to eliminate chance.
"At its core, EUV lithography fires lasers at molten tin to create plasma hotter than the sun, producing a wavelength of light that must travel through a vacuum and reflect off mirrors polished to near atomic perfection. That light etches patterns smaller than viruses onto silicon, placing tens of billions of transistors on a single chip. A city’s worth of infrastructure exists just to arrange matter at a scale where reality itself starts to blur."
There is a lof of noom, dark and light. There is also an inhuman horror. The Inuit have a word for this: "Ilira"
ILIRA
A beautiful word for an ominous thing. It means "the fear that accompanies awe"
Mike Tapp MP
@MikeTappTweets
With the National Crime Agency, I was involved in an operation to arrest an individual who had been importing GHB to spike women.
We raided his home and got him. In his bed was a woman he had spiked!!!
The Greens would enable that behaviour, let that sink in.
Labour want to stop it!
8:46 am · 22 Feb 2026
https://x.com/MikeTappTweets/status/2025492466330141067?s=20
But the interesting stuff is inside.
In my constituency it's Tory or LibDem with everyone else nowhere. However I would have to be convinced the Tories had recovered significantly from the ludicrousness of their last Government to be convinced to vote for them. If they *might* back Reform that would put me off.
I could always vote OMRLP on the basis that I know the party leader well enough to have a pint with him.
As an aside, Nigel has set May as the time limit for those that wish to cross the floor to his 'shadow cabinet'. After that we could refer to the rump of the Conservatives as Reform's Rejects.
https://x.com/frontlinekit/status/2025822270174715939
Say hello to the "Kaleikino" oil pumping station in Tatarstan, one of the main stations for the "Druzhba" oil pipeline.
First and foremost, it was responsible for critical pressure and the uninterrupted pumping of raw materials.
Mr Orban won’t be happy with that one!
Not supporting Reform doesn't necessarily equate to supporting Labour. It's quite conceivable to have a position where the LDs (and perhaps the Conservatives) will neither support Labour nor Reform.
That will mean each individual piece of legislation will be judged on its merits - would the LDs vote down a Reform King's Speech? Probably - would the Conservatives vote down a Reform King's Speech? I suspect, as they did in 1974 when they could have voted against a Labour Queen's Speech and forced a second election, they won't and will abstain.
Turn the question round - would the Conservatives vote down a Labour King's Speech? Would the Liberal Democrats support it?
At the same time, I suspect both (and indeed all) parties would be preparing for a second election within 12-18 months.
That's the whole bloody point, it would indeed be one great ugly shed with a weird lack of windows, but inside is wot makes it scary, impressive, foreboding and worth a slightly desolate pilgrimage (plus the death pit of 5000 year old decapitated women and kids underneath, which delayed construction, I mean: OMG)
I've only ever had this complex mix of emotions when confronted with tech, once before. This exhilaration of noom, plus a large dash of Ilira
Unfortunately, it was when I went to see the ICBM Titan Nuclear Missile Silo in Arizona. The only place in the world you can see a city-killing nuclear weapon in situ, almost ready to go. A terrifying place
Heartily recommended
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Missile_Museum
Nothing ever said by the broad centre ground ever sounds as if they believe a word of it.
Tapp's effort is a nice example of the nonsensical genre.
EU says it will accept no increase in US tariffs after Supreme Court ruling: 'a deal is a deal'
https://www.reuters.com/business/eu-says-it-will-accept-no-increase-us-tariffs-after-supreme-court-ruling-a-deal-2026-02-22/
Labour will be looking to do the same to Plaid (possibly from within govt)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/22/uk-in-talks-with-us-over-best-possible-deal-for-british-firms-amid-higher-tariffs-threat-trump
For "What's the biggest priority for Gorton and Denton voters right now - and how would you help address it as MP?", the Communist candidate's answer is about Cuba.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/asked-every-candidate-gorton-denton-33458739
That's almost exactly the same size as the main Amazon distribution centre in the Flatlands, which is 960,000 square metres according to my GIS. Which is, to be fair, massive. When they were putting it up the diggers were totally dwarfed by the steel structure.[Edit, oops, factor of 10 out! OK, that really is BIG]
However, I'm kind of with Leon here. The local Amazon building stores Chinese Tat piled 5 stories high, whereas the stuff in there is powering the biggest Tulip bubble since, well, Tulips. And also a Brave New World. At the same time.
https://x.com/GMB/status/2025857118394363985
The Libertarian focuses on combatting fly-tipping... which doesn't seem very libertarian!
The Rejoin EU candidate says rejoining the EU, which feels strongly on message.
The MRLP candidate replied, "I believe the biggest concern to local residents is Trump's attempted take over of Iceland’s packing factory in Gorton."
Green, Labour and SDP give complete non-answers.
The other questions are also good, which great answers like, "Gorton and Denton has a proud history of making hats and building locomotives but we need to imagine a new future." No more hat making for Gorton and Denton!
Hence St Gordon trying to get ahead of the story with his dossiers of dodginess
https://x.com/gloooud/status/2025814969141334480
Can’t help but laugh that it’s now up in flames.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WoDQBhJCVQ
70 seconds of James Burke and a rocket.
Kemi could do a lot better than to engage with Lewis and his team offline to work through possible solutions.
There’s two distinct problems; what to do with student finance going forward, and what to do with the legacy loans (many of which have been sold off).
As a nation we face questions about how to fund university in a changing world, how many kids should go, what they should study, should we be forced by finances to prioritise overseas students (who pay more) than home? No easy answers.
Its already better than watching Captain Pugwash on holiday in Mauritius or Zia Yusuf wearing Teresa Mays discarded outfits
The materials are all online, exams and grading for most classroom-based courses is not particularly expensive to do.
What the universities are actually selling at the moment, is scarcity via admissions and the networking opportunities.
“TSMC’s Fab 18, located in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan, is often described as the "beating heart" of the modern digital economy.
It isn't just a factory; it is a GIGAFAB® - a facility of such immense scale and technical sophistication that it essentially dictates the pace of global technological progress.
As of 2026, here is why Fab 18 remains a remarkable feat of human engineering and economic strategy:
1. The Global Epicenter of 3nm and 5nm Production
Fab 18 is the primary production base for the world’s most advanced chips. While other fabs handle older "legacy" nodes, Fab 18 specializes in:
• **5nm (N5) Family: The chips that powered the first wave of 5G smartphones and high-end laptops.
• 3nm (N3) Family: Currently the most advanced logic technology in volume production. These chips offer up to 15% higher speed or 30% lower power consumption compared to the 5nm generation.
Every flagship iPhone, high-end NVIDIA AI GPU, and Apple Silicon Mac chip likely spent its "infancy" inside the cleanrooms of Fab 18.
2. Mind-Boggling Scale (The GIGAFAB® Concept)
The term "Gigafab" isn't just marketing; it refers to a facility capable of producing more than 100,000 12-inch wafers per month.
• Physical Size: The total cleanroom area exceeds 160,000 square meters - equivalent to about 25 standard soccer pitches.
• Investment: The total investment for all phases of Fab 18 exceeds NT$1.86 trillion (roughly $60 billion USD), making it arguably the most expensive construction project in human history.
3. Precision Engineering at the Atomic Level
To manufacture chips at 3nm, Fab 18 utilizes Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography. These machines, made by ASML, are the most complex tools ever built.
• They use light with a wavelength of just 13.5 nanometers to "print" circuits.
• The environment must be so stable that even a slight vibration from a nearby truck or a microscopic dust particle could ruin a multi-million dollar batch of wafers.
4. Economic and Geopolitical Weight
Fab 18 is the crown jewel of Taiwan's "Silicon Shield." Its importance to the global economy is so high that its operational status directly affects global GDP.
• The "3nm Multiplier": TSMC estimates that 3nm technology alone will power products with a market value of $1.5 trillion within five years of mass production.
However, if production at Fab 18 was ever stopped, for more than a few days, much of the world economy would slowly but surely grind to a halt, as we know it.”
Lewis is right of course. Inflation plus interest rates are indeed obnoxious, but prioritising those will help only the top earning graduates.
And the other justification for prioritising indexing of repayment thresholds, is that this was actually a promise attached to the loans when they were taken out.
Since 2010 the LibDems have moved left, and the Tories have moved right. In 2010 there really wasn't all that much difference between the Orange Bookers (Clegg, David Laws, et al) and the Cameroons. Between Kemi and Sir Ed? - it's a gulf.
For example, shed some light on the problems to be addressed in achieving a decent production yield with the 3nm process.
Those that signed up to Plan2 did it in the knowledge of the cost and presumable considered that cost to be outweighed by the benefit they received. Stiffing the taxpayer of future interest payments so you can buy the votes of graduates is on-brand for her. Soundbites rather than considering the effects.
America had the tech and the money and the space. Uniquely so. They could have imported the hard working East Asian people if absolutely necessary
Now they are totally dependant on an island across a mighty ocean and perilously close to America’s most potent economic and military rival, a rival which claims that island as its own, and with good reason
Tut