And if Rayner gets her way scuppering the very reasonable ILR changes this will only get worse far sooner.
Boris wave NEETS
Is this the Matthew Elliott?
Hardly a reliable source
Then provide a link if you dispute the figures
Issue isn't so much the numbers as their meaning- the move to reduce income taxes, especially their headline rates, has been a steady one for most of my life. So it's not surprising that income taxes don't cover X, whatever X is.
There's a kind of rhetoric that works by highlighting two things and definitely not saying that a link should be drawn between them... but you don't need to, because human minds can't help but join dots. It's incredibly dishonest, but it works.
As the comments suggest, that's more than a little misleading.
It denigrates pensioners who represent about £180 billion of the £333 billion welfare spend and classes them as "not working" which, while accurate, is part of what seems to be a deliberate demonising of them as a group.
If any party wants to means test the State pension or withdraw it from, far example, higher rate tax payers, they should come out and say so and explain how it will be done without cliff edges and a huge bureaucracy.
The small matter of what we have to pay in Debt Interest and how we have got to this point should perhaps get a bit more discussion.
Why is it misleading?
It’s pointing out that the total benefits bill, which includes pensions, exceeds income tax proceeds. Which it does.
State pensions are a benefit, just like the other state payments.
A simple solution, is to merge employee NI and IT, with a retained, lower rate for lower rate tax paying pensioners. So only pensioners receiving £50k a year or more, would pay more tax.
Treat the state pension like a tax allowance. Incidentally? I would simplify the tax system at the same time
1) Personal allowance fixed, not withdrawn. 2) Sets suitable rates to make up for this, combining IT and NI
This would get rid of various anomalies.
So a simpler, fairer tax system. Cheaper to run, as well.
I'm sure there are elements of what you are proposing which would make a lot of sense.
I think there's a cultural rubicon to be crossed if you are going to treat the State Pension like any other benefit. Many are of the view it is something to which they are entitled having contributed through work and taxation for longer or shorter periods.
We have now, which we didn't in the past, individuals who have been able to retire and live reasonably well on workplace or private pensions combined with the downsizing of property assets whose growth has often outstripped ambient inflation and the realisation of the receipts from their disposal has also enabled said individuals to live comfortably and stop work early.
Government economic, social and political policy over a generation has created a group whose wealth has been derived mainly from property ownership - now, part of that can be passed on via inheritance or it can be realised via downsizing and either spent by the parents or passed on as cash gifts but that can only happen once and future generations are unlikely to see the returns on asset ownership many of us have enjoyed with rates of appreciation far in advance of inflation.
As more time has passed, it has become obvious that the Coalition government made a lot of decisions that have screwed the country in the long run.
That may well be true for all governments ever.
And governments do that because electorates like to vote for governments that give them concrete goodies in the short term, even if the cost is some vague blowback in future decades. After all, it might not happen and, even if it does, it will largely happen to someone else.
We may not like the politicians we get, but they are approximately as good as we deserve.
Britain's civil service ethics chief twice offered to officially question Lord Mandelson over his links to Jeffrey Epstein but was rebuffed by No10.
Starmer's greasy exit slope just had an extra greasing applied.
He's so fucked.
Contacted number 10
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
As more time has passed, it has become obvious that the Coalition government made a lot of decisions that have screwed the country in the long run.
That may well be true for all governments ever.
And governments do that because electorates like to vote for governments that give them concrete goodies in the short term, even if the cost is some vague blowback in future decades. After all, it might not happen and, even if it does, it will largely happen to someone else.
We may not like the politicians we get, but they are approximately as good as we deserve.
I see this idea that we get the politicians we deserve - why? Surely if you want to be a politician you should want better, strive for better, give your soul. We get the politicians we have because we have become a weak, self centred society who accept any fucker who sells us snake oil but that’s because society is buggered in the uk and nobody wants the horrid truths.
Oh, actually you are correct, we get the politicians we deserve.
Britain's civil service ethics chief twice offered to officially question Lord Mandelson over his links to Jeffrey Epstein but was rebuffed by No10.
Starmer's greasy exit slope just had an extra greasing applied.
He's so fucked.
Contacted number 10
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
Britain's civil service ethics chief twice offered to officially question Lord Mandelson over his links to Jeffrey Epstein but was rebuffed by No10.
Starmer's greasy exit slope just had an extra greasing applied.
He's so fucked.
Contacted number 10
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
Starmer can’t have it both ways.
If it was a political appointment then the process is irrelevant and it’s purely a question of his judgement. If the appointment was on merit then he can’t hide behind process when corners were evidently cut.
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
My utmost sympathies. I have a very troubled sister and about 20 odd years ago I was disgorged from my hungover bed by the police, almost like the opening of apocalypse now, as my sister was on a cliff edge ready to jump and apparently I was the only person she would talk to. I went and sat on the edge of the cliff with her for about two hours trying to reason, explaining she wasn’t helping my hangover and managed to talk her down. It’s the worst feeling in the world to feel you have someone’s life in your hands where they aren’t rational and you are worried that the wrong word or look could be the difference.
Edit to add, I sat far enough away she couldn’t take me with her, I’m not that stupid.
Britain's civil service ethics chief twice offered to officially question Lord Mandelson over his links to Jeffrey Epstein but was rebuffed by No10.
Starmer's greasy exit slope just had an extra greasing applied.
He's so fucked.
Contacted number 10
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
Britain's civil service ethics chief twice offered to officially question Lord Mandelson over his links to Jeffrey Epstein but was rebuffed by No10.
Starmer's greasy exit slope just had an extra greasing applied.
He's so fucked.
Contacted number 10
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
Good luck if you think the public will wear that claptrap
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
My utmost sympathies. I have a very troubled sister and about 20 odd years ago I was disgorged from my hungover bed by the police, almost like the opening of apocalypse now, as my sister was on a cliff edge ready to jump and apparently I was the only person she would talk to. I went and sat on the edge of the cliff with her for about two hours trying to reason, explaining she wasn’t helping my hangover and managed to talk her down. It’s the worst feeling in the world to feel you have someone’s life in your hands where they aren’t rational and you are worried that the wrong word or look could be the difference.
Edit to add, I sat far enough away she couldn’t take me with her, I’m not that stupid.
Very sorry to read these stories.
On the psychotic breakdown, it is possible medication could bring her back from the paranoid state you describe. Sometimes quite rapidly.
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
Is she on dexamethasone or methylprednisolone? Sometimes the neurosurgeons use it to reduce swelling around tumours etc.
It can sometimes induce paranoid psychosis in the doses that they use.
Not sure. She's had surgery, a course of daily radiotherapy, and is still on chemotherapy pills (although after being sectioned she only got them occasionally), but the NHS works in silos and each bit does its stuff and then signs her off until some future review. There's never anyone monitoring and managing each patient's holistic care, and if the patient or their friends and family aren't able to try and join the dots and convey information from one silo to another, it doesn't get done. As it was she was discharged Monday without any of her medication and when challenged they had to pay for a motorcyle courier to despatch it across North London. Most of their patients won't have the resources to do so.
It all sounds very chaotic and haphazard. I wish I could say that I am surprised, but that is the world that I know.
It is the GP's role to co-ordinate care between the Specialists in their silos. Sadly they often lack the time and sometimes the motivation to do so under the pressure of other demands.
It is probably worth checking if the chemo includes steroids. If she had radiotherapy then that may well be the case. I have seen some pretty flamboyant steroid psychoses in my junior doctor days.
The GP bit of the health service is broken, surely you must know that.
Yes, sadly I do know that.
I am not a big fan of Streetings 10 year plan for the NHS (far too much obsession with tech-bro solutions and if the pilot schemes that I have seen likely to keel over in a big way) but I do approve of the emphasis on Primary Care.
I have my doubts that the GP system is fixable. There has been too much loss of grognard experience for it to be restored to what it was. The problem is not primarily financial, but rather one of medical education and vocation. There are some great GPs out there, but they get fewer each year.
I haven't seen a doctor at my practice since the pandemic. Nowadays, you just fill in the e-consult form - who reviews it at the practice end, I don't know, but at best you get a phone call, or get called into the practice for an appointment that turns out to be with some variety of nurse. They're nice, helpful people but utterly unable to connect one dot with another; whatever symptom you've reported is all they can focus on, and you either get sent away with some advice you've already found yourself after five minutes on Google, or referred off for whatever test their book says people with your symptom should get. And you never get the results, especially if there's nothing found, and can only discover by accident if you log into your NHS account every month or so to see if anything new has been posted. Today I finally saw a specialist about some annoying but non-life-threatening condition for which I was referred in June 2024 - so a twenty-one month wait even to get to first consultation - and he quickly identified that some other symptoms I have, for which I have meanwhile been referred off for various tests at the hospital (all of which came back negative - a waste of money that should have been obvious to any intelligent doctor at the outset, had one ever had the case in front of him or her) all likely derive from the same probable condition. As it is, he said that I'd need a scan, for which there is currently a two month wait, and then need to come back for a follow-up consultation likely two months later. So it will be well past the two year point before we get to the stage of deciding whether anything can be done. Meanwhile my GP might as well not exist, since they don't have the capacity to keep up with the flood of new patient complaints, let alone spend time overseeing the cases of patients referred off elsewhere. Once you've been referred off from a GP practice, that appears to be the end of their interest or involvement.
I went for some heart scans a few years ago (family history). After waiting for a few months for the results I arranged an appointment with the GP. They scrolled through my records on their PC for a while then said "Well, I guess they decided there was nothing important. There's nothing here."
End of consultation.
Probably all fine.
I think we could do with much franker assessment of the performance of different practices and hospitals. My experience (in Oxfordshire) is totally different - I can see a GP within a few days any time I ask, and have done so from time to time for fairly minor things. On a much more serious note, a child who I know had several days of non-treatment at a local (London) hospital before finally being referred to Great Ormond Street, where the treatment and simply the attention given is incomparably better. Obviously not everyone will have the identical experience across the country, but really the gap between the best and the worst is indefensibly huge.
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
My utmost sympathies. I have a very troubled sister and about 20 odd years ago I was disgorged from my hungover bed by the police, almost like the opening of apocalypse now, as my sister was on a cliff edge ready to jump and apparently I was the only person she would talk to. I went and sat on the edge of the cliff with her for about two hours trying to reason, explaining she wasn’t helping my hangover and managed to talk her down. It’s the worst feeling in the world to feel you have someone’s life in your hands where they aren’t rational and you are worried that the wrong word or look could be the difference.
Edit to add, I sat far enough away she couldn’t take me with her, I’m not that stupid.
Very sorry to read these stories.
On the psychotic breakdown, it is possible medication could bring her back from the paranoid state you describe. Sometimes quite rapidly.
She found an amazing tech bro, had kids, has a new artistic business and she’s ok. A bit scary from time to time but she’s found her place in life. I guess it was worth getting out of bed in the end.
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
Is she on dexamethasone or methylprednisolone? Sometimes the neurosurgeons use it to reduce swelling around tumours etc.
It can sometimes induce paranoid psychosis in the doses that they use.
Not sure. She's had surgery, a course of daily radiotherapy, and is still on chemotherapy pills (although after being sectioned she only got them occasionally), but the NHS works in silos and each bit does its stuff and then signs her off until some future review. There's never anyone monitoring and managing each patient's holistic care, and if the patient or their friends and family aren't able to try and join the dots and convey information from one silo to another, it doesn't get done. As it was she was discharged Monday without any of her medication and when challenged they had to pay for a motorcyle courier to despatch it across North London. Most of their patients won't have the resources to do so.
It all sounds very chaotic and haphazard. I wish I could say that I am surprised, but that is the world that I know.
It is the GP's role to co-ordinate care between the Specialists in their silos. Sadly they often lack the time and sometimes the motivation to do so under the pressure of other demands.
It is probably worth checking if the chemo includes steroids. If she had radiotherapy then that may well be the case. I have seen some pretty flamboyant steroid psychoses in my junior doctor days.
The GP bit of the health service is broken, surely you must know that.
Yes, sadly I do know that.
I am not a big fan of Streetings 10 year plan for the NHS (far too much obsession with tech-bro solutions and if the pilot schemes that I have seen likely to keel over in a big way) but I do approve of the emphasis on Primary Care.
I have my doubts that the GP system is fixable. There has been too much loss of grognard experience for it to be restored to what it was. The problem is not primarily financial, but rather one of medical education and vocation. There are some great GPs out there, but they get fewer each year.
I haven't seen a doctor at my practice since the pandemic. Nowadays, you just fill in the e-consult form - who reviews it at the practice end, I don't know, but at best you get a phone call, or get called into the practice for an appointment that turns out to be with some variety of nurse. They're nice, helpful people but utterly unable to connect one dot with another; whatever symptom you've reported is all they can focus on, and you either get sent away with some advice you've already found yourself after five minutes on Google, or referred off for whatever test their book says people with your symptom should get. And you never get the results, especially if there's nothing found, and can only discover by accident if you log into your NHS account every month or so to see if anything new has been posted. Today I finally saw a specialist about some annoying but non-life-threatening condition for which I was referred in June 2024 - so a twenty-one month wait even to get to first consultation - and he quickly identified that some other symptoms I have, for which I have meanwhile been referred off for various tests at the hospital (all of which came back negative - a waste of money that should have been obvious to any intelligent doctor at the outset, had one ever had the case in front of him or her) all likely derive from the same probable condition. As it is, he said that I'd need a scan, for which there is currently a two month wait, and then need to come back for a follow-up consultation likely two months later. So it will be well past the two year point before we get to the stage of deciding whether anything can be done. Meanwhile my GP might as well not exist, since they don't have the capacity to keep up with the flood of new patient complaints, let alone spend time overseeing the cases of patients referred off elsewhere. Once you've been referred off from a GP practice, that appears to be the end of their interest or involvement.
I went for some heart scans a few years ago (family history). After waiting for a few months for the results I arranged an appointment with the GP. They scrolled through my records on their PC for a while then said "Well, I guess they decided there was nothing important. There's nothing here."
End of consultation.
Probably all fine.
I think we could do with much franker assessment of the performance of different practices and hospitals. My experience (in Oxfordshire) is totally different - I can see a GP within a few days any time I ask, and have done so from time to time for fairly minor things. On a much more serious note, a child who I know had several days of non-treatment at a local (London) hospital before finally being referred to Great Ormond Street, where the treatment and simply the attention given is incomparably better. Obviously not everyone will have the identical experience across the country, but really the gap between the best and the worst is indefensibly huge.
I agree. Even within a single hospital care can be very variable. For example this scandal at Great Ormond Street.
BBC News - Great Ormond Street doctor who botched surgery harmed nearly 100 children
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
So why is Angie marching around with a big drum shouting 'me, me, me'?
What else does she have to do right now?
Pay her taxes, on her home and on the legal advice that she was gifted?
It is no longer her home, it's the home of her son Charlie whose trust fund (funded by the medical neglect claim) bought the already adapted family home
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
So why is Angie marching around with a big drum shouting 'me, me, me'?
What else does she have to do right now?
Pay her taxes, on her home and on the legal advice that she was gifted?
It is no longer her home, it's the home of her son Charlie whose trust fund (funded by the medical neglect claim) bought the already adapted family home
Ministers will give the green light for the Ajax programme to continue in a bid to save jobs in Labour heartlands and after it passed safety tests
The announcement on Ajax is expected next week. The vehicle passed safety tests and sources suggested troops may have to undergo motion sickness training to overcome issues. No other vehicles were found to be appropriate replacements https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2034296728841523630
What it actually means is that there's no money to do anything about the disaster, so we'll just pretend it hasn't happened.
Oh, and they've postponed the Defence Investment Plan again.
Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit is deploying ahead of schedule from the West Coast and is expected to sail to the Middle East region after the Navy was ordered to surge additional fire power.
Wow, who could have seen that coming? Unfortunately for us, the strategic effects the two sides' forces generate are totally opposite. Iran's combat power relative to ours is like a grain of sand, but that grain of sand is in our eye.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
'The Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary on Thursday ignored a U.S. State Department warning along with pleas from elite Iranian-American wrestlers to not execute 19-year-old champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi for protesting against the Khamenei regime.
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
So why is Angie marching around with a big drum shouting 'me, me, me'?
What else does she have to do right now?
Pay her taxes, on her home and on the legal advice that she was gifted?
It is no longer her home, it's the home of her son Charlie whose trust fund (funded by the medical neglect claim) bought the already adapted family home
It was her home when the tax was due
Well, lets wait for the actual investigation results.
Wasn't the Stamp Duty reclaimable when her disabled son reached the age of 18, a few months after the transaction?
Lowest Reform score with FoN's regular weekly poll since January 2025
I know we can't criticise a BPC pollster but surely there would be a correlation between Reform shipping nearly ten points over several months and an increase in Conservative fortunes. So if Reform are on 25 so are the Tories.
Looks like a small swing from Reform to Labour and Green to LD on that poll but Kemi is keeping her 17% core vote!
I'd be surprised if Restore are making that much headway. Perhaps with Timothy's comments gaining traction they will capture some of the racist vote. Farage has been pedalling like fury today to regain the racist agenda.
Was anyone else reminded of a Nuremberg rally during Farage's Scottish speech today?
Apparently he opposes religious events in public spaces.
Bang goes our Passion Play when he becomes Fuhrer.
You do a big Passion Play outside at Easter? Nice. 🙂
The Lenten themes I’ve used at Sunday School is Lent is not about deprivation, but resting up and feeding the mind too. Get round to taking rest and reading through that pile of books you’ve been meaning to as this is spiritual practice Lent is all about. I’ve been reading a recently published Watership Down graphic novel, and some of a book called the crusader strategy my brother gave me at Christmas.
Shared services and shared prayer is very good and healthy to do outside all together, just as all non religious outdoor community gatherings are for support from each other in community and a great feeling. All Farage and his goons have is hate, no understanding about community and love at all. They will ban things simply because they feel only hate when they see Moslems doing it without a clue the rest of us do same things too!
Wait, when did I agree to be the Reform candidate in Aberdeenshire West.
Reform's candidates: Day 0
NE Fife: Called Humza 'not British' & Islamist Moron Galloway & W Dumfries: Tommy Robinson fan Stirling: Shared false info about migrant hotels Abshire W: Hates the Queen/Royals (and standing in Balmoral!)
Wait, when did I agree to be the Reform candidate in Aberdeenshire West.
Reform's candidates: Day 0
NE Fife: Called Humza 'not British' & Islamist Moron Galloway & W Dumfries: Tommy Robinson fan Stirling: Shared false info about migrant hotels Abshire W: Hates the Queen/Royals (and standing in Balmoral!)
Wait, when did I agree to be the Reform candidate in Aberdeenshire West.
Reform's candidates: Day 0
NE Fife: Called Humza 'not British' & Islamist Moron Galloway & W Dumfries: Tommy Robinson fan Stirling: Shared false info about migrant hotels Abshire W: Hates the Queen/Royals (and standing in Balmoral!)
I expect given their core vote the top 3 Reform candidates could probably get away with it but the anti royal one is doomed (even if some Reformers think the King a bit woke)
A senior council worker repeatedly shared with West Midlands authorities reports of children as young as 11 being sexually abused in High Street mini-marts, the BBC can reveal.
The reports were raised multiple times with police and safeguarding partners over the past 10 years, according to internal Dudley Council documents seen by the BBC.
Extracts from intelligence briefings from 2019 to 2024 also claim that children may have been at risk of being sexually abused after being offered drugs, alcohol and cigarettes in mini-marts.
A West Midlands Police spokesman initially said: "There is currently no evidence to substantiate these claims of child sexual exploitation (CSE) connected to shops in Dudley."
But after further evidence was presented to it today by the BBC, West Midlands Police asked us to use an updated statement which did not contain the claims of "no evidence". It said instead: "We have a robust partnership approach to CSE and safeguarding in the borough and across the wider West Midlands.
"CSE is a serious crime, so we will always act on any information we receive."
That is quite the dramatic change in statement tone.
Definitely goalhanging. As I'm in an online interview watching a candidate drown...
Hopefully not a lifeguard job.
Sadly its applicants to study pharmacy (but from Access to HE courses). Usually very poor, the current one is one of the worst I've seen. He's trying a calculation right now that I suspect every PB member would achieved in 20 s or less. And failing.
I'm surprised that its usually very poor from Access courses.
I don't know what they're generally like, but my wife started Uni this year after doing an Access course (self-study, online, as well as working) last year. She was advised before she started that, that if you can do well on the Access course you should be good for Uni and that the Access course is quite challenging. She said in hindsight she agrees with that, in part as was then working so juggling the course with her job, whereas now she's full-time doing her degree/placements, but that the Access course was good prep.
Don't know if all Access courses are similar or some are better than others.
There is significant variation. I have interviewed into the three figures products of access courses. There are some good students there - typically ones who choose the wrong route early but then want to do pharmacy and don't have the A levels in the right subjects. I have accepted one such this morning.
Then there are the vast majority that were not good enough to get the right grades initially but can get the lower grades for the Access to HE courses and hope that will get them on the main course. At a Top 10 Uni like Bath (are you listening @HYUFD - we not a Russel Group but we are better than most of them) they don't cut it.
At some point I'll share a typical calculation that floors them. PBers will have no dificulty.
Is is
Simplify (a-x)(b-x)(c-x)...(z-x)
?
=0
Only when x is equal to one of the constants (I presume they are constants) a to z.
At a guess, the one between w and y?
Yes, yes. Now I'm embarrassed. I'm just so used to a, b, c, etc being constants and x, y , z, etc being variables.
x can be as variable as it likes, and (x-x) will always be zero
I've always wondered how double posts appeared. You've just managed 5 of them!
Sorry. I got error ‘failed’ messages from the site on my posts so clicked on ‘post’ again. I had no way of knowing it would eventually post my comment over and over.
I’m also quite stressed out as yesterday I had to wrestle a close friend to the ground to stop her throwing herself out of a third floor window, and today I was phoned by the Police to say that this morning she’d done precisely that. This week is one I won’t ever forget.
No apology needed, it's interesting to know how it happens.
And my condolences. A harrowing couple of days.
Her mistake, if that's the right word, was not looking down before she jumped, and hence not noticing that despite being very high up and with paving stones below, the flat beneath hers had a balcony with a washing line strung along it and the door open. It appears that after jumping from the window, she tangled with the washing line, impacted the top of the door, then the railings of the balcony, before falling one more storey to the hard ground below. She was determined to end her life, being terminally ill, but is now in a London hospital with several broken ribs and a punctured lung. It's a truly tragic story, from start to finish. It would play into the assisted dying debate, save for the fact that the mental breakdown she has had, following her terminal diagnosis, would render her considered incapable of making a considered decision about how she wishes her life to end.
Now, she faces a few weeks heavily sedated - as a suicide risk in a regular hospital - and once the injuries from her fall have healed, being returned under section 3 of the MHA to a secure mental health ward where her life will likely end.
Sounds awful for both her and you. Best wishes.
It is a fairly extreme reaction to a terminal diagnosis, assuming that she has no pre existing psychiatric history. It may well be that her mental state bounces back, and certainly sounds like she needs to talk to the pallative care team.
My amateur assessment is that the stress of the diagnosis and the operations and treatments she has had, has led to some sort of psychotic breakdown. If she'd said she didn't want to die a slow, lingering death from spreading cancer, I could rationalise and understand what she's done - but her explanation for the attempted suicides is that she's being followed everywhere and there is a criminal gang, working in consort with her brother, her parents, and the cleaners at the mental hospital, who have stolen her identity and who plan to torture her and bump her off in the night. Hence why she got sectioned, under section 2, in the first place. It's distressing, if also enlightening given that despite my many years in local government I've not really interacted with mental health services before, to see someone previously intelligent and rational descend so quickly into such a dark and twisted state of mind.
At the risk of naivety, they have checked it hasn't spread to the brain, right? In suppose it hardly matters now.
A good friend of mine died at the end of last year of brain cancer. The speed from which he went from an exceptionally clever man to a paranoid shell was frankly terrifying to see. It’s a bloody grim way to go.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Most independent experts value the US’s contribution to Ukraine at $50bn. Which is not nothing but a hell of a long way from $350bn. If they had given that much the war would be over.
Britain's civil service ethics chief twice offered to officially question Lord Mandelson over his links to Jeffrey Epstein but was rebuffed by No10.
Starmer's greasy exit slope just had an extra greasing applied.
He's so fucked.
Contacted number 10
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
One of Starmer's greatest skills is that he is literally never there. Someone else made the decision, whatever the decision is.
As the comments suggest, that's more than a little misleading.
It denigrates pensioners who represent about £180 billion of the £333 billion welfare spend and classes them as "not working" which, while accurate, is part of what seems to be a deliberate demonising of them as a group.
If any party wants to means test the State pension or withdraw it from, far example, higher rate tax payers, they should come out and say so and explain how it will be done without cliff edges and a huge bureaucracy.
The small matter of what we have to pay in Debt Interest and how we have got to this point should perhaps get a bit more discussion.
What is certain these levels of spending are going to end
How and when is more of an issue and some government is going to be in the firing line sooner or later
Does it suggest income taxes are too low, it needs higher income tax to balance UK budget?
Faced with a choice of filling deficit with ever more borrowing, or balancing the budget, we’d prefer a balanced budget?
Wait, when did I agree to be the Reform candidate in Aberdeenshire West.
Reform's candidates: Day 0
NE Fife: Called Humza 'not British' & Islamist Moron Galloway & W Dumfries: Tommy Robinson fan Stirling: Shared false info about migrant hotels Abshire W: Hates the Queen/Royals (and standing in Balmoral!)
The Tories will be delighted that they currently hold two of these seats, the blue Spads will have been working hard to find any dirt this afternoon.
I'm still expecting team Findlay to poll well enough in NE, Borders to keep these seats competitive, but if they stay down at 10% in polling even these seats will be shaky.
Reform are really looking to hoover up as many list seats as possible and any constituencies are a bonus. The presentation today had a raft of English speakers and had a very strong theme on limiting migration.
I suspect their pitch is not aimed at better off Tory/Lib Dem voters, which leads me to think they'll target and do better with parts of working class central Scotland with a high white population
Interesting to see if sitting MSPs keep to the 'its a 2 horse race' line in ....x..... when there will be quite a few seats which could become 3 or 4 way marginals
Wait, when did I agree to be the Reform candidate in Aberdeenshire West.
Reform's candidates: Day 0
NE Fife: Called Humza 'not British' & Islamist Moron Galloway & W Dumfries: Tommy Robinson fan Stirling: Shared false info about migrant hotels Abshire W: Hates the Queen/Royals (and standing in Balmoral!)
I expect given their core vote the top 3 Reform candidates could probably get away with it but the anti royal one is doomed (even if some Reformers think the King a bit woke)
Wonder whether any of these 4 will be pulled as a candidate. It'll be Farage's decision of course
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Fact.
Ukraine has used 300 Patriot missiles in several years. The US A has fired 2400 in the last 3 weeks.
After the first day or so the Iranian response was rather subdued, but it has been gradually building over the last week, including more sophisticated 2 stage missiles.
I suspect this was initial discombobulation from the strikes, but could be a deliberate policy of using cheap Shahed drones to use up all the Patriot missiles before launching their more sophisticated missiles.
Ministers will give the green light for the Ajax programme to continue in a bid to save jobs in Labour heartlands and after it passed safety tests
The announcement on Ajax is expected next week. The vehicle passed safety tests and sources suggested troops may have to undergo motion sickness training to overcome issues. No other vehicles were found to be appropriate replacements https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2034296728841523630
What it actually means is that there's no money to do anything about the disaster, so we'll just pretend it hasn't happened.
Oh, and they've postponed the Defence Investment Plan again.
Oh, this is ridiculous. I know PB Starmerites are pleased at Starmer making the correct decision (after Miliband et al told him what to think) for Iran, but in the name of goodness they can't keep f***ing up like this. He really should be fired, as I've pointed out several times.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Really? Donald J Trump said something that might be thought -under certain circumstances- to be perhaps a tiny bit misleading?
I think we could do with much franker assessment of the performance of different practices and hospitals. My experience (in Oxfordshire) is totally different - I can see a GP within a few days any time I ask, and have done so from time to time for fairly minor things. On a much more serious note, a child who I know had several days of non-treatment at a local (London) hospital before finally being referred to Great Ormond Street, where the treatment and simply the attention given is incomparably better. Obviously not everyone will have the identical experience across the country, but really the gap between the best and the worst is indefensibly huge.
I agree. Even within a single hospital care can be very variable. For example this scandal at Great Ormond Street.
BBC News - Great Ormond Street doctor who botched surgery harmed nearly 100 children
Yes. It's perhaps partly that we assume perfection in health care, and institutions are inevitably not going to meet that, but the answer to that isn't toleration of systematic poor practice.
Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit is deploying ahead of schedule from the West Coast and is expected to sail to the Middle East region after the Navy was ordered to surge additional fire power.
Wow, who could have seen that coming? Unfortunately for us, the strategic effects the two sides' forces generate are totally opposite. Iran's combat power relative to ours is like a grain of sand, but that grain of sand is in our eye.
West Coast USA is a long way from Hormuz. 3 weeks at least surely?
'The Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary on Thursday ignored a U.S. State Department warning along with pleas from elite Iranian-American wrestlers to not execute 19-year-old champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi for protesting against the Khamenei regime.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Fact.
Ukraine has used 300 Patriot missiles in several years. The US A has fired 2400 in the last 3 weeks.
After the first day or so the Iranian response was rather subdued, but it has been gradually building over the last week, including more sophisticated 2 stage missiles.
I suspect this was initial discombobulation from the strikes, but could be a deliberate policy of using cheap Shahed drones to use up all the Patriot missiles before launching their more sophisticated missiles.
The budget anti-drone missile system (APKWS) which the US had started supplying Ukraine after testing it there was diverted to the USAF at the end of last year.
Lol the Tories changed the locks overnight on Maggie T house in Romford so Rosindell and staff cant get in anymore
Have they taken down the huge photos of Andy R yet?
It's amazing to think that Rosindell thought he could maintain use of facilities run by an organisation he had left. Though given his attitude to the EU and GLA, maybe not that amazing.
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
I think Rayner makes her move in May, and Starmer doesn't contest it.
The first thing he will do after losing net 1500 council seats is perform a reshuffle and a relaunch, and bring Rayner back. Her issues will be sorted by May, apparently.
It seems crazy how often media pressure politicians out of government with “they had to go, position became untenable” and just year or two later the media welcome them back with “oooh this is so exciting. Government bolstered by big beasts in the party.”
Rayner is definitely serious about a challenge, as she is positioning herself now as no longer on the left.
“ The Financial Times reported this week that Rayner has joined a call with City investors, hosted by French bank BNP Paribas, in which she reassured them Labour would not lurch to the left.
The former deputy prime minister told investors on the call that the party would stick to the manifesto and not resort to more borrowing.
In essence, Rayner committed to sticking to Chancellor Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules. This would be in part to assuage investors over the prospect of a more left-wing leader and also to ensure that there is no deviation from the manifesto.”
Lol the Tories changed the locks overnight on Maggie T house in Romford so Rosindell and staff cant get in anymore
Have they taken down the huge photos of Andy R yet?
It's amazing to think that Rosindell thought he could maintain use of facilities run by an organisation he had left. Though given his attitude to the EU and GLA, maybe not that amazing.
Nigel will have to lend him a VW camper to run surgeries out of
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
The EU will always find some way to screw over the UK, they just can't help themselves.
Well Cyprus is in the EU and we aren't. Why shouldn't they take their side?
I agree. The EU can do as it wishes. I just wish we took our own side, rather than having an EU fifth column in our Government and Civil Service.
If Cyprus are trying to renege on the 1960 agreement we should renege and fully develop the land with civilian airport, economic development and seaport.
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
Tell the fuckers we are ready to start a discussion about recognising Turkish Cyprus
The sum total of the discussions will be Cyprus wasn’t happy with the initial UK response and the mixed messaging from No 10 which is a perfectly reasonable point . The UK will say they’ve taken this on board and the matter ends there . And there are parliamentary elections in Cyprus in May !
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
The EU will always find some way to screw over the UK, they just can't help themselves.
Well Cyprus is in the EU and we aren't. Why shouldn't they take their side?
I agree. The EU can do as it wishes. I just wish we took our own side, rather than having an EU fifth column in our Government and Civil Service.
When I explained this game a few weeks ago, you were particularly rude and dismissive about what I was explaining. The fault here lies with you for your ignorance. The PB time capsule holds the evidence. 😠
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
Tell the fuckers we are ready to start a discussion about recognising Turkish Cyprus
The sum total of the discussions will be Cyprus wasn’t happy with the initial UK response and the mixed messaging from No 10 which is a perfectly reasonable point . The UK will say they’ve taken this on board and the matter ends there . And there are parliamentary elections in Cyprus in May !
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
Tell the fuckers we are ready to start a discussion about recognising Turkish Cyprus
The sum total of the discussions will be Cyprus wasn’t happy with the initial UK response and the mixed messaging from No 10 which is a perfectly reasonable point . The UK will say they’ve taken this on board and the matter ends there . And there are parliamentary elections in Cyprus in May !
Thats far too boring.
It’s boring but that’s the way it is . Please don’t start MR as we had days of this confected hysteria a few weeks back !
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
The EU will always find some way to screw over the UK, they just can't help themselves.
Well Cyprus is in the EU and we aren't. Why shouldn't they take their side?
I have no problem with the EU standing up for its members, my issue is their apparent desperate need to undermine the UK even when it is ultimately counter productive. They're happy for the UK to use its military capabilities to help defend EU member states, at the same time as trying to weaken those capabilities by depriving us of important bases.
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
I think Rayner makes her move in May, and Starmer doesn't contest it.
The first thing he will do after losing net 1500 council seats is perform a reshuffle and a relaunch, and bring Rayner back. Her issues will be sorted by May, apparently.
It seems crazy how often media pressure politicians out of government with “they had to go, position became untenable” and just year or two later the media welcome them back with “oooh this is so exciting. Government bolstered by big beasts in the party.”
Rayner is definitely serious about a challenge, as she is positioning herself now as no longer on the left.
“ The Financial Times reported this week that Rayner has joined a call with City investors, hosted by French bank BNP Paribas, in which she reassured them Labour would not lurch to the left.
The former deputy prime minister told investors on the call that the party would stick to the manifesto and not resort to more borrowing.
In essence, Rayner committed to sticking to Chancellor Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules. This would be in part to assuage investors over the prospect of a more left-wing leader and also to ensure that there is no deviation from the manifesto.”
We need alternative routes instead of the Hormuz Strait. We should have oil and gas pipelines going west through the Arabian Peninsula right up to our ports in Israel.
That is definitely possible.
Definitely possible but not in a quick timescale.
Getting regime change would be better.
Hopefully when the Israeli election takes place we’ll get rid of the Bibi regime 👍
He's the biggest danger currently to word peace
I'm surprised you don't think the biggest danger is Kemi Badenoch.
She's not really relevant, the only person who is in the UK is Starmer.
He might only have two months left
I used to think that, but I suspect not now.
Depends how bad the local election results are. If they're really disastrous, I think he goes and is replaced by Angela Rayner.
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
Tell the fuckers we are ready to start a discussion about recognising Turkish Cyprus
The sum total of the discussions will be Cyprus wasn’t happy with the initial UK response and the mixed messaging from No 10 which is a perfectly reasonable point . The UK will say they’ve taken this on board and the matter ends there . And there are parliamentary elections in Cyprus in May !
Thats far too boring.
It’s boring but that’s the way it is . Please don’t start MR as we had days of this confected hysteria a few weeks back !
Too late! I told you this would happen.
I also told you they would rush through a vote in Greek Cyprus about keeping UK bases, or us to cede them, ultimately into the hands of Greece and Israel. They will strike while the iron is hottest.
This isn’t a EU thing, ignore EU, it’s a red herring. Germany and Eastern Europe will likely argue for UK whilst France and Western Europe for Cyprus {Greece and Israel} ownership of the 19 installations.
Israel and Greece want to take over all 19 installations we have on the island to help them with their coming war with Turkey.
“confected hysteria” ??? I’m shocked you can’t see what’s going on, even when it blatantly going on in front of you, and I took so much time to explain the facts and details. 🤷♀️
The Government will collect £331bn in income tax this year, and spend £333bn on welfare.
In other words, we now spend more on people not working than we raise from those who do.
And the cost?
Debt per person has risen from £11.5k in 2000 (inflation adjusted) to over £41k today.
I'm a little surprised it is not even higher.
Almost half of that 'welfare' spending is the state pension, which is deliberately omitted as otherwise it'd look like stupid comment...
The point is spent on people not working
Well that's also wrong as many of the benefits such as housing benefit, child benefit etc are largely spent on people who are working but need additional assistance.
And, ignoring arguments over the triple lock and retirement age, we need to have some state pension. People pay taxes when younger to fund when older, even if it's not funded that way.
It's just a ragebait headline that doesn't tell us anything useful.
Housing benefit is worse than that, it goes to landlords. It’s billions being spent on keeping housing too expensive. It definitely doesn’t support the poor beyond immediate need.
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
I think Rayner makes her move in May, and Starmer doesn't contest it.
The first thing he will do after losing net 1500 council seats is perform a reshuffle and a relaunch, and bring Rayner back. Her issues will be sorted by May, apparently.
It seems crazy how often media pressure politicians out of government with “they had to go, position became untenable” and just year or two later the media welcome them back with “oooh this is so exciting. Government bolstered by big beasts in the party.”
Rayner is definitely serious about a challenge, as she is positioning herself now as no longer on the left.
“ The Financial Times reported this week that Rayner has joined a call with City investors, hosted by French bank BNP Paribas, in which she reassured them Labour would not lurch to the left.
The former deputy prime minister told investors on the call that the party would stick to the manifesto and not resort to more borrowing.
In essence, Rayner committed to sticking to Chancellor Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules. This would be in part to assuage investors over the prospect of a more left-wing leader and also to ensure that there is no deviation from the manifesto.”
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
Tell the fuckers we are ready to start a discussion about recognising Turkish Cyprus
The sum total of the discussions will be Cyprus wasn’t happy with the initial UK response and the mixed messaging from No 10 which is a perfectly reasonable point . The UK will say they’ve taken this on board and the matter ends there . And there are parliamentary elections in Cyprus in May !
Thats far too boring.
It’s boring but that’s the way it is . Please don’t start MR as we had days of this confected hysteria a few weeks back !
Too late! I told you this would happen.
I also told you they would rush through a vote in Greek Cyprus about keeping UK bases, or us to cede them, ultimately into the hands of Greece and Israel. They will strike while the iron is hottest.
This isn’t a EU thing, ignore that, it’s a red herring. Germany and Eastern Europe will likely argue for UK whilst France and Western Europe for Cyprus {Greece and Israel} ownership of the 19 installations.
Israel and Greece want to take over all 19 installations we have on the island to help them with their coming war with Turkey.
“confected hysteria” ??? I’m shocked you can’t see what’s going on, even when it blatantly going on in front of you, and I took so much time to explain the facts and details. 🤷♀️
Good grief ! A war between Greece/Israel v Turkey . Have you been on the sherry again !
Danny Finkelstein has joined me in suspecting nobody will move against Sir Keir after May.
I think Rayner makes her move in May, and Starmer doesn't contest it.
The first thing he will do after losing net 1500 council seats is perform a reshuffle and a relaunch, and bring Rayner back. Her issues will be sorted by May, apparently.
It seems crazy how often media pressure politicians out of government with “they had to go, position became untenable” and just year or two later the media welcome them back with “oooh this is so exciting. Government bolstered by big beasts in the party.”
Rayner is definitely serious about a challenge, as she is positioning herself now as no longer on the left.
“ The Financial Times reported this week that Rayner has joined a call with City investors, hosted by French bank BNP Paribas, in which she reassured them Labour would not lurch to the left.
The former deputy prime minister told investors on the call that the party would stick to the manifesto and not resort to more borrowing.
In essence, Rayner committed to sticking to Chancellor Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules. This would be in part to assuage investors over the prospect of a more left-wing leader and also to ensure that there is no deviation from the manifesto.”
'The Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary on Thursday ignored a U.S. State Department warning along with pleas from elite Iranian-American wrestlers to not execute 19-year-old champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi for protesting against the Khamenei regime.
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
Tell the fuckers we are ready to start a discussion about recognising Turkish Cyprus
The sum total of the discussions will be Cyprus wasn’t happy with the initial UK response and the mixed messaging from No 10 which is a perfectly reasonable point . The UK will say they’ve taken this on board and the matter ends there . And there are parliamentary elections in Cyprus in May !
Thats far too boring.
It’s boring but that’s the way it is . Please don’t start MR as we had days of this confected hysteria a few weeks back !
Too late! I told you this would happen.
I also told you they would rush through a vote in Greek Cyprus about keeping UK bases, or us to cede them, ultimately into the hands of Greece and Israel. They will strike while the iron is hottest.
This isn’t a EU thing, ignore that, it’s a red herring. Germany and Eastern Europe will likely argue for UK whilst France and Western Europe for Cyprus {Greece and Israel} ownership of the 19 installations.
Israel and Greece want to take over all 19 installations we have on the island to help them with their coming war with Turkey.
“confected hysteria” ??? I’m shocked you can’t see what’s going on, even when it blatantly going on in front of you, and I took so much time to explain the facts and details. 🤷♀️
Good grief ! A war between Greece/Israel v Turkey . Have you been on the sherry again !
One lousy cheap drone, teeny bit of damage, no UK or US offensive flights from the island. Meanwhile Greece and Cyprus have been in joint military manoeuvre’s and cooperation with Israel for years, that’s why the Turkey backed Hezbollah targeted the island.
They gamed you, and everyone else like Kemi Badenoch, the BBC, Sky News, long list of clueless mugs who bashed the UK government when there was no issue at all, no error from the UK government at all. You were gamed. Used by Israel and Greece like useful idiots, serenely oblivious to how daft you were being.
It’s more than just UKs unsinkable aircraft carrier, we have 19 important installations on the island.
I have had a few Vodka Martini’s actually. Maybe I should tap out and go to bed.
'The Islamic Republic of Iran’s judiciary on Thursday ignored a U.S. State Department warning along with pleas from elite Iranian-American wrestlers to not execute 19-year-old champion wrestler Saleh Mohammadi for protesting against the Khamenei regime.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Fact.
Ukraine has used 300 Patriot missiles in several years. The US A has fired 2400 in the last 3 weeks.
After the first day or so the Iranian response was rather subdued, but it has been gradually building over the last week, including more sophisticated 2 stage missiles.
I suspect this was initial discombobulation from the strikes, but could be a deliberate policy of using cheap Shahed drones to use up all the Patriot missiles before launching their more sophisticated missiles.
Sure looks like Iran played the US, if the US can't protect the giant oil and gas facilities despite 2400 Patriot launches.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Fact.
Ukraine has used 300 Patriot missiles in several years. The US A has fired 2400 in the last 3 weeks.
After the first day or so the Iranian response was rather subdued, but it has been gradually building over the last week, including more sophisticated 2 stage missiles.
I suspect this was initial discombobulation from the strikes, but could be a deliberate policy of using cheap Shahed drones to use up all the Patriot missiles before launching their more sophisticated missiles.
Sure looks like Iran played the US, if the US can't protect the giant oil and gas facilities despite 2400 Patriot launches.
I'm not sure they 'played' the US. I think Iran would much rather that had not been attacked,
The problem is that the US went into this without a clear plan. I'm no @BartholomewRoberts, but I think we can all agree that the worst of all possible worlds is one where the Iranian regime survives, innocent Iranians die, countries across the Middle East are showered in rockets, and essentially all oil and gas from the region is stranded.
That's a recipe for economic and humanitarian catastophe, with the Iranian people suffering more than anyone else.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” .. https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Fact.
Ukraine has used 300 Patriot missiles in several years. The US A has fired 2400 in the last 3 weeks.
After the first day or so the Iranian response was rather subdued, but it has been gradually building over the last week, including more sophisticated 2 stage missiles.
I suspect this was initial discombobulation from the strikes, but could be a deliberate policy of using cheap Shahed drones to use up all the Patriot missiles before launching their more sophisticated missiles.
Sure looks like Iran played the US, if the US can't protect the giant oil and gas facilities despite 2400 Patriot launches.
I'm not sure they 'played' the US. I think Iran would much rather that had not been attacked,
The problem is that the US went into this without a clear plan. I'm no @BartholomewRoberts, but I think we can all agree that the worst of all possible worlds is one where the Iranian regime survives, innocent Iranians die, countries across the Middle East are showered in rockets, and essentially all oil and gas from the region is stranded.
That's a recipe for economic and humanitarian catastophe, with the Iranian people suffering more than anyone else.
Presumably the Just Stop Oil brigade would be happy, at least briefly.
Denmark & others appear clear-eyed about the dangers of Trump to Europe. Notable that article doesn't say they reached out to UK. Our European allies I guess are wondering whose side we are on.
Ministers will give the green light for the Ajax programme to continue in a bid to save jobs in Labour heartlands and after it passed safety tests
The announcement on Ajax is expected next week. The vehicle passed safety tests and sources suggested troops may have to undergo motion sickness training to overcome issues. No other vehicles were found to be appropriate replacements https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2034296728841523630
What it actually means is that there's no money to do anything about the disaster, so we'll just pretend it hasn't happened.
Oh, and they've postponed the Defence Investment Plan again.
Hope not true. It is idiotic to build vehicles we can't use just to keep jobs. What is the point of raising defence spending if we are going to do stupid shit like this.
Comments
There's a kind of rhetoric that works by highlighting two things and definitely not saying that a link should be drawn between them... but you don't need to, because human minds can't help but join dots. It's incredibly dishonest, but it works.
I think there's a cultural rubicon to be crossed if you are going to treat the State Pension like any other benefit. Many are of the view it is something to which they are entitled having contributed through work and taxation for longer or shorter periods.
We have now, which we didn't in the past, individuals who have been able to retire and live reasonably well on workplace or private pensions combined with the downsizing of property assets whose growth has often outstripped ambient inflation and the realisation of the receipts from their disposal has also enabled said individuals to live comfortably and stop work early.
Government economic, social and political policy over a generation has created a group whose wealth has been derived mainly from property ownership - now, part of that can be passed on via inheritance or it can be realised via downsizing and either spent by the parents or passed on as cash gifts but that can only happen once and future generations are unlikely to see the returns on asset ownership many of us have enjoyed with rates of appreciation far in advance of inflation.
We may not like the politicians we get, but they are approximately as good as we deserve.
Starmer or Any other PM answered the phone did he.
Did they fuck.
Typical right wing clap trap
This would have gone to McSweeney ultimately nd civil servants
It would have been exactly same process for every other PM
Clearly right wing shit stirrers like Davie have mp understanding that higher up the chain you are in any big business politics etc, the less you see day to day.
Oh, actually you are correct, we get the politicians we deserve.
“Aston Martin's Adrian Newey to step down as team leader - sources”
If it was a political appointment then the process is irrelevant and it’s purely a question of his judgement. If the appointment was on merit then he can’t hide behind process when corners were evidently cut.
It is because of demographics of ageing, and also increased income inequality.
On the psychotic breakdown, it is possible medication could bring her back from the paranoid state you describe. Sometimes quite rapidly.
Vance says Americans should find comfort in the fact that our allies are "suffering more than we are" from high gas prices
https://x.com/Mollyploofkins/status/2034363912351580335
BBC News - Great Ormond Street doctor who botched surgery harmed nearly 100 children
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq841e4n4v8o
Spain's renewables build-out has structurally decoupled its electricity prices from gas markets.
Gas now sets the price in only 15% of hours, compared to 90% in Italy.
Countries that invested early in clean power are far less exposed to fossil fuel price shocks.
Reform’s policy is literally insane.
https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2034729593995702483
https://x.com/ginadavidsonlbc/status/2034720585956106338
It looks like the decision to hold off naming them til late in the day has backfired. Questionable vetting at the very least
https://x.com/i/status/2034723742396363011
Next week, they hire Verstappen, and put him in charge of driving the trucks to the circuit.
Ministers will give the green light for the Ajax programme to continue in a bid to save jobs in Labour heartlands and after it passed safety tests
The announcement on Ajax is expected next week. The vehicle passed safety tests and sources suggested troops may have to undergo motion sickness training to overcome issues. No other vehicles were found to be appropriate replacements
https://x.com/larisamlbrown/status/2034296728841523630
What it actually means is that there's no money to do anything about the disaster, so we'll just pretend it hasn't happened.
Oh, and they've postponed the Defence Investment Plan again.
Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and the embarked 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit is deploying ahead of schedule from the West Coast and is expected to sail to the Middle East region after the Navy was ordered to surge additional fire power.
@darklaughtertdb.bsky.social
Wow, who could have seen that coming? Unfortunately for us, the strategic effects the two sides' forces generate are totally opposite. Iran's combat power relative to ours is like a grain of sand, but that grain of sand is in our eye.
TRUMP: We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine.
“We wanna have a good… We wanna have vast amounts of ammunition, which we have right now. We have a lot of ammunition, but it was taken down by giving so much to Ukraine. They gave so much. You know, Biden gave $350 billion worth of cash and military equipment to Ukraine, and he didn't rebuild anything. Fortunately, we have a lot. We have a tremendous, unlimited supply of what you'd call middle and upper middle armaments and military equipment. Munitions, armaments, but munitions in particular” ..
https://x.com/KaterynaLis/status/2034667921369170109
Reports say Mohammadi was killed in a public hanging seen as a barbaric move by the Iranian regime to snuff out the ongoing movement seeking to topple it, according to Iranian American human rights activists and dissidents.'
https://www.foxnews.com/sports/mojtaba-khamenei-regime-executes-champion-wrestler-iran-intensifies-brutal-crackdown-during-war
Wasn't the Stamp Duty reclaimable when her disabled son reached the age of 18, a few months after the transaction?
The Lenten themes I’ve used at Sunday School is Lent is not about deprivation, but resting up and feeding the mind too. Get round to taking rest and reading through that pile of books you’ve been meaning to as this is spiritual practice Lent is all about. I’ve been reading a recently published Watership Down graphic novel, and some of a book called the crusader strategy my brother gave me at Christmas.
Shared services and shared prayer is very good and healthy to do outside all together, just as all non religious outdoor community gatherings are for support from each other in community and a great feeling. All Farage and his goons have is hate, no understanding about community and love at all. They will ban things simply because they feel only hate when they see Moslems doing it without a clue the rest of us do same things too!
Reform's candidates: Day 0
NE Fife: Called Humza 'not British' & Islamist Moron
Galloway & W Dumfries: Tommy Robinson fan
Stirling: Shared false info about migrant hotels
Abshire W: Hates the Queen/Royals (and standing in Balmoral!)
He's the great delegator. He's Mr Clean Hands.
Faced with a choice of filling deficit with ever more borrowing, or balancing the budget, we’d prefer a balanced budget?
I'm still expecting team Findlay to poll well enough in NE, Borders to keep these seats competitive, but if they stay down at 10% in polling even these seats will be shaky.
Reform are really looking to hoover up as many list seats as possible and any constituencies are a bonus. The presentation today had a raft of English speakers and had a very strong theme on limiting migration.
I suspect their pitch is not aimed at better off Tory/Lib Dem voters, which leads me to think they'll target and do better with parts of working class central Scotland with a high white population
Interesting to see if sitting MSPs keep to the 'its a 2 horse race' line in ....x..... when there will be quite a few seats which could become 3 or 4 way marginals
Ukraine has used 300 Patriot missiles in several years. The US A has fired 2400 in the last 3 weeks.
After the first day or so the Iranian response was rather subdued, but it has been gradually building over the last week, including more sophisticated 2 stage missiles.
I suspect this was initial discombobulation from the strikes, but could be a deliberate policy of using cheap Shahed drones to use up all the Patriot missiles before launching their more sophisticated missiles.
NEW: EU says it’s ready to help Cyprus start a “discussion” with the UK about British bases on the island
It’s after the Cypriot President told the BBC that the sovereign base areas were a “colonial consequence”
It's something I was previously extremely ignorant of: https://youtu.be/TYG_6QIiimM?si=5vQPMMowJ4gNvuRt
https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/voice-of-the-jewish-news-in-defence-of-praying-during-iftar-in-trafalgar-square/
It's amazing to think that Rosindell thought he could maintain use of facilities run by an organisation he had left. Though given his attitude to the EU and GLA, maybe not that amazing.
It seems crazy how often media pressure politicians out of government with “they had to go, position became untenable” and just year or two later the media welcome them back with “oooh this is so exciting. Government bolstered by big beasts in the party.”
Rayner is definitely serious about a challenge, as she is positioning herself now as no longer on the left.
“ The Financial Times reported this week that Rayner has joined a call with City investors, hosted by French bank BNP Paribas, in which she reassured them Labour would not lurch to the left.
The former deputy prime minister told investors on the call that the party would stick to the manifesto and not resort to more borrowing.
In essence, Rayner committed to sticking to Chancellor Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules. This would be in part to assuage investors over the prospect of a more left-wing leader and also to ensure that there is no deviation from the manifesto.”
I blame Kemi Badenoch, the BBC, Sky and many PBer’s siding with the Greek enemy when this war started.
https://cyprus-mail.com/2026/03/20/eu-stands-ready-to-assist-cyprus-in-discussions-over-british-bases-future
As I said this is more about the parliamentary elections in May and AKEL in particular trying to turn it into an election issue .
I also told you they would rush through a vote in Greek Cyprus about keeping UK bases, or us to cede them, ultimately into the hands of Greece and Israel. They will strike while the iron is hottest.
This isn’t a EU thing, ignore EU, it’s a red herring. Germany and Eastern Europe will likely argue for UK whilst France and Western Europe for Cyprus {Greece and Israel} ownership of the 19 installations.
Israel and Greece want to take over all 19 installations we have on the island to help them with their coming war with Turkey.
“confected hysteria” ??? I’m shocked you can’t see what’s going on, even when it blatantly going on in front of you, and I took so much time to explain the facts and details. 🤷♀️
They gamed you, and everyone else like Kemi Badenoch, the BBC, Sky News, long list of clueless mugs who bashed the UK government when there was no issue at all, no error from the UK government at all. You were gamed. Used by Israel and Greece like useful idiots, serenely oblivious to how daft you were being.
It’s more than just UKs unsinkable aircraft carrier, we have 19 important installations on the island.
I have had a few Vodka Martini’s actually. Maybe I should tap out and go to bed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGwFJh9idig
The problem is that the US went into this without a clear plan. I'm no @BartholomewRoberts, but I think we can all agree that the worst of all possible worlds is one where the Iranian regime survives, innocent Iranians die, countries across the Middle East are showered in rockets, and essentially all oil and gas from the region is stranded.
That's a recipe for economic and humanitarian catastophe, with the Iranian people suffering more than anyone else.
Denmark & others appear clear-eyed about the dangers of Trump to Europe. Notable that article doesn't say they reached out to UK. Our European allies I guess are wondering whose side we are on.