Got to love the supposed risk of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries exploding
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely 2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
The protesters were protesting a large site that operates silently, has no/few moving parts, requires little maintenance, produces clean energy, because it...doesn't look like a field?
I honestly think some people just oppose any development or building because it’s different to what was there before. They can’t coherently explain what they don’t actually like about it.
The biggest disappoint for me of this government so far has not been telling these idiots where to go more often.
I note yet another mast has been rejected in an URBAN area of London because of visual pollution. Madness.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
these black swan events happen. Well done for getting a sensible solution.
It’s depressing listening to Cooper wobbling away on Today. Unenlightening stuff that is either obvious or just deflection. I would love to know why Starmer replaced Lammy with her. For all that I think Lammy is a bit of a waste of space at least he clearly had a genuinely good relationship with Vance which might have had some small benefit in these times, not saying he would sway the US to do anything majorly different but at least would have a senior administration ear and communication channel outside of the mad king.
The whole current government feels a bit pointless. They are delivering platitudes, and leave a feeling that there is little initative and action. There is nothing about the government's decisions to date that gives me any confidence. Although I'll concede that there might be a lot going on out of sight.
Listening to Ed Davey this morning, even if you don't agree with him he does at least seem willing to speak up, and seems to have some ideas beyond the "keep the plates spinning" which is all it feels like the government can manage.
Got to love the supposed risk of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries exploding
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely 2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
The protesters were protesting a large site that operates silently, has no/few moving parts, requires little maintenance, produces clean energy, because it...doesn't look like a field?
I honestly think some people just oppose any development or building because it’s different to what was there before. They can’t coherently explain what they don’t actually like about it.
The biggest disappoint for me of this government so far has not been telling these idiots where to go more often.
I note yet another mast has been rejected in an URBAN area of London because of visual pollution. Madness.
Rutte going massively outside his brief again. What business is it of the NATO secretary general (who is not a US citizen) to support Trump's threats against Iran ? The large majority of NATO members oppose Trump's war.
Absolutely bizarre.
TAPPER: When Trump threatened to kill the entire Iranian civilization, did that bother you as a diplomat?
We talk about impeachment and the 25th amendment to get rid of Trump. How do we get rid of Rutte?
It's not easy. Sec Gens are appointed by consensus (effectively unanimous) and have four year terms. There's no real mechanism - other than consensus again - for removal. Or wait a couple if years for the end of his term.
I guess public censure might be worth a try.
And actively supporting one member state against the wishes of the others directly contradicts the terms of his brief.
It's so awful that the head of NATO refuses to follow the dictates of PB collective wisdom and call Donald Trump nasty names in the name of diplomacy. For sure he's in no position to know the true state of the alliance's capability to cope without US backing and rely instead on the might of Spain for example to save us all from the Russian threat. Perhaps we need a new Armada here to tackle those pesky warships off the channel coast yesterday.....
You are missing the point
You have to project strength and make your argument and not fawn over Trump and call him Daddy
Rutte needs replacing and quickly
That's not really the point, either, Big_G. The Secretary General is a civil servant with a clearly defined role and responsibilities.
Chair of all major committees, responsible for steering discussions, facilitating the decision-making process and ensuring that decisions are implemented. Principal spokesperson for the Organization. Head of the International Staff, whose role it is to support the Secretary General directly and indirectly. The person is nominated by member governments for an initial period of four years, which can be extended by mutual consent...
More specifically: ..their role allows them to exert some influence on the decision-making process while respecting the fundamental principle that the authority for taking decisions is invested only in the member governments themselves.
The Secretary General is also the principal spokesperson of the Alliance and represents the Alliance in public on behalf of the member countries, reflecting their common positions on political issues...
Siding with one member - Trump's US - on a policy which is in any event outside of NATO's area of operations, directly contradicts that defined brief.
It’s depressing listening to Cooper wobbling away on Today. Unenlightening stuff that is either obvious or just deflection. I would love to know why Starmer replaced Lammy with her. For all that I think Lammy is a bit of a waste of space at least he clearly had a genuinely good relationship with Vance which might have had some small benefit in these times, not saying he would sway the US to do anything majorly different but at least would have a senior administration ear and communication channel outside of the mad king.
The whole current government feels a bit pointless. They are delivering platitudes, and leave a feeling that there is little initative and action. There is nothing about the government's decisions to date that gives me any confidence. Although I'll concede that there might be a lot going on out of sight.
Listening to Ed Davey this morning, even if you don't agree with him he does at least seem willing to speak up, and seems to have some ideas beyond the "keep the plates spinning" which is all it feels like the government can manage.
There’s no money for them to do anything. That’s not to say they’ve not made tonnes of mistakes.
But they could be doing things that don’t cost any money at all. Like just removing most planning restrictions at least in urban areas.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
these black swan events happen. Well done for getting a sensible solution.
There was a time when the death of a candidate in a contested election was deemed a withdrawal by that candidate, and the other candidate if there was only one other was elected unopposed. If there was a contested election, it still went ahead. Any votes for the dead candidate were treated as spoiled ballot papers.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
My sympathies. But aren't those rules game-able? By successively registering candidates with very short prognosis, you could delay an election indefinitely...
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
My sympathies. But aren't those rules game-able? By successively registering candidates with very short prognosis, you could delay an election indefinitely...
Sir Patrick Cormack raised that point when in 2005 the election in South Staffordshire had to be postponed due to the death of one candidate.
He noted it didn't matter much in South Staffs, as he wasn't an important figure, but he asked what still seems the highly pertinent question as to what would have happened if a suicide bomber had nominated himself in Sedgefield, then blew himself up during the campaign.
Edit - I didn't realise that the law was changed afterwards and since then, for that reason, candidates can be replaced by parties in a general election even after the close of nominations. Surprised that doesn't apply in local elections too. It would make sense to.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
My sympathies. But aren't those rules game-able? By successively registering candidates with very short prognosis, you could delay an election indefinitely...
Sir Patrick Cormack raised that point when in 2005 the election in South Staffordshire had to be postponed due to the death of one candidate.
He noted it didn't matter much in South Staffs, as he wasn't an important figure, but he asked what still seems the highly pertinent question as to what would have happened if a suicide bomber had nominated himself in Sedgefield, then blew himself up during the campaign.
Edit - I didn't realise that the law was changed afterwards and since then, for that reason, candidates can be replaced by parties in a general election even after the close of nominations. Surprised that doesn't apply in local elections too. It would make sense to.
One of OGH’s great whatifs was is Nigel Farage had died in that plane crash in 2010.
The Buckingham election would have been postponed, then parliament would have needed to elect a new Speaker, no more John Bercow.
You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
My feeling is that most people don't vote at all in the locals and of those that do, most vote to protest against the government of the day as a proxy for all the perceived iniquities in their daily lives. Local or national issues - not so much.
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
This has been the first election where I've actually been convassing voters (rather than just delivering leaflets), and it's been very interesting. I've spoken to a few very switched on people who are fully aware of the political landscape and determined to use their vote as strategically as possible (mostly anti-Reform), but the majority seem extremely politically naive.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
If you're canvassing and someone actually starts to engage in political discussion over a national or international political issue - as distinct from raising some gripe about their local area - it's almost always a warning sign that however long you stay on that doorstep is going to be time wasted for your campaign. The only time it really makes sense to raise national issues is if the canvasser asks an open question, such as which political issues concern them the most, or what things they think need changing - not to start a debate on it, but to gather data for use when you contact that voter later, or during another election, with targeted messaging.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
these black swan events happen. Well done for getting a sensible solution.
There was a time when the death of a candidate in a contested election was deemed a withdrawal by that candidate, and the other candidate if there was only one other was elected unopposed. If there was a contested election, it still went ahead. Any votes for the dead candidate were treated as spoiled ballot papers.
Not sure when it changed.
I don't think that's ever been true for UK elections. The 1918 Act is clear that a new election has to be held. AI says the practice goes back to the 17th century at least.
The recent change was that you now need a new election if a party candidate dies, but not if an independent candidate dies.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
My sympathies. But aren't those rules game-able? By successively registering candidates with very short prognosis, you could delay an election indefinitely...
Sir Patrick Cormack raised that point when in 2005 the election in South Staffordshire had to be postponed due to the death of one candidate.
He noted it didn't matter much in South Staffs, as he wasn't an important figure, but he asked what still seems the highly pertinent question as to what would have happened if a suicide bomber had nominated himself in Sedgefield, then blew himself up during the campaign.
Edit - I didn't realise that the law was changed afterwards and since then, for that reason, candidates can be replaced by parties in a general election even after the close of nominations. Surprised that doesn't apply in local elections too. It would make sense to.
Imaginative situation construction! However, for me the crucial point is that, whatever has happened earlier, the campaign proper doesn't legally start until the candidates have been accepted by the Returning Officer.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
My sympathies. But aren't those rules game-able? By successively registering candidates with very short prognosis, you could delay an election indefinitely...
Sir Patrick Cormack raised that point when in 2005 the election in South Staffordshire had to be postponed due to the death of one candidate.
He noted it didn't matter much in South Staffs, as he wasn't an important figure, but he asked what still seems the highly pertinent question as to what would have happened if a suicide bomber had nominated himself in Sedgefield, then blew himself up during the campaign.
Edit - I didn't realise that the law was changed afterwards and since then, for that reason, candidates can be replaced by parties in a general election even after the close of nominations. Surprised that doesn't apply in local elections too. It would make sense to.
Not quite. Candidates can't be replaced by parties after the close of nominations. Rather, the death of an independent candidate no longer requires a new election, and if a party candidate dies, the election is re-held and the party gets to choose a new candidate, but no other new candidates can stand. See Electoral Administration Act 2006 63 (6): https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2006/22/section/24
Got to love the supposed risk of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries exploding
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely 2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
The protesters were protesting a large site that operates silently, has no/few moving parts, requires little maintenance, produces clean energy, because it...doesn't look like a field?
I honestly think some people just oppose any development or building because it’s different to what was there before. They can’t coherently explain what they don’t actually like about it.
The biggest disappoint for me of this government so far has not been telling these idiots where to go more often.
I note yet another mast has been rejected in an URBAN area of London because of visual pollution. Madness.
I'm involved in a planning issue near where I live - unfortunately, people found out I was politically knowledgeable and had worked in local Government so assumed I knew it all (I pointed out I was at best a know-it-all).
Newham is desperately short of sites for residential redevelopment - the site near us adjoins the A406, has high pressure gas pipes and electricity pylons and an old gas holder (not the original) and is of course in the flood plain. The land is also contaminated with spoil from industrial sites.
The developer has put forward an outlline plan for 600 dwellings, a mix of flats and houses, but leaving a lot of the site open for community use. Their PR company invited us all to a nice workshop where we brainstormed various ideas for the space including cricket pitches, a Muslim burial site etc, etc.
I'm not convinced given the costs of remediation, 600 works for the developer and it's likely to be a minimum of 50% affordable housing and the truth is there's more concern about who will come and live in the development than the development itself.
Thursday, 9 April: Last date for delivery of nomination papers (4pm) Friday, 10 April: Statement of Persons Nominated is published (the list of candidates standing in the election)
My papers went in on Tuesday.
Mine went in a week and a half ago, and there is a sad story to tell about what happened, but perhaps also a story interesting to election nerds.
I'm standing in a 3 member ward, so we put in 3 candidates. Shortly after the paperwork had gone in, we received the very sad news that one of the candidates had had a heart attack and died. Obviously, this was tragic at a personal level. He was in his early 70s, but the death was unexpected.
However, it also created a problem for the election. The Electoral Commission website says, "If the RO is notified of a candidate’s death during the election campaign or even on polling day itself (but before the declaration of the result), the poll will be cancelled." The election then has to be re-held, an expense for the Borough. However, our Borough's lawyer went back to the legislation, argued with the Electoral Commission and won. The Borough concluded that a candidate dying before the close of nominations does not invalidate the election. We are sticking with the normal timetable. We've been able to find a new, third candidate and have submitted the paperwork.
these black swan events happen. Well done for getting a sensible solution.
There was a time when the death of a candidate in a contested election was deemed a withdrawal by that candidate, and the other candidate if there was only one other was elected unopposed. If there was a contested election, it still went ahead. Any votes for the dead candidate were treated as spoiled ballot papers.
Not sure when it changed.
I don't think that's ever been true for UK elections. The 1918 Act is clear that a new election has to be held. AI says the practice goes back to the 17th century at least.
The recent change was that you now need a new election if a party candidate dies, but not if an independent candidate dies.
AI is wrong, and it was actually very common for elections to start but not be completed until secret voting was brought in. Death might be one reason for an election to be stopped, but sometimes candidates simply gave up and withdrew when it was clear they couldn't win. Thomas Coke, MP for Norfolk in 1783, withdrew part way through writing indignantly to Fox 'bringing forward one of your desperate resolutions has ruined me with all thinking men.' So Astley and Wodehouse were officially returned unopposed.
Noted on the election law. It all seems needlessly complicated if I'm honest.
It’s depressing listening to Cooper wobbling away on Today. Unenlightening stuff that is either obvious or just deflection. I would love to know why Starmer replaced Lammy with her. For all that I think Lammy is a bit of a waste of space at least he clearly had a genuinely good relationship with Vance which might have had some small benefit in these times, not saying he would sway the US to do anything majorly different but at least would have a senior administration ear and communication channel outside of the mad king.
My tin-foil theory is that Lammy was moved in order to placate Mandelson and end the fight for credit on successfully (then) handling US relations. Then Mandelson fell and we are left with the wrong Foreign Secretary, and since then relations have become trickier.
You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
My feeling is that most people don't vote at all in the locals and of those that do, most vote to protest against the government of the day as a proxy for all the perceived iniquities in their daily lives. Local or national issues - not so much.
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
This has been the first election where I've actually been convassing voters (rather than just delivering leaflets), and it's been very interesting. I've spoken to a few very switched on people who are fully aware of the political landscape and determined to use their vote as strategically as possible (mostly anti-Reform), but the majority seem extremely politically naive.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
I'm sorry - I know it's a mistype but "convassing" - I love it.
Can we make this the political word of 2026 - "convassing" - defined as speaking to an individual to obtain their vote by the deliberate use of misinformation?
It’s depressing listening to Cooper wobbling away on Today. Unenlightening stuff that is either obvious or just deflection. I would love to know why Starmer replaced Lammy with her. For all that I think Lammy is a bit of a waste of space at least he clearly had a genuinely good relationship with Vance which might have had some small benefit in these times, not saying he would sway the US to do anything majorly different but at least would have a senior administration ear and communication channel outside of the mad king.
My tin-foil theory is that Lammy was moved in order to placate Mandelson and end the fight for credit on successfully (then) handling US relations. Then Mandelson fell and we are left with the wrong Foreign Secretary, and since then relations have become trickier.
At times like this it would be refreshing to live somewhere the government doesn’t worry overly about whether they have good relations with the US or not.
It’s notable here during my Easter break in France: the local media really doesn’t obsess about what Trump says, even when it’s about France or Macron. There’s much more national shrugging involved.
We should have a foreign secretary who’s good at the job in the round, not one focused entirely on maintaining cordial relations with the loonies in Washington.
Thousands of consumer routers hacked by Russia’s military End-of-life routers in homes and small offices hacked in 120 countries. ... An estimated 18,000 to 40,000 consumer routers, mostly those made by MikroTik and TP-Link, located in 120 countries, were wrangled into infrastructure belonging to APT28, an advanced threat group that’s part of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU, researchers from Lumen Technologies’ Black Lotus Labs said. The threat group has operated for at least two decades and is behind dozens of high-profile hacks targeting governments worldwide. https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/04/russias-military-hacks-thousands-of-consumer-routers-to-steal-credentials/
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Got to love the supposed risk of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries exploding
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely 2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
The protesters were protesting a large site that operates silently, has no/few moving parts, requires little maintenance, produces clean energy, because it...doesn't look like a field?
I honestly think some people just oppose any development or building because it’s different to what was there before. They can’t coherently explain what they don’t actually like about it.
The biggest disappoint for me of this government so far has not been telling these idiots where to go more often.
I note yet another mast has been rejected in an URBAN area of London because of visual pollution. Madness.
I'm involved in a planning issue near where I live - unfortunately, people found out I was politically knowledgeable and had worked in local Government so assumed I knew it all (I pointed out I was at best a know-it-all).
Newham is desperately short of sites for residential redevelopment - the site near us adjoins the A406, has high pressure gas pipes and electricity pylons and an old gas holder (not the original) and is of course in the flood plain. The land is also contaminated with spoil from industrial sites.
The developer has put forward an outlline plan for 600 dwellings, a mix of flats and houses, but leaving a lot of the site open for community use. Their PR company invited us all to a nice workshop where we brainstormed various ideas for the space including cricket pitches, a Muslim burial site etc, etc.
I'm not convinced given the costs of remediation, 600 works for the developer and it's likely to be a minimum of 50% affordable housing and the truth is there's more concern about who will come and live in the development than the development itself.
Snobbery - in Newham - who'd have thunk it?
Two real issues with the Lincolnshire developments - no clear local benefit, and the fencing off the sites.
The later means that fields people would cross, walk around become closed off. Complete with some quite aggressive signage.
A solution to NIMYism in a democracy has to include dealing with those issues.
I would suggest hedged paths along traditional routes and free/cheap ‘leccy for the locals.
It’s depressing listening to Cooper wobbling away on Today. Unenlightening stuff that is either obvious or just deflection. I would love to know why Starmer replaced Lammy with her. For all that I think Lammy is a bit of a waste of space at least he clearly had a genuinely good relationship with Vance which might have had some small benefit in these times, not saying he would sway the US to do anything majorly different but at least would have a senior administration ear and communication channel outside of the mad king.
My tin-foil theory is that Lammy was moved in order to placate Mandelson and end the fight for credit on successfully (then) handling US relations. Then Mandelson fell and we are left with the wrong Foreign Secretary, and since then relations have become trickier.
You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
My feeling is that most people don't vote at all in the locals and of those that do, most vote to protest against the government of the day as a proxy for all the perceived iniquities in their daily lives. Local or national issues - not so much.
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
This has been the first election where I've actually been convassing voters (rather than just delivering leaflets), and it's been very interesting. I've spoken to a few very switched on people who are fully aware of the political landscape and determined to use their vote as strategically as possible (mostly anti-Reform), but the majority seem extremely politically naive.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
I'm sorry - I know it's a mistype but "convassing" - I love it.
Can we make this the political word of 2026 - "convassing" - defined as speaking to an individual to obtain their vote by the deliberate use of misinformation?
Please feel free to expand on this definition.
I see an OED entry by the end of the year.
No, "convassing" is getting trapped in a conversation when you are trying to do canvassing and just want to know how someone's going to vote.
Got to love the supposed risk of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries exploding
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely 2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
The protesters were protesting a large site that operates silently, has no/few moving parts, requires little maintenance, produces clean energy, because it...doesn't look like a field?
I honestly think some people just oppose any development or building because it’s different to what was there before. They can’t coherently explain what they don’t actually like about it.
The biggest disappoint for me of this government so far has not been telling these idiots where to go more often.
I note yet another mast has been rejected in an URBAN area of London because of visual pollution. Madness.
I'm involved in a planning issue near where I live - unfortunately, people found out I was politically knowledgeable and had worked in local Government so assumed I knew it all (I pointed out I was at best a know-it-all).
Newham is desperately short of sites for residential redevelopment - the site near us adjoins the A406, has high pressure gas pipes and electricity pylons and an old gas holder (not the original) and is of course in the flood plain. The land is also contaminated with spoil from industrial sites.
The developer has put forward an outlline plan for 600 dwellings, a mix of flats and houses, but leaving a lot of the site open for community use. Their PR company invited us all to a nice workshop where we brainstormed various ideas for the space including cricket pitches, a Muslim burial site etc, etc.
I'm not convinced given the costs of remediation, 600 works for the developer and it's likely to be a minimum of 50% affordable housing and the truth is there's more concern about who will come and live in the development than the development itself.
Snobbery - in Newham - who'd have thunk it?
There’s no doubt there are legitimate planning issues people have but I think we’ve gone way too far towards a default no.
I’m sorry to bring up phone masts again but I like to try and speak to things I know about as much as possible. Cornerstone had applied for planning permission to put a site on top of a block of flats. It was rejected because it wasn’t in keeping with the visual aesthetic of the area.
This is literally next to Wandsworth Bridge. I cannot understand how this can be something where we can honestly say “we’ve got that right”. And yet there are new blocks of flats going up on the same road as we speak. How is one in keeping with the area but a rooftop isn’t?
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence. The rising number of older people is the principal driver, but that doesn't necessarily mean that individual older people are getting significantly more - there are just more of them in total. That conditions like ADHD and OCD have turned into apparently contagious diseases among the young and can open the gateway to health-related benefit payments isn't helping any.
The parents blocked a merger so they get a sudden collapse instead.
I would also say however that if the school was in that serious a mess the governors have some very awkward questions to answer about what they were doing and what they knew at the time they abandoned the merger plans.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
Besides- whilst tax is the visible bit of the problem, the bigger issue for many is the cost of having somewhere to live, which the free market has settled as "as much as the owner dares to ask for". Until that changes convincingly, any gains from tax cuts or reducing the price of anything else or even economic growth will pretty quickly flow to the owners of land and property,
You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
My feeling is that most people don't vote at all in the locals and of those that do, most vote to protest against the government of the day as a proxy for all the perceived iniquities in their daily lives. Local or national issues - not so much.
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
This has been the first election where I've actually been convassing voters (rather than just delivering leaflets), and it's been very interesting. I've spoken to a few very switched on people who are fully aware of the political landscape and determined to use their vote as strategically as possible (mostly anti-Reform), but the majority seem extremely politically naive.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
I'm sorry - I know it's a mistype but "convassing" - I love it.
Can we make this the political word of 2026 - "convassing" - defined as speaking to an individual to obtain their vote by the deliberate use of misinformation?
Please feel free to expand on this definition.
I see an OED entry by the end of the year.
It sounds too much like conversational canvassing to be restricted to the meaning you propose ?
You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
My feeling is that most people don't vote at all in the locals and of those that do, most vote to protest against the government of the day as a proxy for all the perceived iniquities in their daily lives. Local or national issues - not so much.
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
This has been the first election where I've actually been convassing voters (rather than just delivering leaflets), and it's been very interesting. I've spoken to a few very switched on people who are fully aware of the political landscape and determined to use their vote as strategically as possible (mostly anti-Reform), but the majority seem extremely politically naive.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
If you're canvassing and someone actually starts to engage in political discussion over a national or international political issue - as distinct from raising some gripe about their local area - it's almost always a warning sign that however long you stay on that doorstep is going to be time wasted for your campaign. The only time it really makes sense to raise national issues is if the canvasser asks an open question, such as which political issues concern them the most, or what things they think need changing - not to start a debate on it, but to gather data for use when you contact that voter later, or during another election, with targeted messaging.
I've never done canvassing. I signed up for it for the first time at the last GE but then, I kid you not, the day before I burst a blood vessel in my eye and had to pull out for fear of frightening the voters. Didn't matter - we still won the seat.
You have all these talking heads appearing on screens pontificating about issues over which they have no control (defence, immigration, economics etc) though they claim to have. Meanwhile locally everyone gets the hump over potholes and bins and dog shit.
My feeling is that most people don't vote at all in the locals and of those that do, most vote to protest against the government of the day as a proxy for all the perceived iniquities in their daily lives. Local or national issues - not so much.
These days the general fashion to dislike all politicians seems to trump everything. My anti-immigrant but 'definitely not racist' sister-in-law was explaining on the phone to Mrs P last night that the best approach is to spoil you ballot paper because 'that really makes a difference'.
This has been the first election where I've actually been convassing voters (rather than just delivering leaflets), and it's been very interesting. I've spoken to a few very switched on people who are fully aware of the political landscape and determined to use their vote as strategically as possible (mostly anti-Reform), but the majority seem extremely politically naive.
The last one I spoke to (actually, while leafleting) was going to vote Conservative on the basis that he liked that chap Andy (Street, it turned out after a little prompting) and didn't understand why he'd gone. But after basically nodding and agreeing with him, he said he'd give the Lib Dems a go this time because I seemed a pleasant bloke. I'm not sure he understood the difference between local and mayoral elections.
Anyway, any thoughts I had of interesting political discussions on the doorstep have largely been dispelled; my main strategy now is to make sure they know who the Lib Dem candidate is, and to simply be friendly in the hope that they vote on the basis of that nice Lib Dem chap they chatted with!
I'm sorry - I know it's a mistype but "convassing" - I love it.
Can we make this the political word of 2026 - "convassing" - defined as speaking to an individual to obtain their vote by the deliberate use of misinformation?
Please feel free to expand on this definition.
I see an OED entry by the end of the year.
It sounds too much like conversational canvassing to be restricted to the meaning you propose ?
Conversational canvassing can be very useful between elections, especially when you're starting out and want to collect information about the local issues people care about, as well as making a good impression. During an actual election campaign, it's the last thing you want - fortunately, most voters are in the same place, as few people want to be dragged from whatever they were doing before you knocked and find themselves trapped in an extended political discussion with someone whom they will typically see as an expert - someone they imagine has gone through an intensive month-long training course in political combat at some remote upland hideout, and sent to their door equipped with encyclopaedic knowledge of policy, fully armed with every statistic, and has the ability to counter any contrary argument they might offer. The relief on most voters' faces when you just say you're calling quickly to say hello and see if there's anything they would like to ask or need help with, is normally pretty obvious. Anyone who has smiled before you get to that point is a huge red flag.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
Last month I had my first consultation with someone I was referred to with an annoying but non-life-threatening complaint back in June 2024. So a twenty-one month wait. This evening I am booked in for a scan relating to same complaint; that this is taking place well into the evening does suggest they're working all hours to clear what must be a massive backlog. I've separately just recently been referred again for another related matter, and told the wait for that first appointment is currently nine months - fortunately the first consultant thinks it's all related so that second referral I probably won't need.
Thousands of consumer routers hacked by Russia’s military End-of-life routers in homes and small offices hacked in 120 countries. ... An estimated 18,000 to 40,000 consumer routers, mostly those made by MikroTik and TP-Link, located in 120 countries, were wrangled into infrastructure belonging to APT28, an advanced threat group that’s part of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU, researchers from Lumen Technologies’ Black Lotus Labs said. The threat group has operated for at least two decades and is behind dozens of high-profile hacks targeting governments worldwide. https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/04/russias-military-hacks-thousands-of-consumer-routers-to-steal-credentials/
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
I was told, over the phone, to book an appointment using the online system, as they couldn't book them by phone any more.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
Demand for NHS services, beyond the acute stuff, is essentially managed by the deterrent effect of the hassle and wait to enter the process. Imagine an NHS where the queues have suddenly all disappeared - like the Leave campaign did in their now infamous pro-Brexit advert - and what would happen is that everyone with any sort of minor niggle or health worry would decide to go and see their GP, and get referred on as appropriate, so tha queues lengthen again until people with sore shoulders once again decide not to bother.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Probably, with a sore shoulder, some combination of a Google/AI-assisted search and some time watching Youtube videos will provide you the answer. When I had same, the combination of some good shoulder stretching videos and buying a bar so I could grip and hang in an open doorway, solved the problem. For Streeting, the interesting question is whether harnassing such technology at the NHS gateway heads off a lot of demand, as he hopes and as may well happen, or alternatively actually leads to an increase in people then wanting referrals and tests?
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
I was told, over the phone, to book an appointment using the online system, as they couldn't book them by phone any more.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
Demand for NHS services, beyond the acute stuff, is essentially managed by the deterrent effect of the hassle and wait to enter the process. Imagine an NHS where the queues have suddenly all disappeared - like the Leave campaign did in their now infamous pro-Brexit advert - and what would happen is that everyone with any sort of minor niggle or health worry would decide to go and see their GP, and get referred on as appropriate, so tha queues lengthen again until people with sore shoulders once again decide not to bother.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Not everyone - probably 50% of the population. The other half would continue as they currently do and unless on deaths door refuse to see the doctor because they are fine, really..
Thousands of consumer routers hacked by Russia’s military End-of-life routers in homes and small offices hacked in 120 countries. ... An estimated 18,000 to 40,000 consumer routers, mostly those made by MikroTik and TP-Link, located in 120 countries, were wrangled into infrastructure belonging to APT28, an advanced threat group that’s part of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU, researchers from Lumen Technologies’ Black Lotus Labs said. The threat group has operated for at least two decades and is behind dozens of high-profile hacks targeting governments worldwide. https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/04/russias-military-hacks-thousands-of-consumer-routers-to-steal-credentials/
Stay safe, everyone.
I have a TP Link router!
In the cupboard. Gathering dust.
This is related to what I was talking about yesterday - the Russian hacker groups are setting up and using bot armies at a much high rate than previously.
Make sure your devices are secured. Cheap gadgets that need a WiFi connection are a big issue - as much as ancient routers.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
I was told, over the phone, to book an appointment using the online system, as they couldn't book them by phone any more.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
Demand for NHS services, beyond the acute stuff, is essentially managed by the deterrent effect of the hassle and wait to enter the process. Imagine an NHS where the queues have suddenly all disappeared - like the Leave campaign did in their now infamous pro-Brexit advert - and what would happen is that everyone with any sort of minor niggle or health worry would decide to go and see their GP, and get referred on as appropriate, so tha queues lengthen again until people with sore shoulders once again decide not to bother.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Probably, with a sore shoulder, some combination of a Google/AI-assisted search and some time watching Youtube videos will provide you the answer. When I had same, the combination of some good shoulder stretching videos and buying a bar so I could grip and hang in an open doorway, solved the problem. For Streeting, the interesting question is whether harnassing such technology at the NHS gateway heads off a lot of demand, as he hopes and as may well happen, or alternatively actually leads to an increase in people then wanting referrals and tests?
The Government appears very interesting in using genAI for triage, but, as you suggest, it can have counterintuitve results, increasing demand.
I don't recognise it because of the scale of racist fucks coming out of the woodwork to bleat about brown people and then putting up cheap flags on lampposts with cable ties to make the street look shit.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 15m Can we also be clear on something else. The reason there are "several peace plans floating around" is because - as I said yesterday - Trump, Hegseth et al are literally inventing what the Iranian negotiating position is to pretend the Iranian's have capitulated.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
I was told, over the phone, to book an appointment using the online system, as they couldn't book them by phone any more.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
Demand for NHS services, beyond the acute stuff, is essentially managed by the deterrent effect of the hassle and wait to enter the process. Imagine an NHS where the queues have suddenly all disappeared - like the Leave campaign did in their now infamous pro-Brexit advert - and what would happen is that everyone with any sort of minor niggle or health worry would decide to go and see their GP, and get referred on as appropriate, so tha queues lengthen again until people with sore shoulders once again decide not to bother.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Probably, with a sore shoulder, some combination of a Google/AI-assisted search and some time watching Youtube videos will provide you the answer. When I had same, the combination of some good shoulder stretching videos and buying a bar so I could grip and hang in an open doorway, solved the problem. For Streeting, the interesting question is whether harnassing such technology at the NHS gateway heads off a lot of demand, as he hopes and as may well happen, or alternatively actually leads to an increase in people then wanting referrals and tests?
The Government appears very interesting in using genAI for triage, but, as you suggest, it can have counterintuitve results, increasing demand.
The government appears very interested in using AI for everything.
Keir Starmer entered Downing Street with no policies, just the conviction that every problem has a technocratic solution and that the Civil Service knows these solutions but have been blocked by incompetent or evil Tories.
You will recall that when these solutions (which must exist) were not immediately pulled from filing cabinets and implemented, Starmer turned to blaming complacent Civil Servants in their baths.
But then Tony Blair introduced Starmer to his tech bro chums and now everything has an AI solution. AI will monitor traffic; AI will find illegal immigrants; AI will stop crime; AI will diagnose and treat disease.
The actual mechanisms by which AI will achieve these doubtless desirable ends are a bit hazy but a few large cheques to Oracle and Palantir should see us all right.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 15m Can we also be clear on something else. The reason there are "several peace plans floating around" is because - as I said yesterday - Trump, Hegseth et al are literally inventing what the Iranian negotiating position is to pretend the Iranian's have capitulated.
It's a bloody farce. Where we go from here who knows. Trump can concede "victory" but the whole world has witnessed the impotence of the US military which is catastrophic for the US. Or he can go ahead with the invasion which will be catastrophic for the US. Or actually nuke them as threatened which, well...
We've all long accepted that whilst Russia has nukes, it has little else left worrying about. The problem for America is that it is in the same position.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
America needs to do what Britain did in Northern Ireland. Lean on each side not to respond to provocations from their enemies. There are as many hot heads ready to retaliate as there are extremists seeking to undermine the ceasefire. All it takes is one man to fire a rocket or even a well-aimed bullet and the whole shooting match explodes with retaliation and then retaliation against retaliation.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence. The rising number of older people is the principal driver, but that doesn't necessarily mean that individual older people are getting significantly more - there are just more of them in total. That conditions like ADHD and OCD have turned into apparently contagious diseases among the young and can open the gateway to health-related benefit payments isn't helping any.
Thread on how survival rates for various cancers have been transformed by medical advances in the last ten years . Substantially funded by the US National institutes of Health, now destroyed by Musk and Trump.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Who cares, the kalshi contracts have already paid out on ceasefire so thats another few million to the White House insider traders. This is what winning looks like!
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Who cares, the kalshi contracts have already paid out on ceasefire so thats another few million to the White House insider traders. This is what winning looks like!
Markets already rapidly correcting themselves. Maybe that is the plan!
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Fake news. It is the GREATEST peace DEAL in recorded history.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Fake news. It is the GREATEST peace DEAL in recorded history.
Correct:
Leavitt: "Thanks to the unmatched excellence of our warriors at the direction of the commander in chief, the world has just witnessed a historically swift and successful military triumph"
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Fake news. It is the GREATEST peace DEAL in recorded history.
Correct:
Leavitt: "Thanks to the unmatched excellence of our warriors at the direction of the commander in chief, the world has just witnessed a historically swift and successful military triumph"
I would imagine that Hezbollah 'command centres' aren't that dissimilar to Conservative, Labour or LibDem 'command centres' during an election campaign, except for their more serious weaponry?
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Fake news. It is the GREATEST peace DEAL in recorded history.
Correct:
Leavitt: "Thanks to the unmatched excellence of our warriors at the direction of the commander in chief, the world has just witnessed a historically swift and successful military triumph"
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
I was told, over the phone, to book an appointment using the online system, as they couldn't book them by phone any more.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
Demand for NHS services, beyond the acute stuff, is essentially managed by the deterrent effect of the hassle and wait to enter the process. Imagine an NHS where the queues have suddenly all disappeared - like the Leave campaign did in their now infamous pro-Brexit advert - and what would happen is that everyone with any sort of minor niggle or health worry would decide to go and see their GP, and get referred on as appropriate, so tha queues lengthen again until people with sore shoulders once again decide not to bother.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Not everyone - probably 50% of the population. The other half would continue as they currently do and unless on deaths door refuse to see the doctor because they are fine, really..
Which can, of course, be worse for both the NHS and the patient when an issue that could have been easily nipped in the bud ends up requiring difficult and expensive treatment.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
Got to love the supposed risk of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries exploding
1) it's not pure lithium so unlikely 2) it's a 4000 acre site, they aren't placing the batteries 20 feet from your home..
The protesters were protesting a large site that operates silently, has no/few moving parts, requires little maintenance, produces clean energy, because it...doesn't look like a field?
Desecration of the landscape.
These vast solar farms have no place in our green and pleasant land.
Put panels on the top of every warehouse, business park, supermarket and other suitable buildings. Not in fields.
I would imagine that Hezbollah 'command centres' aren't that dissimilar to Conservative, Labour or LibDem 'command centres' during an election campaign, except for their more serious weaponry?
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
I was told, over the phone, to book an appointment using the online system, as they couldn't book them by phone any more.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
Demand for NHS services, beyond the acute stuff, is essentially managed by the deterrent effect of the hassle and wait to enter the process. Imagine an NHS where the queues have suddenly all disappeared - like the Leave campaign did in their now infamous pro-Brexit advert - and what would happen is that everyone with any sort of minor niggle or health worry would decide to go and see their GP, and get referred on as appropriate, so tha queues lengthen again until people with sore shoulders once again decide not to bother.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Not everyone - probably 50% of the population. The other half would continue as they currently do and unless on deaths door refuse to see the doctor because they are fine, really..
Which can, of course, be worse for both the NHS and the patient when an issue that could have been easily nipped in the bud ends up requiring difficult and expensive treatment.
Oh I know it's not a good thing - I was just pointing out that there are some people who don't go to the Doctors even if they should have been there at 7:30am waiting for the door to open...
I can access PB from my mobile but not from my desktop. There each of the last 3 headers report 0 posts and a no entry sign. Is it my Norton 360 reacting to 'betting'?
I can access PB from my mobile but not from my desktop. There each of the last 3 headers report 0 posts and a no entry sign. Is it my Norton 360 reacting to 'betting'?
Mine is the opposite
I can't access on my mobile. I have to go to vanilla
I can access PB from my mobile but not from my desktop. There each of the last 3 headers report 0 posts and a no entry sign. Is it my Norton 360 reacting to 'betting'?
OK I have now accessed PB using vf.politicalbetting.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
It's part of it but I don't think the main reason. One of the big problems is there isn't a single clear reason why it is happening, which makes it hard to resolve.
Javier Blas @JavierBlas · 1h UAE senior oil official Sultan Al Jaber denounces the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. “Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled,”
“Conditional passage is not passage. It is control by another name,” he says.
So now, this creates a bit of a problem for the White House, which as yesterday night was still pushed the ‘magic realism’ narrative that said the strait was opening, with a rising number of ships crossing. Effectively, the UAE says, on the record, that’s not true.
YouTube has just offered me this video from the Telegraph, dated 12 March, about the people whom ICE have deported from the USA back to Britain. It's very interesting and puts the resettlement money given to those deported from Britain in a different perspective. 11mins long, I hope the link works.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
It's part of it but I don't think the main reason. One of the big problems is there isn't a single clear reason why it is happening, which makes it hard to resolve.
The reason should be clear - Benjamin Netanyahu needs wars to remain as PM of Israel because once he leaves that position he's likely spending the rest of his life in courts followed by jail.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
I don wonder how much Iran was never Bibi’s focus. What he wanted was an excuse to invade Lebanon and to get Israel back into a ground war. This satisfies those to his right who want Greater Israel and it achieves his aim of forever war as he thinks that will keep him out of jail and get him re-elected.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
It's part of it but I don't think the main reason. One of the big problems is there isn't a single clear reason why it is happening, which makes it hard to resolve.
The reason should be clear - Benjamin Netanyahu needs wars to remain as PM of Israel because once he leaves that position he's likely spending the rest of his life in courts followed by jail.
Again, one of the reasons but not the only one. Trump and Epstein. Making money. Iran being a threat. Israel and Netanyahu wanting to take action against Iran long before Netanyahu was at risk of jail.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
That is my assumption too, to explain all the sudden changes of direction and contradictory statements from day to day. I wonder if anyone is plotting trades immediately before Trump announcements?
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
I don wonder how much Iran was never Bibi’s focus. What he wanted was an excuse to invade Lebanon and to get Israel back into a ground war. This satisfies those to his right who want Greater Israel and it achieves his aim of forever war as he thinks that will keep him out of jail and get him re-elected.
All of the above, I think. If the US and Israelis can destroy Iran; Israel uses the pretext of Hezbollah retaliation to destroy and occupy Lebanon; and Iran also weakens the economies of the Gulf States in its retaliations; that's a win/win/win as far as Netenyahu is concerned.
I can access PB from my mobile but not from my desktop. There each of the last 3 headers report 0 posts and a no entry sign. Is it my Norton 360 reacting to 'betting'?
OK I have now accessed PB using vf.politicalbetting.
Almost certainly caused by the recent Russian internet attacks, which have caused a number of vendors to set their service’s security to “Not Paranoid - Because People Are Out To Get Us”
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
That is my assumption too, to explain all the sudden changes of direction and contradictory statements from day to day. I wonder if anyone is plotting trades immediately before Trump announcements?
{Lord Mandelbrot looks up while typing furiously on his mobile}
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
Demand for the most expensive services - the NHS, social care, special education, benefits including pensions - is rising across the board, mostly due to demographics but also technology - and hence the extra taxation being raised is barely allowing these services to stay above water and is still requiring cuts elsewhere. To which you can add the emerging demands for more spending on defence.
Last month I had my first consultation with someone I was referred to with an annoying but non-life-threatening complaint back in June 2024. So a twenty-one month wait. This evening I am booked in for a scan relating to same complaint; that this is taking place well into the evening does suggest they're working all hours to clear what must be a massive backlog. I've separately just recently been referred again for another related matter, and told the wait for that first appointment is currently nine months - fortunately the first consultant thinks it's all related so that second referral I probably won't need.
I had similar two year wait for a condition that normally presents no issues at all, but with a risk of a critical emergency. When I finally had the surgery I had the impression the surgeon probably wouldn't have proposed operating but he couldn't really say no on the day after a two year wait. There was no review of my condition and relative priority of treating it during the two years.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
I am trying to make this a meme: We pay more and more for less and less.
I don’t recognise my “country” anymore because of the scale of immigration - approx 50% in thirty years - the thing is the vast majority if not the totality in most of those 30 years are scuzzy Brits from shitty towns and cities in the Uk who, instead of the earlier imports who wanted to adapt and live in a lovely but different place, couldn’t manage that and brought in their behaviour, lack of dress sense, sloppy attitudes and grim chains turning somewhere unique into not far off a Uk town.
Every time a site or large shop comes available social media is full of twats whining about getting a primark or similar because that’s all their brains can compute and their experiences dictate whereas once it was independent, or a mix of French and British.
Maybe a lot of Brits need to look at the quality of their natives and sort that out before they move onto the incomers.
This ceasefire looks ever shakier. Trumpler says Lebanon not included. Pakistan - who negotiated it - say it is included. Iran and now European leaders unanimously supporting its inclusion.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased The Strait has not reopened The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
I get the impression the US administration did agree to Lebanon being included in the ceasefire only for Israel to tell them once they heard about it, no way. Trump absolutely refuses to face down Netenyahu even though the US bankrolls Israel across the board, so now pretends it wasn't included, thus effectively ripping up the ceasefire her was so desperate to sign just a day earlier.
You do have to wonder if this malign behaviour is all about playing the markets and making billions
That is my assumption too, to explain all the sudden changes of direction and contradictory statements from day to day. I wonder if anyone is plotting trades immediately before Trump announcements?
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
I am trying to make this a meme: We pay more and more for less and less.
It’s feast or famine - either there is no money or there is billions spent stupidly on things that other countries do far more cheaply.
And before anyone says it - do you think Norway is a low cost country that skips environmental protection and safety of infrastructure projects?
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
I am trying to make this a meme: We pay more and more for less and less.
That's certainly why we're unhappy, but maybe it's inevitable. We have had several decades when the fiscal situation was temporarily easy- favourable demographics, windfalls from the North Sea. We got used to quite a lot of something for nothing.
As the loveable rogues on Hustle used to say, that tends to be followed by getting nothing for something. But absent a time machine to go back and make more prudent choices from the mid 1980s onwards, we are where we are.
If anyone is baffled about why so many people are considering the Greens, look at the comments from Sarwar yesterday about cycle lanes.
Now, I understand that the motoring/pensioner segment of the population is by far the most important electorally, but there is a real sense that the other parties simply do not care about you unless you’re over 60 and live in suburbia. This is particularly the case with the Scottish Lib Dems, I’m afraid. Reform actually directly attacked my age group.
There’s a reason the SNP have a 20 point lead. A very large proportion of the Scottish population live in dense urban areas and none of the UK parties are fighting in that space.
To be honest I feel like this in London where Reform seemingly only want to attack my city as a crime hole and full of awful people.
Nobody is really aiming at people that actually work between the ages of 25 and 40. I thought Reform might actually do it but they’ve gone for the triple lock.
If Labour somehow cut my taxes by 2029 (they won’t but just pretend) they’ll have done one more thing than anyone has done for us since 2010.
It’s honestly a joke how the people actually doing the work in this country get completely ignored in basically every debate.
No, they don't. If I had a pound for every time I heard a politician say "hard working families", I'd need new pockets in twenty pairs of trousers. I do agree it's become a mantra but it's as much an idealised version of Britain as the old Tory vision of villages with Vicars cycling past the cricket green.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
But I am aspirational and they don’t speak to me. None of them do really that’s the point.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
I am trying to make this a meme: We pay more and more for less and less.
But we don’t. I think that’s misleading. We get more, but we don’t always feel the more. For example, an older population means there are more old people getting pensions and NHS care, but as an individual, you don’t feel that “more”.
Comments
The biggest disappoint for me of this government so far has not been telling these idiots where to go more often.
I note yet another mast has been rejected in an URBAN area of London because of visual pollution. Madness.
The whole current government feels a bit pointless. They are delivering platitudes, and leave a feeling that there is little initative and action. There is nothing about the government's decisions to date that gives me any confidence. Although I'll concede that there might be a lot going on out of sight.
Listening to Ed Davey this morning, even if you don't agree with him he does at least seem willing to speak up, and seems to have some ideas beyond the "keep the plates spinning" which is all it feels like the government can manage.
The Secretary General is a civil servant with a clearly defined role and responsibilities.
https://www.nato.int/en/about-us/organization/nato-structure/nato-secretary-general
The Secretary General is NATO's top international civil servant and has three principal roles.
Chair of all major committees, responsible for steering discussions, facilitating the decision-making process and ensuring that decisions are implemented.
Principal spokesperson for the Organization.
Head of the International Staff, whose role it is to support the Secretary General directly and indirectly.
The person is nominated by member governments for an initial period of four years, which can be extended by mutual consent...
More specifically:
..their role allows them to exert some influence on the decision-making process while respecting the fundamental principle that the authority for taking decisions is invested only in the member governments themselves.
The Secretary General is also the principal spokesperson of the Alliance and represents the Alliance in public on behalf of the member countries, reflecting their common positions on political issues...
Siding with one member - Trump's US - on a policy which is in any event outside of NATO's area of operations, directly contradicts that defined brief.
But they could be doing things that don’t cost any money at all. Like just removing most planning restrictions at least in urban areas.
Not that we have had a ceasefire.
Not sure when it changed.
He noted it didn't matter much in South Staffs, as he wasn't an important figure, but he asked what still seems the highly pertinent question as to what would have happened if a suicide bomber had nominated himself in Sedgefield, then blew himself up during the campaign.
Edit - I didn't realise that the law was changed afterwards and since then, for that reason, candidates can be replaced by parties in a general election even after the close of nominations. Surprised that doesn't apply in local elections too. It would make sense to.
If you're asking about practical policy for these "hard working families", that in many ways is the core of the debate. The Conservative Party does well when it's the party of aspiration but somewhere it turned away from aspiration to those who actually voted, the welthy, the retired and the comfortable.
Blair did well because he understood that and offered the grandparents the ideal of their grandchildren having nice schools or nurseries and libraries and all the rest of it and he knew people will always vote for something which makes their children's or grandchildren's lives better.
Talking to the aspirational has almost stopped - the man or woman who has to do two jobs just to pay the rent wants a better life but is that better life simply about more money or is it about a place they can afford or just some more time to themselves to rest and relax?
Aspiration can't just be on a material basis -having more "things" isn't the be-all and end-all any longer (I think the pandemic changed a lot of perceptions) and simply cutting taxes isn't the only solution. How do you make people's lives better in ways that work for them rather than ways that get more votes for your party?
The Buckingham election would have been postponed, then parliament would have needed to elect a new Speaker, no more John Bercow.
The recent change was that you now need a new election if a party candidate dies, but not if an independent candidate dies.
However, for me the crucial point is that, whatever has happened earlier, the campaign proper doesn't legally start until the candidates have been accepted by the Returning Officer.
Newham is desperately short of sites for residential redevelopment - the site near us adjoins the A406, has high pressure gas pipes and electricity pylons and an old gas holder (not the original) and is of course in the flood plain. The land is also contaminated with spoil from industrial sites.
The developer has put forward an outlline plan for 600 dwellings, a mix of flats and houses, but leaving a lot of the site open for community use. Their PR company invited us all to a nice workshop where we brainstormed various ideas for the space including cricket pitches, a Muslim burial site etc, etc.
I'm not convinced given the costs of remediation, 600 works for the developer and it's likely to be a minimum of 50% affordable housing and the truth is there's more concern about who will come and live in the development than the development itself.
Snobbery - in Newham - who'd have thunk it?
Noted on the election law. It all seems needlessly complicated if I'm honest.
Can we make this the political word of 2026 - "convassing" - defined as speaking to an individual to obtain their vote by the deliberate use of misinformation?
Please feel free to expand on this definition.
I see an OED entry by the end of the year.
Doesn't sound attractive tbh.
It’s notable here during my Easter break in France: the local media really doesn’t obsess about what Trump says, even when it’s about France or Macron. There’s much more national shrugging involved.
We should have a foreign secretary who’s good at the job in the round, not one focused entirely on maintaining cordial relations with the loonies in Washington.
End-of-life routers in homes and small offices hacked in 120 countries.
...
An estimated 18,000 to 40,000 consumer routers, mostly those made by MikroTik and TP-Link, located in 120 countries, were wrangled into infrastructure belonging to APT28, an advanced threat group that’s part of Russia’s military intelligence agency known as the GRU, researchers from Lumen Technologies’ Black Lotus Labs said. The threat group has operated for at least two decades and is behind dozens of high-profile hacks targeting governments worldwide.
https://arstechnica.com/security/2026/04/russias-military-hacks-thousands-of-consumer-routers-to-steal-credentials/
Stay safe, everyone.
The reason I mentioned taxes is that all it seems to me is that our taxes go up and everything is still broken. The NHS seems to be almost crumbling, litter seems to be getting worse, anti social behaviour etc.
The elderly seem to complain but seem to get a nice pension at the end of it. What exactly do we get?
I’m putting in the hard yards and I just feel like a lot of the time I’m not really included in much of the debate.
I’d be happy with taxes going up if things were actually getting better but it feels like we’re just treading water, you know?
The later means that fields people would cross, walk around become closed off. Complete with some quite aggressive signage.
A solution to NIMYism in a democracy has to include dealing with those issues.
I would suggest hedged paths along traditional routes and free/cheap ‘leccy for the locals.
I’m sorry to bring up phone masts again but I like to try and speak to things I know about as much as possible. Cornerstone had applied for planning permission to put a site on top of a block of flats. It was rejected because it wasn’t in keeping with the visual aesthetic of the area.
This is literally next to Wandsworth Bridge. I cannot understand how this can be something where we can honestly say “we’ve got that right”. And yet there are new blocks of flats going up on the same road as we speak. How is one in keeping with the area but a rooftop isn’t?
Private school St Lawrence College in Ramsgate closes after going into administration with loss of 170 jobs
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/thanet/news/this-is-an-incredibly-sad-day-for-everyone-school-closes-338807/
The parents blocked a merger so they get a sudden collapse instead.
I would also say however that if the school was in that serious a mess the governors have some very awkward questions to answer about what they were doing and what they knew at the time they abandoned the merger plans.
I dutifully spent an hour sorting my registration for it.
I was then told there were no appointments available online as the system wasn't yet ready and I would have to ring and book one.
I decided I would live with a sore shoulder.
In the cupboard. Gathering dust.
There must be an optimal queue length, undoubtedly much shorter than it is currently, but it won't be zero!
Probably, with a sore shoulder, some combination of a Google/AI-assisted search and some time watching Youtube videos will provide you the answer. When I had same, the combination of some good shoulder stretching videos and buying a bar so I could grip and hang in an open doorway, solved the problem. For Streeting, the interesting question is whether harnassing such technology at the NHS gateway heads off a lot of demand, as he hopes and as may well happen, or alternatively actually leads to an increase in people then wanting referrals and tests?
‘ Israel ruthlessly carpet bombed Lebanon today, killing at least 180 people and injuring more than 800.
How does the BBC report it?
“Israel says it hit more than 100 command centres and military sites in 10 minutes…”
This is how war crimes are laundered.’
https://x.com/hamza_a96/status/2041989038966497373?s=61
Make sure your devices are secured. Cheap gadgets that need a WiFi connection are a big issue - as much as ancient routers.
"People don't recognise their country due to immigration
I no longer recognise my country because of the scale of immigration in recent years, England
Lab 39%
LD 37%
Grn 28%"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/04/08/divided-britain-more-split-than-ever-new-poll-reveals/
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
·
15m
Can we also be clear on something else. The reason there are "several peace plans floating around" is because - as I said yesterday - Trump, Hegseth et al are literally inventing what the Iranian negotiating position is to pretend the Iranian's have capitulated.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/2042179479372546465
The BPC shall be having words.
So we have a ceasefire where:
Fire has intensified, not ceased
The Strait has not reopened
The three belligerents are quoting contrasting terms
Unless someone backs down, this doesn't make the weekend.
Keir Starmer entered Downing Street with no policies, just the conviction that every problem has a technocratic solution and that the Civil Service knows these solutions but have been blocked by incompetent or evil Tories.
You will recall that when these solutions (which must exist) were not immediately pulled from filing cabinets and implemented, Starmer turned to blaming complacent Civil Servants in their baths.
But then Tony Blair introduced Starmer to his tech bro chums and now everything has an AI solution. AI will monitor traffic; AI will find illegal immigrants; AI will stop crime; AI will diagnose and treat disease.
The actual mechanisms by which AI will achieve these doubtless desirable ends are a bit hazy but a few large cheques to Oracle and Palantir should see us all right.
We've all long accepted that whilst Russia has nukes, it has little else left worrying about. The problem for America is that it is in the same position.
https://bsky.app/profile/ashwinvarma97.bsky.social/post/3mippfc65222y
Leavitt: "Thanks to the unmatched excellence of our warriors at the direction of the commander in chief, the world has just witnessed a historically swift and successful military triumph"
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3miyta6yerw2o
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0j6d538l6qo
These vast solar farms have no place in our green and pleasant land.
Put panels on the top of every warehouse, business park, supermarket and other suitable buildings. Not in fields.
I can't access on my mobile. I have to go to vanilla
Javier Blas
@JavierBlas
·
1h
UAE senior oil official Sultan Al Jaber denounces the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. “Access is being restricted, conditioned and controlled,”
“Conditional passage is not passage. It is control by another name,” he says.
Javier Blas
@JavierBlas
So now, this creates a bit of a problem for the White House, which as yesterday night was still pushed the ‘magic realism’ narrative that said the strait was opening, with a rising number of ships crossing. Effectively, the UAE says, on the record, that’s not true.
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2042174652324118818
https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=youtube+ice+deported+me+to+britain+telegraph&mid=372BDC8A2B02567682D6372BDC8A2B02567682D6&FORM=VIRE
We pay more and more for less and less.
https://x.com/sajwani/status/2042197108825239748
Fingers crossed!
Every time a site or large shop comes available social media is full of twats whining about getting a primark or similar because that’s all their brains can compute and their experiences dictate whereas once it was independent, or a mix of French and British.
Maybe a lot of Brits need to look at the quality of their natives and sort that out before they move onto the incomers.
Probably far more money made on the main markets but less anonymity there so depends how confident you are in getting a pardon from Trump......
And before anyone says it - do you think Norway is a low cost country that skips environmental protection and safety of infrastructure projects?
As the loveable rogues on Hustle used to say, that tends to be followed by getting nothing for something. But absent a time machine to go back and make more prudent choices from the mid 1980s onwards, we are where we are.