Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
Not quite enough. To answer, on behalf of a putative PM, that there are no great answers, and ask what someone else wants is not the stuff of being a PM. Being a PM is about trust, vision, capacity, problem solving, good communication, team building and retention, intelligence and leadership. It's hard. That's why we mostly mostly don't want the job, while asking it of those who do.
In particular it is fair to ask and expect the Burnhams and the Farages etc about the essential bits of the state they are less interested in. I want to know from Farage about his plans for the successful and respectful assimilation of minorities and the Islamic population. I want to know from Burnham about whether he believes the solution to the government debt crisis is to increase the debt by £130 billion a year or whether he has a better plan and if so what it is. Etc.
Fair enough. I'm not Andy Burnham. I can only say that Manchester isn't bankrupt, unlike many places and is growing faster than the rest of the country.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
Pressure v asking for updates this is quite subjective .
It seems now that Robbins has confirmed Starmer didn’t know and wasn’t lying about knowing Mandelson had issues with the vetting , the media have now moved onto this ridiculous attempt re the Priviliges Committee .
This is irrelevant as has been said.
Starmer appointed Mandelson. Risk but backfired. He should resign for that.
It’s not irrelevant. The last weeks drama was about Starmer allegedly lying which had been proven wrong . We all know Mandelson shouldn’t have been appointed but this latest Privileges Committee is laughable .
The media are fed up because their narrative has bitten the dust . I think Starmer should go this year but they’re now flogging a dead horse .
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
I think this is where a change to use a PR voting system could help Britain. It would force politicians to work across party lines, instead of simply pandering to their base.
The combined membership of the political parties is 1-2% of the adult population, yet effectively they decide our PMs between them. The rest of us get left with a choice between dumb and dumber.
Worse than that.
When a new PM is chosen mid-term (which has happened a lot recently), the general public have no input at all, and MPs mostly only get to generate the shortlist. Beyond that, it comes down to one of these small groups of frankly weird people.
OK, democracy is more effective at rejecting afterwards than electing beforehand, but it's a heck of a flaw.
Disagree there. I think MPs choosing the PM is fine. Voters should take more care in who we elect as MPs.
MPs choosing- fine.
Party members choosing, which is the default now- not fine.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
I think this is where a change to use a PR voting system could help Britain. It would force politicians to work across party lines, instead of simply pandering to their base.
The combined membership of the political parties is 1-2% of the adult population, yet effectively they decide our PMs between them. The rest of us get left with a choice between dumb and dumber.
Worse than that.
When a new PM is chosen mid-term (which has happened a lot recently), the general public have no input at all, and MPs mostly only get to generate the shortlist. Beyond that, it comes down to one of these small groups of frankly weird people.
OK, democracy is more effective at rejecting afterwards than electing beforehand, but it's a heck of a flaw.
Disagree there. I think MPs choosing the PM is fine. Voters should take more care in who we elect as MPs.
MPs choosing- fine.
Party members choosing, which is the default now- not fine.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
Not quite enough. To answer, on behalf of a putative PM, that there are no great answers, and ask what someone else wants is not the stuff of being a PM. Being a PM is about trust, vision, capacity, problem solving, good communication, team building and retention, intelligence and leadership. It's hard. That's why we mostly mostly don't want the job, while asking it of those who do.
In particular it is fair to ask and expect the Burnhams and the Farages etc about the essential bits of the state they are less interested in. I want to know from Farage about his plans for the successful and respectful assimilation of minorities and the Islamic population. I want to know from Burnham about whether he believes the solution to the government debt crisis is to increase the debt by £130 billion a year or whether he has a better plan and if so what it is. Etc.
Fair enough. I'm not Andy Burnham. I can only say that Manchester isn't bankrupt, unlike many places and is growing faster than the rest of the country.
I think hopium can work well at city mayorality level. A lot of it is vibe. At national level it doesn't have the same impact.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
I think this is where a change to use a PR voting system could help Britain. It would force politicians to work across party lines, instead of simply pandering to their base.
The combined membership of the political parties is 1-2% of the adult population, yet effectively they decide our PMs between them. The rest of us get left with a choice between dumb and dumber.
Worse than that.
When a new PM is chosen mid-term (which has happened a lot recently), the general public have no input at all, and MPs mostly only get to generate the shortlist. Beyond that, it comes down to one of these small groups of frankly weird people.
OK, democracy is more effective at rejecting afterwards than electing beforehand, but it's a heck of a flaw.
Disagree there. I think MPs choosing the PM is fine. Voters should take more care in who we elect as MPs.
MPs choosing- fine.
Party members choosing, which is the default now- not fine.
This is why in my view, Labour will go for a coronation.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
I think this is where a change to use a PR voting system could help Britain. It would force politicians to work across party lines, instead of simply pandering to their base.
The combined membership of the political parties is 1-2% of the adult population, yet effectively they decide our PMs between them. The rest of us get left with a choice between dumb and dumber.
Worse than that.
When a new PM is chosen mid-term (which has happened a lot recently), the general public have no input at all, and MPs mostly only get to generate the shortlist. Beyond that, it comes down to one of these small groups of frankly weird people.
OK, democracy is more effective at rejecting afterwards than electing beforehand, but it's a heck of a flaw.
Disagree there. I think MPs choosing the PM is fine. Voters should take more care in who we elect as MPs.
The issue isn’t MPs picking the PM, it’s party members picking their preferred candidate to be PM which is how come we ended up with Bozo and Truss rather than Hunt and Rishi
He won’t run as leader but I think he might call for Starmer to quit.
He should resign and see who else follows
To be fair, Miliband resigning would be a win for the country, whether anyone followed him or not...
On North Sea oil he’s wrong but on renewables in general what do you not agree with?
Bit of a nercro, but worth responding to:
Very little that Miliband is doing is good. Obviously there is the North Sea stupidity, but also consider:
- £20bn being spunked on CCS - Sizewell C (somehow they've taken the debacle of Hinckley Point C, and decided to do it again, with a contract considerably less favourable). - No attempt to contract South Korean nuclear at 1/6th the cost of HPC - Permitting more yet windfarms without plausible grid connections to use the power - Failing to put a rocket under National Grid to build suitable connections - particularly north-south interconnectors so at times windfarms are getting constraint payments in Scotland whilst the South West is being supplied by gas turbines. - Locking in expensive electricity for a generation via ludicrously expensive CfD payments for offshore wind - Failure to properly explore regional electricity pricing - Letting NESTO treat international interconnectors as "capacity" during capacity auctions - Completely failing to plan for the increases in electricity demand which would occur if all transport and space heating is actually electrified (from which one concludes no-one actually thinks this will happen, particularly wrt space heating).
I could go on, but that gives you a flavour of my issues with Miliband.
I'd be more impressed if he canned his CCS vanity projects, and gave the grid the £20bn to build more north-south interconnectors - that would suggest he at least had some awareness of what actually needs to happen.
Pressure v asking for updates this is quite subjective .
It seems now that Robbins has confirmed Starmer didn’t know and wasn’t lying about knowing Mandelson had issues with the vetting , the media have now moved onto this ridiculous attempt re the Priviliges Committee .
This is irrelevant as has been said.
Starmer appointed Mandelson. Risk but backfired. He should resign for that.
It’s not irrelevant. The last weeks drama was about Starmer allegedly lying which had been proven wrong . We all know Mandelson shouldn’t have been appointed but this latest Privileges Committee is laughable .
The media are fed up because their narrative has bitten the dust . I think Starmer should go this year but they’re now flogging a dead horse .
But even without this, what exactly is Sir Keir going to do now?
I said long ago he needed time to show us what he’s for. But it’s 2026, nearly two years ago and I still have absolutely zero clue what he wants to do.
The press were right, there isn’t anything. For that reason, what is the point in him being there?
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
Not quite enough. To answer, on behalf of a putative PM, that there are no great answers, and ask what someone else wants is not the stuff of being a PM. Being a PM is about trust, vision, capacity, problem solving, good communication, team building and retention, intelligence and leadership. It's hard. That's why we mostly mostly don't want the job, while asking it of those who do.
In particular it is fair to ask and expect the Burnhams and the Farages etc about the essential bits of the state they are less interested in. I want to know from Farage about his plans for the successful and respectful assimilation of minorities and the Islamic population. I want to know from Burnham about whether he believes the solution to the government debt crisis is to increase the debt by £130 billion a year or whether he has a better plan and if so what it is. Etc.
Fair enough. I'm not Andy Burnham. I can only say that Manchester isn't bankrupt, unlike many places and is growing faster than the rest of the country.
I think hopium can work well at city mayorality level. A lot of it is vibe. At national level it doesn't have the same impact.
Well indeed. This is true. But Labour, and the UK, isn't overburdened with vibe right now.
a hair dryer at a Paris airport broke Polymarket weather markets & made someone $34,000 richer
- polymarket was settling Paris temperature bets on a single Météo France sensor sitting near the Charles de Gaulle runway perimeter - basically unguarded
- the guy bought the long-shot outcome (like "22°C" when everyone expected 18°C) for pennies, since nobody thought it'd hit
- then he walked up to the probe and briefly heated the air around it with a portable heat source, spiking the reading just long enough to register as the daily max
- temperature snapped back to normal in minutes, the market resolved in his favor, and he cashed out - twice, on April 6 and April 15, before Météo France caught on and filed charges https://x.com/aaronjmars/status/2047017251270734309
Other than the separation of fools from their money, what actual crime has this chap committed?
Weather observations at airports are a safety-critical service, so it could be something related to that.
Pressure v asking for updates this is quite subjective .
It seems now that Robbins has confirmed Starmer didn’t know and wasn’t lying about knowing Mandelson had issues with the vetting , the media have now moved onto this ridiculous attempt re the Priviliges Committee .
This is irrelevant as has been said.
Starmer appointed Mandelson. Risk but backfired. He should resign for that.
It’s not irrelevant. The last weeks drama was about Starmer allegedly lying which had been proven wrong . We all know Mandelson shouldn’t have been appointed but this latest Privileges Committee is laughable .
The media are fed up because their narrative has bitten the dust . I think Starmer should go this year but they’re now flogging a dead horse .
But even without this, what exactly is Sir Keir going to do now?
I said long ago he needed time to show us what he’s for. But it’s 2026, nearly two years ago and I still have absolutely zero clue what he wants to do.
The press were right, there isn’t anything. For that reason, what is the point in him being there?
They have done bits and pieces of small managerial stuff that will make a difference in aggregate. On the big issues, they have started on healthcare and immigration but face challenges, dont seem to have done anything yet on housing, care, infrastructure, defence or growth.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
Not quite enough. To answer, on behalf of a putative PM, that there are no great answers, and ask what someone else wants is not the stuff of being a PM. Being a PM is about trust, vision, capacity, problem solving, good communication, team building and retention, intelligence and leadership. It's hard. That's why we mostly mostly don't want the job, while asking it of those who do.
In particular it is fair to ask and expect the Burnhams and the Farages etc about the essential bits of the state they are less interested in. I want to know from Farage about his plans for the successful and respectful assimilation of minorities and the Islamic population. I want to know from Burnham about whether he believes the solution to the government debt crisis is to increase the debt by £130 billion a year or whether he has a better plan and if so what it is. Etc.
Fair enough. I'm not Andy Burnham. I can only say that Manchester isn't bankrupt, unlike many places and is growing faster than the rest of the country.
I think hopium can work well at city mayorality level. A lot of it is vibe. At national level it doesn't have the same impact.
Well indeed. This is true. But Labour, and the UK, isn't overburdened with vibe right now.
Burnham will undoubtedly do hope and communication better. And to be fair that will be a big improvement.
But that can only get you so far. Johnson’s hope and optimism worked for ages until it collided with reality of what was actually going on.
If Burnham jumps on the controlled immigration, defence spending, crime and weaves a story he’ll do very well in my view. But I’ve not seen much of that just yet.
I remain to be convinced. But Labour should 100% get him into Parliament. Of that I am sure.
a hair dryer at a Paris airport broke Polymarket weather markets & made someone $34,000 richer
- polymarket was settling Paris temperature bets on a single Météo France sensor sitting near the Charles de Gaulle runway perimeter - basically unguarded
- the guy bought the long-shot outcome (like "22°C" when everyone expected 18°C) for pennies, since nobody thought it'd hit
- then he walked up to the probe and briefly heated the air around it with a portable heat source, spiking the reading just long enough to register as the daily max
- temperature snapped back to normal in minutes, the market resolved in his favor, and he cashed out - twice, on April 6 and April 15, before Météo France caught on and filed charges https://x.com/aaronjmars/status/2047017251270734309
Other than the separation of fools from their money, what actual crime has this chap committed?
Weather observations at airports are a safety-critical service, so it could be something related to that.
If the prosecutors are in a particularly bad mood, endangering aircraft is a rather serious offence.
Temperature is important to pilots because air density varies quite dramatically with it, takeoff speeds are higher and takeoff runs longer on hot days. In the sandpit in summer, flights often get delayed when it’s very hot, the alternative being for the aircraft to lose weight (pax/cargo/fuel) before takeoff.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
The country badly needs a government of radical, competent pragmatists.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ? I can't really think of one.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
You mean it's depressing they hold Labour values rather than Tory ones that you favour.
Labour MP Graham Stringer tells @GBNEWS: "I don't think the PM can survive the Parliament" and should set out a timetable for his departure, the veteran Labour has just said.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
You mean it's depressing they hold Labour values rather than Tory ones that you favour.
I'm definitely not a Tory. Not Labour either, like many in the country just disdain for both big parties over the last decade. Favourite politicians Blair, Ashdown and Ken Clarke, more recently I do like Streeting, Mahmood, and Rory the ex Tory sure, not because I agree with them on stuff, but because they are trying to make things actually work, rather than doing things to be popular within their parties.
You normally have to rely on us chemical engineers to produce such an impact in a petrochemical plant.
The Ukraine drone squad are doing us out of a job!
For as long as the russian chemical engineers are using their factories to make explosives for weapons, the Ukranian drone squad will be hunting them down!
Yet all the concern seems to be around an American data company, who are bound by contract to keep their data in the UK and face significant penalties for any leaks.
He won’t run as leader but I think he might call for Starmer to quit.
He should resign and see who else follows
To be fair, Miliband resigning would be a win for the country, whether anyone followed him or not...
On North Sea oil he’s wrong but on renewables in general what do you not agree with?
Bit of a nercro, but worth responding to:
Very little that Miliband is doing is good. Obviously there is the North Sea stupidity, but also consider:
- £20bn being spunked on CCS - Sizewell C (somehow they've taken the debacle of Hinckley Point C, and decided to do it again, with a contract considerably less favourable). - No attempt to contract South Korean nuclear at 1/6th the cost of HPC - Permitting more yet windfarms without plausible grid connections to use the power - Failing to put a rocket under National Grid to build suitable connections - particularly north-south interconnectors so at times windfarms are getting constraint payments in Scotland whilst the South West is being supplied by gas turbines. - Locking in expensive electricity for a generation via ludicrously expensive CfD payments for offshore wind - Failure to properly explore regional electricity pricing - Letting NESTO treat international interconnectors as "capacity" during capacity auctions - Completely failing to plan for the increases in electricity demand which would occur if all transport and space heating is actually electrified (from which one concludes no-one actually thinks this will happen, particularly wrt space heating).
I could go on, but that gives you a flavour of my issues with Miliband.
I'd be more impressed if he canned his CCS vanity projects, and gave the grid the £20bn to build more north-south interconnectors - that would suggest he at least had some awareness of what actually needs to happen.
I agree with an awful lot of that, but I think you overestimate the problems of electrifying transport.
The combination of considerably higher energy efficiency, and improvement in balance of payments owing the reduction in fuel imports means that the increase in generation ought to be well within the country's means. There will be some shocks along the way, as increase in capacity will not match in lockstep with demand, but the technology continues to improve, and it is inevitable irrespective of government failings.
The switch in heating is likely to lag significantly behind that change, but similar considerations apply.
Germany plans to build Europe’s strongest military force by 2039.
I think Poland may have something to say about that.
I think Ukraine might want a word too.
Germany has a large advantage in both population and resources (both industrial and financial), though.
By 2039 I suspect the biggest armies will be from AI owned and run tech companies rather than nation states......
Look at what Anduril are doing in Ukraine at the moment, they’re like early SpaceX in terms of innovation and iteration when compared to the existing supply chain boondoggles in defence and aerospace procurement.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
I think this is where a change to use a PR voting system could help Britain. It would force politicians to work across party lines, instead of simply pandering to their base.
The combined membership of the political parties is 1-2% of the adult population, yet effectively they decide our PMs between them. The rest of us get left with a choice between dumb and dumber.
Worse than that.
When a new PM is chosen mid-term (which has happened a lot recently), the general public have no input at all, and MPs mostly only get to generate the shortlist. Beyond that, it comes down to one of these small groups of frankly weird people.
OK, democracy is more effective at rejecting afterwards than electing beforehand, but it's a heck of a flaw.
Disagree there. I think MPs choosing the PM is fine. Voters should take more care in who we elect as MPs.
MPs choosing- fine.
Party members choosing, which is the default now- not fine.
Party members choose the leader of the party.
MPs of all parties then get the chance to have a VONC if they don't want that person as PM.
For what it's worth, I think that would have been the outcome if Labour had won a GE under Corbyn.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
The country badly needs a government of radical, competent pragmatists.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ? I can't really think of one.
Germany plans to build Europe’s strongest military force by 2039.
I think Poland may have something to say about that.
I think Ukraine might want a word too.
Germany has a large advantage in both population and resources (both industrial and financial), though.
By 2039 I suspect the biggest armies will be from AI owned and run tech companies rather than nation states......
Look at what Anduril are doing in Ukraine at the moment, they’re like early SpaceX in terms of innovation and iteration when compared to the existing supply chain boondoggles in defence and aerospace procurement.
Are they ?
I think Anduril just want to join in the general boondogglery as a new entrant.
Germany plans to build Europe’s strongest military force by 2039.
I think Poland may have something to say about that.
I think Ukraine might want a word too.
Germany has a large advantage in both population and resources (both industrial and financial), though.
By 2039 I suspect the biggest armies will be from AI owned and run tech companies rather than nation states......
Look at what Anduril are doing in Ukraine at the moment, they’re like early SpaceX in terms of innovation and iteration when compared to the existing supply chain boondoggles in defence and aerospace procurement.
Colombo da Siena has entered the chat and asked for 50,000 ducats.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
Not quite enough. To answer, on behalf of a putative PM, that there are no great answers, and ask what someone else wants is not the stuff of being a PM. Being a PM is about trust, vision, capacity, problem solving, good communication, team building and retention, intelligence and leadership. It's hard. That's why we mostly mostly don't want the job, while asking it of those who do.
In particular it is fair to ask and expect the Burnhams and the Farages etc about the essential bits of the state they are less interested in. I want to know from Farage about his plans for the successful and respectful assimilation of minorities and the Islamic population. I want to know from Burnham about whether he believes the solution to the government debt crisis is to increase the debt by £130 billion a year or whether he has a better plan and if so what it is. Etc.
Fair enough. I'm not Andy Burnham. I can only say that Manchester isn't bankrupt, unlike many places and is growing faster than the rest of the country.
I think hopium can work well at city mayorality level. A lot of it is vibe. At national level it doesn't have the same impact.
Well indeed. This is true. But Labour, and the UK, isn't overburdened with vibe right now.
Burnham will undoubtedly do hope and communication better. And to be fair that will be a big improvement.
But that can only get you so far. Johnson’s hope and optimism worked for ages until it collided with reality of what was actually going on.
If Burnham jumps on the controlled immigration, defence spending, crime and weaves a story he’ll do very well in my view. But I’ve not seen much of that just yet.
I remain to be convinced. But Labour should 100% get him into Parliament. Of that I am sure.
Indeed. And of all the wrong decisions made by SKS, the most politically disastrous was blocking Burnham. It rocket charged and solidified the rise of the Greens in the polls.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
The country badly needs a government of radical, competent pragmatists.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ? I can't really think of one.
I'd say Streeting and Mahmood are on the right track, if too early to tell how radical and how competent.
He won’t run as leader but I think he might call for Starmer to quit.
He should resign and see who else follows
To be fair, Miliband resigning would be a win for the country, whether anyone followed him or not...
On North Sea oil he’s wrong but on renewables in general what do you not agree with?
Bit of a nercro, but worth responding to:
Very little that Miliband is doing is good. Obviously there is the North Sea stupidity, but also consider:
- £20bn being spunked on CCS - Sizewell C (somehow they've taken the debacle of Hinckley Point C, and decided to do it again, with a contract considerably less favourable). - No attempt to contract South Korean nuclear at 1/6th the cost of HPC - Permitting more yet windfarms without plausible grid connections to use the power - Failing to put a rocket under National Grid to build suitable connections - particularly north-south interconnectors so at times windfarms are getting constraint payments in Scotland whilst the South West is being supplied by gas turbines. - Locking in expensive electricity for a generation via ludicrously expensive CfD payments for offshore wind - Failure to properly explore regional electricity pricing - Letting NESTO treat international interconnectors as "capacity" during capacity auctions - Completely failing to plan for the increases in electricity demand which would occur if all transport and space heating is actually electrified (from which one concludes no-one actually thinks this will happen, particularly wrt space heating).
I could go on, but that gives you a flavour of my issues with Miliband.
I'd be more impressed if he canned his CCS vanity projects, and gave the grid the £20bn to build more north-south interconnectors - that would suggest he at least had some awareness of what actually needs to happen.
The CCS money is not all going to the power generation sector. Padeswood cement is one of the three "Track 1" projects to be funded so far. So it isn't just a case of reallocating to different parts of the electricity sector.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
The country badly needs a government of radical, competent pragmatists.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ? I can't really think of one.
I'd say Streeting and Mahmood are on the right track, if too early to tell how radical and how competent.
I'm guessing you don't vote Labour but would like Labour to be more right-wing.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
The country badly needs a government of radical, competent pragmatists.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ? I can't really think of one.
I'd say Streeting and Mahmood are on the right track, if too early to tell how radical and how competent.
I'm guessing you don't vote Labour but would like Labour to be more right-wing.
Count Binface will do for me at the moment. As Nigel put it, I'd like a radical government but a pragmatic and competent one.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
After the F-35 'you can only use it if we agree' bollocks why would anybody want to buy American weaponry?
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
Surely that's always the case when you buy weapons manufactured in another country?
I'm sure anyone buying from South Korea knows that their purchases will be delayed if war resumes between North and South. I would be unsurprised if some military exports from Britain were delayed as a result of the Falklands War.
This is also why, for countries larger than Estonia, defence contracts often involve localised production, so as to avoid such issues (I believe Poland is having a factory built for some of their purchases from South Korea, for example)
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
Isn't that pretty standard? Of course it stings a little when the war in question is stupid, but still...
I don’t think Goodwin etc are correct about this. For me a landlord should be able to advertise for specific tenants. Of course there would be uproar from the left if it were ‘white’ or ‘Christian’ instead of Muslim, but so what? They aren’t the left. I think there are far too many Muslims in the UK, but fair enough if people want to stick to their own, that’s human nature. It shows that multiculturalism doesn’t really work, but it never was going to.
This is outrageous. Landlords are illegally advertising for “Muslim only” tenants across London and the south-east, The Telegraph has found.
The property listings feature phrases such as “only for Muslims”, “for 2 Muslim boys or 2 Muslim girls” and “Muslims preferred”.
This is illegal, is unBritish, and should be shut down immediately.
Can you imagine the total uproar in Westminster & the BBC if landlords were advertising for “whites only” or “Christians only”?!
Here’s a question for you old bean: what exactly is your issue with Muslims?
Don’t bother with the ‘old bean’ nonsense please
I think it is a problem for a country to have competing groups for supremacy, and having so many of a new group that doesn’t really accept the traditional laws or customs of the land is a recipe for disaster. I don’t have an issue with anyone personally on the basis of their religion or colour, I get on with most people and am interested in different cultures, I just think that on a nationwide level it makes for a lot of unnecessary aggravation to have introduced Islam en masse to what was/is a Christian country
Do you object to Hindus, Sikhs and Jews?
Why would I?
Because they have similarly introduced non-Christian beliefs and cultures to the country.
I think the Hindu, Sikh and Jewish culture introduced is smaller in number and not as fundamental as that of Islam. I’ve never looked but I’d guess the level of inter marriage between Christian’s/atheists and Muslims is lower than that between the other religions you mention. Maybe not. I’ll look now
AI says
Muslim marrying Christian/no religion is 2-4% Sikh is 3-5% Hindi 8-10% Jewish 30-40%
Given that there are 4m Muslims, 1m Hindus, 500k Sikhs and 250k Jews in the UK, that seems to back up my instinct; there are millions of Muslims who don’t seem to want to mix with what was considered the native population, compared with a much smaller number both in real terms and as a percentage of the other religions mentioned. Throw in 7/7, Lee Rigby, Westminster & London Bridge, Manchester Arena, the PBunmentionable, and I say, with no offence to the nice Muslims, the sixties, nurses, dentists and so on that on balance I think it was a bad move to have so many here, even if on a one to one level I consider them no differently to anyone else
The issue with Starmer and Labour is not so much the sleaze but the lack of judgment Starmer has displayed, which has led to the sleaze but which has also led to very poor policy and political decisions.
As I said a few days ago, it is a mistake to assume - as many did - that all lawyers have good judgment. Starmer may have been a fine lawyer within his specialism but outside it he has shown poor judgment. Look at his first choices in his Shadow Cabinet, for instance.
People also assumed that because he was DPP he would be good at running things well. Hmm. I was very heavily involved in the investigation and criminal trial of what still remains the UK's biggest fraud trial in 2011/2012. The CPS were prosecuting. This was right in the middle of Starmer's tenure as DPP. The CPS were awful: they tried to offload the prosecution's disclosure obligations onto us, a third party, contrary to the law, and I - having got proper criminal law advice - had to push them back twice and tell them in writing that, no, they could not delegate their obligations as prosecutor onto us, which was pretty ballsy of me. They conceded and then, rather disgracefully, made the police apologise to me for the CPS's failure. It was appalling. Though it had the welcome result that the police and I then worked really well together, as we muttered to each other about "bloody lawyers not knowing the law"! The CPS solicitor who attended the trial was asleep most of the time. If such a big trial was at all emblematic of the CPS under Starmer it really does not speak well of his management abilities. Mind you the SFO were even worse.
I can't help but think if he had been a bright thinking person he would have joined a private practice. He has so many flaws. If it hadn't been for the Public School he would have ended up in retail I guess, perhaps ever a store manager, but that would have been pushing his abilities.
When a disaster happens it is seen as a coming together of events. Surely it is only because or a coming together of events that Starmer ever got to uni and so became the menace he has undeniably been.
The most striking thing for me this week was the look of absolute bafflement on his face in the Commons when people were unimpressed and not satisfied by his grandeloquent statements. How could Kemi not accept and be delighted to accept his wonderful carefully crafted responses which showed that as always he was right all along.
More worryingly and Cyclefree seems to confirm this, in his previous life he could spout this balls and be thought a great man.
What Public School? Sir Keir passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar.
Although @A_View_From_Cumbria5 makes a valid general point about public school education allowing numpties to get into positions of power and influence way beyond their abilities.
If you listen to the people giving evidence at the Nottingham Inquiry or the Southport one or the Post Office one or one of the many others, the majority of people who were useless at their job and/or liars and/or malicious were not public school educated.
Our toleration of the second and third rate in so many of our institutions is a far bigger problem than the belief that some bullshitting arse like Johnson is somehow born to rule because he went to a posh private school.
Capability Brown Gertrude Jekyll Sir Christopher Wren Elizabeth Fry
Gertrude Jekyll, yes, a definite miss on my part.
Also, J.M.W. Turner* and Laura Knight.
(* But not Chocolate Box Constable - ugh!)
Pepys ?
Purcell should be in the list. Britain's greatest composer (with the possible exception of the almost forgotten, but enormously influential John Dunstaple).
Happy 23rd April, the day we English celebrate some Greek Christian bloke from modern-day Turkey being prosecuted for killing an endangered species...
More to the point it's Shakespeare's birthday*. An Englishman we can all be proud of.
Benpointer's idosyncratic list of greatest English men and women, in no particular order:
William Shakespeare Isaac Newton Florence Nightingale Charles Darwin George Stephenson Mary Anning Michael Faraday Horatio Nelson Jane Austen Elizabeth I Winston Churchill Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(*Probably)
Rosalind Franklin CS Lewis JRR Tolkien Philip Larkin Terry Pratchett Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Its this kind of poll that makes me despair. Streeting and Mahmood are the ones who would have the best chance of making the party electable and the best chance of tackling some of the countries big problems. But their influence quickly gets capped as they don't pander to the party established viewpoint.
Same thing happened with the Tories and Rory the ex Tory. The only candidates willing to take on party orthodoxy get a bit of respect from their opponents but have no way of progressing within the UK political framework, perhaps beyond standing as Mayor of one of the big cities.
Although Rayner's overall favourability amongst all voters (-31%) is below that of Mahmood (-22) and Streeting (-20), that is entirely because she is like Marmite. Her negative ratings are off the scale with 2024 Conservative and 2024 Reform voters, and it is only that dragging down her net favourability. Yet there is not a cat in hell's chance of 2024 Conservative and Reform voters supporting Labour under Mahmood or Streeting either. Leave them out of the equation and the picture changes.
What matters to Labour is that a new leader is given the time of day by those who might actually consider voting Labour. That is, it wins back 2024 Labour voters who have since deserted the party and also makes some appeal to 2024 Greens and 2024 Lib Dems. The polling shows that Rayner is by a long way the more (net) favourably regarded by 2024 Labour and 2024 Greens than Streeting and Mahmood. (Streeting is the more favourably regarded by 2024 Lib Dems.)
Rayner is also a close ally of Burnham, and that could reflect better on her than is currently reflected in the polls. With a contest imminent Burnham is going to have to rein back his ambition. My advice to Rayner would be to offer Burnham anything he asks for to get his endorsement, and when she becomes PM to make him a Lord and to bring him into the government as Deputy PM with specific responsibility for the Regions, Devolved Nations and Local Government. And all the while Burnham could stay on as GM Metro Mayor until his term is up, because he would not be an elected MP.
I just cannot see Rayner as PM, she doesn’t pass the test.
It may not be long before you will be able to see Rayner as PM, because she's by far more likely than anyone else to succeed Starmer.
As for people writing her off without giving her a chance, against all the odds she's turned out to be pretty good at proving them wrong in her life to date.
The issue with Starmer and Labour is not so much the sleaze but the lack of judgment Starmer has displayed, which has led to the sleaze but which has also led to very poor policy and political decisions.
As I said a few days ago, it is a mistake to assume - as many did - that all lawyers have good judgment. Starmer may have been a fine lawyer within his specialism but outside it he has shown poor judgment. Look at his first choices in his Shadow Cabinet, for instance.
People also assumed that because he was DPP he would be good at running things well. Hmm. I was very heavily involved in the investigation and criminal trial of what still remains the UK's biggest fraud trial in 2011/2012. The CPS were prosecuting. This was right in the middle of Starmer's tenure as DPP. The CPS were awful: they tried to offload the prosecution's disclosure obligations onto us, a third party, contrary to the law, and I - having got proper criminal law advice - had to push them back twice and tell them in writing that, no, they could not delegate their obligations as prosecutor onto us, which was pretty ballsy of me. They conceded and then, rather disgracefully, made the police apologise to me for the CPS's failure. It was appalling. Though it had the welcome result that the police and I then worked really well together, as we muttered to each other about "bloody lawyers not knowing the law"! The CPS solicitor who attended the trial was asleep most of the time. If such a big trial was at all emblematic of the CPS under Starmer it really does not speak well of his management abilities. Mind you the SFO were even worse.
I can't help but think if he had been a bright thinking person he would have joined a private practice. He has so many flaws. If it hadn't been for the Public School he would have ended up in retail I guess, perhaps ever a store manager, but that would have been pushing his abilities.
When a disaster happens it is seen as a coming together of events. Surely it is only because or a coming together of events that Starmer ever got to uni and so became the menace he has undeniably been.
The most striking thing for me this week was the look of absolute bafflement on his face in the Commons when people were unimpressed and not satisfied by his grandeloquent statements. How could Kemi not accept and be delighted to accept his wonderful carefully crafted responses which showed that as always he was right all along.
More worryingly and Cyclefree seems to confirm this, in his previous life he could spout this balls and be thought a great man.
What Public School? Sir Keir passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar.
Although @A_View_From_Cumbria5 makes a valid general point about public school education allowing numpties to get into positions of power and influence way beyond their abilities.
If you listen to the people giving evidence at the Nottingham Inquiry or the Southport one or the Post Office one or one of the many others, the majority of people who were useless at their job and/or liars and/or malicious were not public school educated.
Our toleration of the second and third rate in so many of our institutions is a far bigger problem than the belief that some bullshitting arse like Johnson is somehow born to rule because he went to a posh private school.
Capability Brown Gertrude Jekyll Sir Christopher Wren Elizabeth Fry
Gertrude Jekyll, yes, a definite miss on my part.
Also, J.M.W. Turner* and Laura Knight.
(* But not Chocolate Box Constable - ugh!)
Pepys ?
Purcell should be in the list. Britain's greatest composer (with the possible exception of the almost forgotten, but enormously influential John Dunstaple).
Elgar
Proportion of privately educated: About 6% Threshold for showing privately educated over promoted is not them being in most of the positions, it is much lower than that.
Germany plans to build Europe’s strongest military force by 2039.
I think Poland may have something to say about that.
I think Ukraine might want a word too.
Germany has a large advantage in both population and resources (both industrial and financial), though.
By 2039 I suspect the biggest armies will be from AI owned and run tech companies rather than nation states......
This is the future foreseen by Kurt Vonnegut Jr in Player Piano (1952). Nation states have withered away while megacorps fight endless wars. Most proles are unemployed and living on minimal benefits, their manual skills having been recorded to program robots (hence Player Piano).
Somewhere in the vast array of documents the Cabinet Office has gathered on the appointment of Peter Mandelson as the UK’s ambassador in Washington, there is a text message which Keir Starmer sent the night before he made the announcement. ‘You’ll be brilliant in challenging circumstances,’ he told Mandelson. ‘And after many years of our discussions, we get to work together side by side. I really look forward to that.’
Another Westminster veteran says: ‘I hope this will finally kill the absurd “Keir Starmer is a decent man” narrative. He’s a shitweasel whose sole political talent is blaming others for his own failings.’
He was only a decent man in contrast to Boris in the minds of Remain voters. Someone commented yesterday that people like to have a hero and a villain, with little time for nuance, so Sir Keir was feted as high minded and squeaky clean
I think Kier was quite high minded at one point. His youthful publications, pro bono work for the McLibel two, etc.
Quite when and why he went over to the dark side is unclear. The usual combination of ambition and arrogance I suppose.
I don't think he's a bad man, it's just that he's in the wrong job. He has no God but the Law and he thinks the country isn't broken, just badly administered and if everybody just obeyed the law and behaved things would be fine. But that's not the right skillset. He'd make a very good Attorney-General. He'd make a perfectly decent Foreign Secretary with proper supervision. But not Prime Minister.
He won’t run as leader but I think he might call for Starmer to quit.
He should resign and see who else follows
To be fair, Miliband resigning would be a win for the country, whether anyone followed him or not...
On North Sea oil he’s wrong but on renewables in general what do you not agree with?
Bit of a nercro, but worth responding to:
Very little that Miliband is doing is good. Obviously there is the North Sea stupidity, but also consider:
- £20bn being spunked on CCS - Sizewell C (somehow they've taken the debacle of Hinckley Point C, and decided to do it again, with a contract considerably less favourable). - No attempt to contract South Korean nuclear at 1/6th the cost of HPC - Permitting more yet windfarms without plausible grid connections to use the power - Failing to put a rocket under National Grid to build suitable connections - particularly north-south interconnectors so at times windfarms are getting constraint payments in Scotland whilst the South West is being supplied by gas turbines. - Locking in expensive electricity for a generation via ludicrously expensive CfD payments for offshore wind - Failure to properly explore regional electricity pricing - Letting NESTO treat international interconnectors as "capacity" during capacity auctions - Completely failing to plan for the increases in electricity demand which would occur if all transport and space heating is actually electrified (from which one concludes no-one actually thinks this will happen, particularly wrt space heating).
I could go on, but that gives you a flavour of my issues with Miliband.
I'd be more impressed if he canned his CCS vanity projects, and gave the grid the £20bn to build more north-south interconnectors - that would suggest he at least had some awareness of what actually needs to happen.
So CCS for cement, chemicals and other CO2 producing industrial processes makes sense, other CCS is harder to justify CfD is to encourage development of high upfront capital cost generating capacity e.g offshore wind, it won't happen without it Sizewell C already had consent, Miliband gave FID, he'd have been denounced either way, it will probably be the last big Nuclear plant NESO approach has been reformed to "first ready" clearing out the queue blocking, planning is being reformed to speed up grid connections
You criticise him for approving new generating capacity and then not planning for more demand
I sail near a Magnox, it's now two great dirty white cubes and will be for getting on for the next 100 years when they plan on decommissioning the difficult stuff. It stopped generating over 20 years ago. 120 years of cleaning up the mess!!
It’s that day in the year when the most annoying people on earth say “AcKshUaLly St George WaS SyRiaN and WoulD be A RefUgee”
That bit doesn't bother me. What does is that England has a patron saint who isn't English and has no association with England. Could have picked someone worthy.
We could always switch to St Edmund. Plus it's a good excuse of a bank holiday in that long slog towards Christmas.
I think St Botolph needs a revival. Just for the name.
I'd go for Bede (though I'm not sure he's officially a saint ?).
I think he is, the Catholic Church made him a Doctor of the Church in 1899 and I think that included formal canonisation
Also in the early days of the church sainthood was by acclamation anyway, did that apply then? Though he is often referred to as 'Venerable' which implies only the first step along the way. OTOH the are Anglican churches dedicated to St Bede so clearly he is recognised as being a saint even without the Catholic formalisation of it much later. Anyway I'm no expert and I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will chip in.
If we're discussing our patron saint, do we really care what might be the precise rules of the Catholic Church ? Bede was a seriously good egg, which is what counts.
Not very inclusive of you.
Do you think Catholics are somehow not English? We built the cathedrals and churches in this country and the saints you're considering. And you don't want us to have a say ......
It’s that day in the year when the most annoying people on earth say “AcKshUaLly St George WaS SyRiaN and WoulD be A RefUgee”
That bit doesn't bother me. What does is that England has a patron saint who isn't English and has no association with England. Could have picked someone worthy.
We could always switch to St Edmund. Plus it's a good excuse of a bank holiday in that long slog towards Christmas.
I think St Botolph needs a revival. Just for the name.
I'd go for Bede (though I'm not sure he's officially a saint ?).
I think he is, the Catholic Church made him a Doctor of the Church in 1899 and I think that included formal canonisation
Also in the early days of the church sainthood was by acclamation anyway, did that apply then? Though he is often referred to as 'Venerable' which implies only the first step along the way. OTOH the are Anglican churches dedicated to St Bede so clearly he is recognised as being a saint even without the Catholic formalisation of it much later. Anyway I'm no expert and I'm sure someone more knowledgeable will chip in.
If we're discussing our patron saint, do we really care what might be the precise rules of the Catholic Church ? Bede was a seriously good egg, which is what counts.
Not very inclusive of you.
Do you think Catholics are somehow not English? We built the cathedrals and churches in this country and the saints you're considering. And you don't want us to have a say ......
The issue with Starmer and Labour is not so much the sleaze but the lack of judgment Starmer has displayed, which has led to the sleaze but which has also led to very poor policy and political decisions.
As I said a few days ago, it is a mistake to assume - as many did - that all lawyers have good judgment. Starmer may have been a fine lawyer within his specialism but outside it he has shown poor judgment. Look at his first choices in his Shadow Cabinet, for instance.
People also assumed that because he was DPP he would be good at running things well. Hmm. I was very heavily involved in the investigation and criminal trial of what still remains the UK's biggest fraud trial in 2011/2012. The CPS were prosecuting. This was right in the middle of Starmer's tenure as DPP. The CPS were awful: they tried to offload the prosecution's disclosure obligations onto us, a third party, contrary to the law, and I - having got proper criminal law advice - had to push them back twice and tell them in writing that, no, they could not delegate their obligations as prosecutor onto us, which was pretty ballsy of me. They conceded and then, rather disgracefully, made the police apologise to me for the CPS's failure. It was appalling. Though it had the welcome result that the police and I then worked really well together, as we muttered to each other about "bloody lawyers not knowing the law"! The CPS solicitor who attended the trial was asleep most of the time. If such a big trial was at all emblematic of the CPS under Starmer it really does not speak well of his management abilities. Mind you the SFO were even worse.
I can't help but think if he had been a bright thinking person he would have joined a private practice. He has so many flaws. If it hadn't been for the Public School he would have ended up in retail I guess, perhaps ever a store manager, but that would have been pushing his abilities.
When a disaster happens it is seen as a coming together of events. Surely it is only because or a coming together of events that Starmer ever got to uni and so became the menace he has undeniably been.
The most striking thing for me this week was the look of absolute bafflement on his face in the Commons when people were unimpressed and not satisfied by his grandeloquent statements. How could Kemi not accept and be delighted to accept his wonderful carefully crafted responses which showed that as always he was right all along.
More worryingly and Cyclefree seems to confirm this, in his previous life he could spout this balls and be thought a great man.
What Public School? Sir Keir passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar.
Although @A_View_From_Cumbria5 makes a valid general point about public school education allowing numpties to get into positions of power and influence way beyond their abilities.
If you listen to the people giving evidence at the Nottingham Inquiry or the Southport one or the Post Office one or one of the many others, the majority of people who were useless at their job and/or liars and/or malicious were not public school educated.
Our toleration of the second and third rate in so many of our institutions is a far bigger problem than the belief that some bullshitting arse like Johnson is somehow born to rule because he went to a posh private school.
Capability Brown Gertrude Jekyll Sir Christopher Wren Elizabeth Fry
Gertrude Jekyll, yes, a definite miss on my part.
Also, J.M.W. Turner* and Laura Knight.
(* But not Chocolate Box Constable - ugh!)
Pepys ?
Purcell should be in the list. Britain's greatest composer (with the possible exception of the almost forgotten, but enormously influential John Dunstaple).
Elgar
Along with Vaughan Williams. I wouldn't like to be forced to choose between the two.
The issue with Starmer and Labour is not so much the sleaze but the lack of judgment Starmer has displayed, which has led to the sleaze but which has also led to very poor policy and political decisions.
As I said a few days ago, it is a mistake to assume - as many did - that all lawyers have good judgment. Starmer may have been a fine lawyer within his specialism but outside it he has shown poor judgment. Look at his first choices in his Shadow Cabinet, for instance.
People also assumed that because he was DPP he would be good at running things well. Hmm. I was very heavily involved in the investigation and criminal trial of what still remains the UK's biggest fraud trial in 2011/2012. The CPS were prosecuting. This was right in the middle of Starmer's tenure as DPP. The CPS were awful: they tried to offload the prosecution's disclosure obligations onto us, a third party, contrary to the law, and I - having got proper criminal law advice - had to push them back twice and tell them in writing that, no, they could not delegate their obligations as prosecutor onto us, which was pretty ballsy of me. They conceded and then, rather disgracefully, made the police apologise to me for the CPS's failure. It was appalling. Though it had the welcome result that the police and I then worked really well together, as we muttered to each other about "bloody lawyers not knowing the law"! The CPS solicitor who attended the trial was asleep most of the time. If such a big trial was at all emblematic of the CPS under Starmer it really does not speak well of his management abilities. Mind you the SFO were even worse.
I can't help but think if he had been a bright thinking person he would have joined a private practice. He has so many flaws. If it hadn't been for the Public School he would have ended up in retail I guess, perhaps ever a store manager, but that would have been pushing his abilities.
When a disaster happens it is seen as a coming together of events. Surely it is only because or a coming together of events that Starmer ever got to uni and so became the menace he has undeniably been.
The most striking thing for me this week was the look of absolute bafflement on his face in the Commons when people were unimpressed and not satisfied by his grandeloquent statements. How could Kemi not accept and be delighted to accept his wonderful carefully crafted responses which showed that as always he was right all along.
More worryingly and Cyclefree seems to confirm this, in his previous life he could spout this balls and be thought a great man.
What Public School? Sir Keir passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar.
Although @A_View_From_Cumbria5 makes a valid general point about public school education allowing numpties to get into positions of power and influence way beyond their abilities.
If you listen to the people giving evidence at the Nottingham Inquiry or the Southport one or the Post Office one or one of the many others, the majority of people who were useless at their job and/or liars and/or malicious were not public school educated.
Our toleration of the second and third rate in so many of our institutions is a far bigger problem than the belief that some bullshitting arse like Johnson is somehow born to rule because he went to a posh private school.
Capability Brown Gertrude Jekyll Sir Christopher Wren Elizabeth Fry
Gertrude Jekyll, yes, a definite miss on my part.
Also, J.M.W. Turner* and Laura Knight.
(* But not Chocolate Box Constable - ugh!)
Pepys ?
Purcell should be in the list. Britain's greatest composer (with the possible exception of the almost forgotten, but enormously influential John Dunstaple).
Elgar
Proportion of privately educated: About 6% Threshold for showing privately educated over promoted is not them being in most of the positions, it is much lower than that.
You're missing the point. Mediocrity and incompetence is everywhere in all sorts of jobs and the effect of that has been disastrous for those affected ie most of us.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Manchester owes a lot of that to the IRA. It's 30 years ago this year and Manchester hasn't looked back.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
Isn't that pretty standard? Of course it stings a little when the war in question is stupid, but still...
Could be worse. Think about all the countries around the world that ordered Russian weapons a few years ago. Not only are the deliveries on hold, perhaps for a decade or more, but pretty much every single piece of Russian military equipment has shown to be severely lacking when compared to their Western counterparts. As part of European rearming, making new alliances around the world will be a massive export opportunity.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Manchester owes a lot of that to the IRA. It's 30 years ago this year and Manchester hasn't looked back.
Who was it who first said the IRA bombed Manchester and caused £2bn worth of improvements?
Happy 23rd April, the day we English celebrate some Greek Christian bloke from modern-day Turkey being prosecuted for killing an endangered species...
More to the point it's Shakespeare's birthday*. An Englishman we can all be proud of.
Benpointer's idosyncratic list of greatest English men and women, in no particular order:
William Shakespeare Isaac Newton Florence Nightingale Charles Darwin George Stephenson Mary Anning Michael Faraday Horatio Nelson Jane Austen Elizabeth I Winston Churchill Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(*Probably)
Rosalind Franklin CS Lewis JRR Tolkien Philip Larkin Terry Pratchett Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
...come to think of it, two of those failed and died in the attempt, one was a curmudgeonly misanthropist, one wrote books about devils, and two wrote books about dwarves and elves. If we include Plath and Shackleton, one committed suicide and the other died heroically on an unnecessary mission. It seems i like interesting but doomed. This may explain my interest in politics.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
It's fairly standard for weapons deliveries to be delayed if the producing country suddenly needs them. But generally you want to apologise to the buyer and reassure them their stuff will be delivered as quickly as possible. I suspect Hegseth didn't do that.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
I have seen some seriously alarming stats on US procurement in relation to Iran. They have used significant percentages of all of their guided missiles , Patriot missiles and guided bombs, coming up to half. In 6 weeks of war. Even the US is finding their resources seriously stretched by a relatively modest war.
It will take months or even years to make good what has been used. And I suspect that they will want to have much greater reserves in future.
Happy 23rd April, the day we English celebrate some Greek Christian bloke from modern-day Turkey being prosecuted for killing an endangered species...
More to the point it's Shakespeare's birthday*. An Englishman we can all be proud of.
Benpointer's idosyncratic list of greatest English men and women, in no particular order:
William Shakespeare Isaac Newton Florence Nightingale Charles Darwin George Stephenson Mary Anning Michael Faraday Horatio Nelson Jane Austen Elizabeth I Winston Churchill Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(*Probably)
Rosalind Franklin CS Lewis JRR Tolkien Philip Larkin Terry Pratchett Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
Lewis a Norn Irishman. Though Leon’s new found love for NI may lead to promotion to Anglo.
Cat Little's evidence to MPs today was truly damning of Olly Robbins.
During the process of gathering evidence in response to the Humble Address, in a futile attempt to protect his own back, the man tried to defy the will of parliament by refusing to release to the Cabinet Office the vetting summary that would have revealed that UKSV had recommended refusing clearance. The Cabinet Office had to resort to taking the "very unusual judgment" to go directly to UKSV to get the evidence.
Germany plans to build Europe’s strongest military force by 2039.
I think Poland may have something to say about that.
I think Ukraine might want a word too.
Germany has a large advantage in both population and resources (both industrial and financial), though.
By 2039 I suspect the biggest armies will be from AI owned and run tech companies rather than nation states......
Look at what Anduril are doing in Ukraine at the moment, they’re like early SpaceX in terms of innovation and iteration when compared to the existing supply chain boondoggles in defence and aerospace procurement.
Are they ?
I think Anduril just want to join in the general boondogglery as a new entrant.
The Ukranians seem pretty happy so far. They’re targeting 100x cost reductions on things like long-range missiles and interceptors, selling for $100k what are currently $10m items.
Their biggest problem is of course getting their foot in the door in the first place, as they’re not going to be offering the brass hats seven-figure retirement salaries and are being heavily lobbied against.
More grift, US company incorporated in November last year with no track record but fronted by two Trump cronies insisting on sole bid for Balkan pipeline.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
I have seen some seriously alarming stats on US procurement in relation to Iran. They have used significant percentages of all of their guided missiles , Patriot missiles and guided bombs, coming up to half. In 6 weeks of war. Even the US is finding their resources seriously stretched by a relatively modest war.
It will take months or even years to make good what has been used. And I suspect that they will want to have much greater reserves in future.
Happy 23rd April, the day we English celebrate some Greek Christian bloke from modern-day Turkey being prosecuted for killing an endangered species...
More to the point it's Shakespeare's birthday*. An Englishman we can all be proud of.
Benpointer's idosyncratic list of greatest English men and women, in no particular order:
William Shakespeare Isaac Newton Florence Nightingale Charles Darwin George Stephenson Mary Anning Michael Faraday Horatio Nelson Jane Austen Elizabeth I Winston Churchill Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(*Probably)
Rosalind Franklin CS Lewis JRR Tolkien Philip Larkin Terry Pratchett Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
Lewis a Norn Irishman. Though Leon’s new found love for NI may lead to promotion to Anglo.
Damn, you're right. I should have remembered that. It's just that "Shadowlands" is the only (I think?) Anthony Hopkins performance to make me cry. Like I said: interesting but doomed.
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
I have seen some seriously alarming stats on US procurement in relation to Iran. They have used significant percentages of all of their guided missiles , Patriot missiles and guided bombs, coming up to half. In 6 weeks of war. Even the US is finding their resources seriously stretched by a relatively modest war.
It will take months or even years to make good what has been used. And I suspect that they will want to have much greater reserves in future.
If China has ever considered military force a realistic option for seizing Taiwan then they will not have a better opportunity. Perhaps after the midterms, when the US is embroiled in a political crisis dealing with the aftermath of those elections.
Happy 23rd April, the day we English celebrate some Greek Christian bloke from modern-day Turkey being prosecuted for killing an endangered species...
More to the point it's Shakespeare's birthday*. An Englishman we can all be proud of.
Benpointer's idosyncratic list of greatest English men and women, in no particular order:
William Shakespeare Isaac Newton Florence Nightingale Charles Darwin George Stephenson Mary Anning Michael Faraday Horatio Nelson Jane Austen Elizabeth I Winston Churchill Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(*Probably)
Rosalind Franklin CS Lewis JRR Tolkien Philip Larkin Terry Pratchett Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
Lewis a Norn Irishman. Though Leon’s new found love for NI may lead to promotion to Anglo.
Damn, you're right. I should have remembered that. It's just that "Shadowlands" is the only (I think?) Anthony Hopkins performance to make me cry. Like I said: interesting but doomed.
Intr some snobbish critic or other saying there was always a touch of the Belfast pork butcher about Lewis.
He won’t run as leader but I think he might call for Starmer to quit.
He should resign and see who else follows
To be fair, Miliband resigning would be a win for the country, whether anyone followed him or not...
On North Sea oil he’s wrong but on renewables in general what do you not agree with?
Bit of a nercro, but worth responding to:
Very little that Miliband is doing is good. Obviously there is the North Sea stupidity, but also consider:
- £20bn being spunked on CCS - Sizewell C (somehow they've taken the debacle of Hinckley Point C, and decided to do it again, with a contract considerably less favourable). - No attempt to contract South Korean nuclear at 1/6th the cost of HPC - Permitting more yet windfarms without plausible grid connections to use the power - Failing to put a rocket under National Grid to build suitable connections - particularly north-south interconnectors so at times windfarms are getting constraint payments in Scotland whilst the South West is being supplied by gas turbines. - Locking in expensive electricity for a generation via ludicrously expensive CfD payments for offshore wind - Failure to properly explore regional electricity pricing - Letting NESTO treat international interconnectors as "capacity" during capacity auctions - Completely failing to plan for the increases in electricity demand which would occur if all transport and space heating is actually electrified (from which one concludes no-one actually thinks this will happen, particularly wrt space heating).
I could go on, but that gives you a flavour of my issues with Miliband.
I'd be more impressed if he canned his CCS vanity projects, and gave the grid the £20bn to build more north-south interconnectors - that would suggest he at least had some awareness of what actually needs to happen.
Broadly disagree with this assessment.
1. Sceptical of CCS but to be clear it was a Sunak project, not a Miliband one, which he could cancel if he wants to. 2. Hinckley C is a disaster, but an inherited one which we will probably have to stick with to the bitter end. 3. South Korean nuclear energy won't be 1/6 cheaper in a UK implementation. It should be cheaper and quicker than the Hinckley C clusterfuck but that doesn't mean actually cheap and fast. For reference the Korean power station in UAE was late, massively over budget (no-one knows how much) and with quality issues. 4. There's a massive grid upgrade underway. Everything depends on this, but it is happening. 5. Recent offshore CfDs are decent value and a lot cheaper than new gas would be. I think the balance would switch to solar and batteries now the cost of both have fallen steeply. CfDs run for 15 to 20 years and then it's marginal pricing. 6. Fix the grid and you don't need regional pricing as no curtailment due to lack of capacity. 7. AFAIK no reason for interconnectors to be viewed as capacity but happy to be informed on this. 8. The expectation and planning is electrification instead of fossil fuels.
Most 2024 Labour voters have a positive opinion of Andy Burnham, while also tending to see Angela Rayner favourably. They are, though, much less keen on Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood
Commenters on this board regularly miss that Burnham is popular. We always hear "he couldn't win a by election". Well. He's consistently outpolled the Labour Party by a country mile in GM.
I’ve got no doubt he’s popular and would win a by-election. I also think he’d raise Labour’s poll ratings a lot in the short term.
But what exactly does he want to do? That’s what I am not sure about. I worry he’s like Sir Keir was, where we’re projecting things onto him without knowing anything.
All I’ve heard is he likes devolution.
Not being Keir Starmer would be a start. Also. Manchester is the fastest growing economy in the country. It's utterly, bewilderingly transformed from 30 years ago. OK. It didn't start with him, and he isn't solely responsible. But he hasn't screwed it up. Quite the opposite.
Okay but again, what does he actually want to do?
We agree he’s not Keir Starmer. Good.
But you know more than most, what would he actually DO?
What do you want him to do? No one has great answers. Not least because the electorate won't stand for them. Not being the very epitome of the London elite with an uncanny knack for making the worst decision at every opportunity and generally being unlikeable would be a start. Anything more call a magician.
So, as a country we have a huge fiscal deficit, around £150bn a year. We think that taxes are already too high and we think our public services are underfunded.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
The country badly needs a government of radical, competent pragmatists.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ? I can't really think of one.
I'm up for it. Tax system is fucked, public services both prohibitively expensive and crumbling due to lack of cash, economy actively working to stop economic output. A massive rethink is needed, starting with who are we are what are we doing?
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
I have seen some seriously alarming stats on US procurement in relation to Iran. They have used significant percentages of all of their guided missiles , Patriot missiles and guided bombs, coming up to half. In 6 weeks of war. Even the US is finding their resources seriously stretched by a relatively modest war.
It will take months or even years to make good what has been used. And I suspect that they will want to have much greater reserves in future.
It will, though production of some things (Tomahawks, for example) is a lot easier to scale up than (eg) Patriots.
Of course the US hasn't used any Javelins or HIMARS rockets in Iran, so the Estonia thing is hardly excused.
Irrespective of that, it has been US policy for decades to discourage Europe from building up its own manufacturing to replace US weapons. Whether you think they are being now reasonable or not with repectot other European customers, that policy is now effectively dead.
The club has received a full apology from Westminster Council following their serious misuse of a registered club badge, which was placed on an illustration of a white supremacist hate group member in a children's education booklet distributed in schools, creating a false and damaging image of the club.
The council have confirmed no more copies of the image with the club's logo will be made or distributed by them and all remaining material in their possession will be destroyed.
The club is still considering its legal position on the matter and are unable to comment further.
If nothing else comes from this conflict, getting these often dangerous and unseaworthy vessels out of the world’s oceans is definitely a good thing, not to mention that they almost exclusively trade with sanctioned nations such as Iran, Russia, North Korea…
Nothing else (good) is going to come from this conflict.
Just contacted my GP by Online booking. They replied "we have arranged a "soon type appointment"". It's in three weeks. Glad it was soon.
Ah, good old SoonTM.
I had to go to A&E last week. In and out in about an hour. Wound dressed and referred back to GP, where follow-up (with nurse) was on day specified, and again took about 10 minutes.
On the topic of medical anecdotes I spent some time yesterday waiting in the reception of a medical facility nearby with stunning views over the hills of the Sheeps Head and Mizen peninsulas (I was too mesmerised by the view to think to take a photo).
I would defy anyone to have had a better view from the reception of a medical facility, anywhere in the world.
Guy's hospital dental department is (ot at least was?) very high up the main building with fantastic views of London.
Transporting one of the most vital and flammable cargoes by some of the largest, slowest moving and least manoeuvrable vehicles we've ever invented, through the world's most unstable region does seem rather fraught when you step back and think about it.
Transporting one of the most vital and flammable cargoes by some of the largest, slow moving and least manoeuvrable vehicles we've ever invented, through the world's most unstable regions does seem rather fraught when you step back and think about it.
A former tanker captain I worked with, chose LNG ships.
Because, he said, the maintenance was actually done. And if other ships were getting in the way on a crowded strait, an announcement that an LNG tanker was coming through cleared the way nicely.
Pressure v asking for updates this is quite subjective .
It seems now that Robbins has confirmed Starmer didn’t know and wasn’t lying about knowing Mandelson had issues with the vetting , the media have now moved onto this ridiculous attempt re the Priviliges Committee .
This is irrelevant as has been said.
Starmer appointed Mandelson. Risk but backfired. He should resign for that.
PMs can't resign over every mistake. What, for you, makes Mandelson's appointment a resigning-level mistake?
Transporting one of the most vital and flammable cargoes by some of the largest, slowest moving and least manoeuvrable vehicles we've ever invented, through the world's most unstable region does seem rather fraught when you step back and think about it.
Ossoff: "I have zero interest in running for president in 2028. I love serving the state of Georgia. Let's keep our eyes on the ball, folks. We need to win decisively in Georgia and every battleground state and every competitive US House district this fall." https://x.com/atrupar/status/2047128549849465114
Transporting one of the most vital and flammable cargoes by some of the largest, slowest moving and least manoeuvrable vehicles we've ever invented, through the world's most unstable region does seem rather fraught when you step back and think about it.
Crewed by the cheapest mariners that can be found too.
Eric Trump on his $24 million Pentagon contract for robots: "It's gonna change industry, military application, hospitality. The uses are unlimited and I think it's a very beautiful thing, but we must win that race." https://x.com/atrupar/status/2047288979918078389
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
Surely that's always the case when you buy weapons manufactured in another country?
I'm sure anyone buying from South Korea knows that their purchases will be delayed if war resumes between North and South. I would be unsurprised if some military exports from Britain were delayed as a result of the Falklands War.
This is also why, for countries larger than Estonia, defence contracts often involve localised production, so as to avoid such issues (I believe Poland is having a factory built for some of their purchases from South Korea, for example)
But most countries don't repeatedly and randomly blunder into losing wars because their leaders are as corrupt and dumb as the US's.
The issue with Starmer and Labour is not so much the sleaze but the lack of judgment Starmer has displayed, which has led to the sleaze but which has also led to very poor policy and political decisions.
As I said a few days ago, it is a mistake to assume - as many did - that all lawyers have good judgment. Starmer may have been a fine lawyer within his specialism but outside it he has shown poor judgment. Look at his first choices in his Shadow Cabinet, for instance.
People also assumed that because he was DPP he would be good at running things well. Hmm. I was very heavily involved in the investigation and criminal trial of what still remains the UK's biggest fraud trial in 2011/2012. The CPS were prosecuting. This was right in the middle of Starmer's tenure as DPP. The CPS were awful: they tried to offload the prosecution's disclosure obligations onto us, a third party, contrary to the law, and I - having got proper criminal law advice - had to push them back twice and tell them in writing that, no, they could not delegate their obligations as prosecutor onto us, which was pretty ballsy of me. They conceded and then, rather disgracefully, made the police apologise to me for the CPS's failure. It was appalling. Though it had the welcome result that the police and I then worked really well together, as we muttered to each other about "bloody lawyers not knowing the law"! The CPS solicitor who attended the trial was asleep most of the time. If such a big trial was at all emblematic of the CPS under Starmer it really does not speak well of his management abilities. Mind you the SFO were even worse.
I can't help but think if he had been a bright thinking person he would have joined a private practice. He has so many flaws. If it hadn't been for the Public School he would have ended up in retail I guess, perhaps ever a store manager, but that would have been pushing his abilities.
When a disaster happens it is seen as a coming together of events. Surely it is only because or a coming together of events that Starmer ever got to uni and so became the menace he has undeniably been.
The most striking thing for me this week was the look of absolute bafflement on his face in the Commons when people were unimpressed and not satisfied by his grandeloquent statements. How could Kemi not accept and be delighted to accept his wonderful carefully crafted responses which showed that as always he was right all along.
More worryingly and Cyclefree seems to confirm this, in his previous life he could spout this balls and be thought a great man.
What Public School? Sir Keir passed the 11+ and went to the local grammar.
Although @A_View_From_Cumbria5 makes a valid general point about public school education allowing numpties to get into positions of power and influence way beyond their abilities.
If you listen to the people giving evidence at the Nottingham Inquiry or the Southport one or the Post Office one or one of the many others, the majority of people who were useless at their job and/or liars and/or malicious were not public school educated.
Our toleration of the second and third rate in so many of our institutions is a far bigger problem than the belief that some bullshitting arse like Johnson is somehow born to rule because he went to a posh private school.
Capability Brown Gertrude Jekyll Sir Christopher Wren Elizabeth Fry
Gertrude Jekyll, yes, a definite miss on my part.
Also, J.M.W. Turner* and Laura Knight.
(* But not Chocolate Box Constable - ugh!)
Pepys ?
Purcell should be in the list. Britain's greatest composer (with the possible exception of the almost forgotten, but enormously influential John Dunstaple).
Happy 23rd April, the day we English celebrate some Greek Christian bloke from modern-day Turkey being prosecuted for killing an endangered species...
More to the point it's Shakespeare's birthday*. An Englishman we can all be proud of.
Benpointer's idosyncratic list of greatest English men and women, in no particular order:
William Shakespeare Isaac Newton Florence Nightingale Charles Darwin George Stephenson Mary Anning Michael Faraday Horatio Nelson Jane Austen Elizabeth I Winston Churchill Isambard Kingdom Brunel
(*Probably)
Rosalind Franklin CS Lewis JRR Tolkien Philip Larkin Terry Pratchett Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
Some of these were very good in their field and have interesting stories (e.g. Anning, Franklin, Scott), but does that make them great?
Pressure v asking for updates this is quite subjective .
It seems now that Robbins has confirmed Starmer didn’t know and wasn’t lying about knowing Mandelson had issues with the vetting , the media have now moved onto this ridiculous attempt re the Priviliges Committee .
This is irrelevant as has been said.
Starmer appointed Mandelson. Risk but backfired. He should resign for that.
PMs can't resign over every mistake. What, for you, makes Mandelson's appointment a resigning-level mistake?
Ossoff: "I have zero interest in running for president in 2028. I love serving the state of Georgia. Let's keep our eyes on the ball, folks. We need to win decisively in Georgia and every battleground state and every competitive US House district this fall." https://x.com/atrupar/status/2047128549849465114
Don’t that all say that until around mid-2027, when they suddenly change their minds?
If the Trump funding faucet is ever turned off, the US defence contractors are in for a tough time.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” .. https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
I have seen some seriously alarming stats on US procurement in relation to Iran. They have used significant percentages of all of their guided missiles , Patriot missiles and guided bombs, coming up to half. In 6 weeks of war. Even the US is finding their resources seriously stretched by a relatively modest war.
It will take months or even years to make good what has been used. And I suspect that they will want to have much greater reserves in future.
It will, though production of some things (Tomahawks, for example) is a lot easier to scale up than (eg) Patriots.
Of course the US hasn't used any Javelins or HIMARS rockets in Iran, so the Estonia thing is hardly excused.
Irrespective of that, it has been US policy for decades to discourage Europe from building up its own manufacturing to replace US weapons. Whether you think they are being now reasonable or not with repectot other European customers, that policy is now effectively dead.
It's absolutely dead anyway. We can no longer trust them. The reputation of the US built up over 80 years post WW2 has been destroyed in not much more than a year.
Comments
I can only say that Manchester isn't bankrupt, unlike many places and is growing faster than the rest of the country.
We also have a significant trade deficit and have done for 25 years continuously. This means we are consuming more than we earn, consistently. Our wealth and asset base has been run down ruinously to pay for this. To fix it we need to reduce consumption, increase investment and significantly increase productivity.
We are now (along with almost every other western country) facing very serious chaos because of a completely stupid war against Iran. We can no longer rely on the US to give us a defence umbrella. Our armed forces have reached the point that the deployment of a single vessel is a serious challenge.
There are no simple answers to these problems. There may not be any answers at all. The best a government can do, as Osborne did in 2010-2019, is to take steps in the right direction. Reduce borrowing year on year without crashing the economy. Control government spending. End the triple lock. Focus available resources on those most in need. Use tax policies to encourage investment and training here not to penalise business. Maximise the use of our own resources, including North Sea oil. Support import substitution. Increase defence spending but also increase its utility by removing all of the accretions of senior staff for units and resources we no longer have.
Is there anyone, in any party, offering anything close to this? I am not seeing it. @BatteryCorrectHorse say that Angela Rayner is not a serious candidate capable of facing the challenges that we have. I agree. But who is?
https://x.com/globeeyenews/status/2047202497740321168
Germany plans to build Europe’s strongest military force by 2039.
The media are fed up because their narrative has bitten the dust . I think Starmer should go this year but they’re now flogging a dead horse .
Party members choosing, which is the default now- not fine.
Very little that Miliband is doing is good. Obviously there is the North Sea stupidity, but also consider:
- £20bn being spunked on CCS
- Sizewell C (somehow they've taken the debacle of Hinckley Point C, and decided to do it again, with a contract considerably less favourable).
- No attempt to contract South Korean nuclear at 1/6th the cost of HPC
- Permitting more yet windfarms without plausible grid connections to use the power
- Failing to put a rocket under National Grid to build suitable connections - particularly north-south interconnectors so at times windfarms are getting constraint payments in Scotland whilst the South West is being supplied by gas turbines.
- Locking in expensive electricity for a generation via ludicrously expensive CfD payments for offshore wind
- Failure to properly explore regional electricity pricing
- Letting NESTO treat international interconnectors as "capacity" during capacity auctions
- Completely failing to plan for the increases in electricity demand which would occur if all transport and space heating is actually electrified (from which one concludes no-one actually thinks this will happen, particularly wrt space heating).
I could go on, but that gives you a flavour of my issues with Miliband.
I'd be more impressed if he canned his CCS vanity projects, and gave the grid the £20bn to build more north-south interconnectors - that would suggest he at least had some awareness of what actually needs to happen.
I said long ago he needed time to show us what he’s for. But it’s 2026, nearly two years ago and I still have absolutely zero clue what he wants to do.
The press were right, there isn’t anything. For that reason, what is the point in him being there?
But Labour, and the UK, isn't overburdened with vibe right now.
But that can only get you so far. Johnson’s hope and optimism worked for ages until it collided with reality of what was actually going on.
If Burnham jumps on the controlled immigration, defence spending, crime and weaves a story he’ll do very well in my view. But I’ve not seen much of that just yet.
I remain to be convinced. But Labour should 100% get him into Parliament. Of that I am sure.
Temperature is important to pilots because air density varies quite dramatically with it, takeoff speeds are higher and takeoff runs longer on hot days. In the sandpit in summer, flights often get delayed when it’s very hot, the alternative being for the aircraft to lose weight (pax/cargo/fuel) before takeoff.
Is there a politician in the country who combines all three of those attributes ?
I can't really think of one.
Labour MP Graham Stringer tells @GBNEWS: "I don't think the PM can survive the Parliament" and should set out a timetable for his departure, the veteran Labour has just said.
The Ukraine drone squad are doing us out of a job!
https://news.sky.com/story/medical-data-of-half-a-million-britons-listed-for-sale-on-chinese-website-government-says-13535387
UK Biobank health data listed for sale in China, government confirms
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvxgl3n138o
Medical data of half a million Britons listed for sale on Chinese website, government says
The combination of considerably higher energy efficiency, and improvement in balance of payments owing the reduction in fuel imports means that the increase in generation ought to be well within the country's means.
There will be some shocks along the way, as increase in capacity will not match in lockstep with demand, but the technology continues to improve, and it is inevitable irrespective of government failings.
The switch in heating is likely to lag significantly behind that change, but similar considerations apply.
MPs of all parties then get the chance to have a VONC if they don't want that person as PM.
For what it's worth, I think that would have been the outcome if Labour had won a GE under Corbyn.
I think Anduril just want to join in the general boondogglery as a new entrant.
And of all the wrong decisions made by SKS, the most politically disastrous was blocking Burnham.
It rocket charged and solidified the rise of the Greens in the polls.
The United States has just nuked its own arms export business. Not with a missile. With a phone call.
Pete Hegseth rang Estonia’s defense minister and told him the HIMARS and Javelin deliveries are on hold.
Indefinitely. Months, not weeks. No timeline. No alternative. Just: sorry, we’re busy bombing Iran.
And that’s it. Twenty years of patient alliance-building, vaporized in a Monday morning call.
Here’s what European defense planners now know for certain: American weapons come with an asterisk. The asterisk reads “subject to cancellation whenever Washington decides its own adventure takes priority.” ..
https://x.com/Microinteracti1/status/2047183959818219617
I'm sure anyone buying from South Korea knows that their purchases will be delayed if war resumes between North and South. I would be unsurprised if some military exports from Britain were delayed as a result of the Falklands War.
This is also why, for countries larger than Estonia, defence contracts often involve localised production, so as to avoid such issues (I believe Poland is having a factory built for some of their purchases from South Korea, for example)
Our toleration of the second and third rate in so many of our institutions is a far bigger problem than the belief that some bullshitting arse like Johnson is somehow born to rule because he went to a posh private school. Elgar
CS Lewis
JRR Tolkien
Philip Larkin
Terry Pratchett
Robert Falcon Scott
(Unfortunately can't include Sylvia Plath nor Ernest Shackleton)
As for people writing her off without giving her a chance, against all the odds she's turned out to be pretty good at proving them wrong in her life to date.
Threshold for showing privately educated over promoted is not them being in most of the positions, it is much lower than that.
CCS for cement, chemicals and other CO2 producing industrial processes makes sense, other CCS is harder to justify
CfD is to encourage development of high upfront capital cost generating capacity e.g offshore wind, it won't happen without it
Sizewell C already had consent, Miliband gave FID, he'd have been denounced either way, it will probably be the last big Nuclear plant
NESO approach has been reformed to "first ready" clearing out the queue blocking, planning is being reformed to speed up grid connections
You criticise him for approving new generating capacity and then not planning for more demand
Interesting article on UK nuclear power https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-the-uk-learned-and-unlearned-nuclear/
I sail near a Magnox, it's now two great dirty white cubes and will be for getting on for the next 100 years when they plan on decommissioning the difficult stuff. It stopped generating over 20 years ago. 120 years of cleaning up the mess!!
Do you think Catholics are somehow not English? We built the cathedrals and churches in this country and the saints you're considering. And you don't want us to have a say ......
I wouldn't like to be forced to choose between the two.
https://x.com/daverich1/status/2047264113538035940
It will take months or even years to make good what has been used. And I suspect that they will want to have much greater reserves in future.
Though Leon’s new found love for NI may lead to promotion to Anglo.
During the process of gathering evidence in response to the Humble Address, in a futile attempt to protect his own back, the man tried to defy the will of parliament by refusing to release to the Cabinet Office the vetting summary that would have revealed that UKSV had recommended refusing clearance. The Cabinet Office had to resort to taking the "very unusual judgment" to go directly to UKSV to get the evidence.
Starmer was right to sack him.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/23/olly-robbins-refused-mandelson-vetting-summary-cabinet-office-cat-little
Their biggest problem is of course getting their foot in the door in the first place, as they’re not going to be offering the brass hats seven-figure retirement salaries and are being heavily lobbied against.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/23/eu-risks-fallout-with-us-trump-linked-balkans-pipeline-plan-intervention
1. Sceptical of CCS but to be clear it was a Sunak project, not a Miliband one, which he could cancel if he wants to.
2. Hinckley C is a disaster, but an inherited one which we will probably have to stick with to the bitter end.
3. South Korean nuclear energy won't be 1/6 cheaper in a UK implementation. It should be cheaper and quicker than the Hinckley C clusterfuck but that doesn't mean actually cheap and fast. For reference the Korean power station in UAE was late, massively over budget (no-one knows how much) and with quality issues.
4. There's a massive grid upgrade underway. Everything depends on this, but it is happening.
5. Recent offshore CfDs are decent value and a lot cheaper than new gas would be. I think the balance would switch to solar and batteries now the cost of both have fallen steeply. CfDs run for 15 to 20 years and then it's marginal pricing.
6. Fix the grid and you don't need regional pricing as no curtailment due to lack of capacity.
7. AFAIK no reason for interconnectors to be viewed as capacity but happy to be informed on this.
8. The expectation and planning is electrification instead of fossil fuels.
Of course the US hasn't used any Javelins or HIMARS rockets in Iran, so the Estonia thing is hardly excused.
Irrespective of that, it has been US policy for decades to discourage Europe from building up its own manufacturing to replace US weapons. Whether you think they are being now reasonable or not with repectot other European customers, that policy is now effectively dead.
Message from @MillwallFC
The club has received a full apology from Westminster Council following their serious misuse of a registered club badge, which was placed on an illustration of a white supremacist hate group member in a children's education booklet distributed in schools, creating a false and damaging image of the club.
The council have confirmed no more copies of the image with the club's logo will be made or distributed by them and all remaining material in their possession will be destroyed.
The club is still considering its legal position on the matter and are unable to comment further.
#millwallfootballclub #millwallsupportersclub
https://x.com/themillwallfans/status/2047264927753142491?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
Second Round at the Crucible.
Oversight chair James Comer told me members of his panel are open to a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell so that she would share info with Congress.
Robert Garcia said the move would be disrespectful to Epstein's victims + all Dems opposed it.
https://x.com/Hailey_Fuchs/status/2047062188720800036
Because, he said, the maintenance was actually done. And if other ships were getting in the way on a crowded strait, an announcement that an LNG tanker was coming through cleared the way nicely.
Ossoff: "I have zero interest in running for president in 2028. I love serving the state of Georgia. Let's keep our eyes on the ball, folks. We need to win decisively in Georgia and every battleground state and every competitive US House district this fall."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2047128549849465114
We were lucky it's worked so well for so long.
Eric Trump on his $24 million Pentagon contract for robots: "It's gonna change industry, military application, hospitality. The uses are unlimited and I think it's a very beautiful thing, but we must win that race."
https://x.com/atrupar/status/2047288979918078389
https://x.com/warmonitor3/status/2047294223636963514