Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
The Milburn interim report does not mention ghost jobs - at all. It recognises a mismatch in the employment/vacancy stats, but assumes the vacancies are real. This means the crisis is (wrongly!) positioned as a "transition" problem, requiring changes to welfare policy
The Milburn interim report does not mention ghost jobs - at all. It recognises a mismatch in the employment/vacancy stats, but assumes the vacancies are real. This means the crisis is (wrongly!) positioned as a "transition" problem, requiring changes to welfare policy
I know there is real concern in the US about the use of ghost jobs. Is there any handle on how widespread the practice is in the UK?
Using the level of vacancies to claim that we have a labour shortage and need more immigration is another way that statistic is misused. A vacancy doesn’t imply a shortage.
In the US, most wives as unhappy with their husbands as Nicola says she is would "file for divorce". Is there some reason she can't do that in Scotland?
Or is there some practical reason for her not doing so. (For example: Commonly in the US a wife can not be forced to testify against her husband (and vice versa). Is the same true in Scotland?)
In Scotland, unlike in England, you still need to prove that a marriage has irretrievably broken down before a divorce can be granted. There's a list of ways to prove it, the most common being separation of two years with the consent of the other party, or five years without consent. I'm not sure if they have been separated for two years, and if Murrell is refusing divorce I'm fairly sure they have not been separated for five years.
Interestingly another ground is behaviour so that it would be unreasonable to expect the spouse to live with the other. I would imagine this would qualify.
I'm afraid that you are a bit out of date. These were the original numbers but it was changed to 1 year with consent and 2 years without consent in 2006, 20 years ago now. Convictions for fraud in the realm of £400k is also undoubtedly unreasonable behaviour, especially when your wife was former first Minister and head of the party he was stealing from.
The complications here are that there are undoubtedly proceeds of crime orders in place against Murrell. The extent of these and their implications, not least on the matrimonial home but also on the matrimonial property generally, will have made working out a financial settlement not straightforward.
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
Enfield council now Conservative led after the Greens abstain on both leadership votes. What a turnaround in two cycles after hitting an all time low of just 17 out if 63 councillors.
Hopefully they can undo a lot of the damage Labour have done over the last decade and bin the ridiculous developments that are completely overcrowding the area. I hope they tell the mayor to go fuck himself, paving over every bit of green space in outer London with unwanted flats and high rises needs to stop. Enfield is functionally full much like the rest of London and it's time for councils to take a stand.
I see...
Not so long ago, it was "build, build, build" and scrap planning legislation because we need houses (or indeed flats).
Now, Enfield is apparently "full" - well, if it is, Newham must be full as well so presuambly our Council should join the anti-development Conservatives and block new developments.
Yet Sadiq is criticised for the low number of houses being built in London....
I'd start with net emigration for 5 years, halting all the fake student visas and expiring all visas for workers (plus dependents) who don't meet a £60k salary threshold in London. Reduce the non-citizen population before concreting over our green spaces.
Can I just be clear about the second point?
Anyone who is not a British citizen but has legal right to live here but doesn't earn £60k in London would be deported, thrown out of the country or simply told they can live somewhere else in England so Cornwall or Liverpool or Derby or wherever?
I'm trying to establish if there is a coherent policy underpinning this and even if you could get all these people and their dependents to leave London, is it your belief there are enough "natives" to do the jobs?
What number should the "non citizen" population be?
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
The Milburn interim report does not mention ghost jobs - at all. It recognises a mismatch in the employment/vacancy stats, but assumes the vacancies are real. This means the crisis is (wrongly!) positioned as a "transition" problem, requiring changes to welfare policy
The Milburn interim report does not mention ghost jobs - at all. It recognises a mismatch in the employment/vacancy stats, but assumes the vacancies are real. This means the crisis is (wrongly!) positioned as a "transition" problem, requiring changes to welfare policy
I know there is real concern in the US about the use of ghost jobs. Is there any handle on how widespread the practice is in the UK?
In the care home industry, vacancies went down quite a bit, after they closed off the visa comedy.
There are 79 vape shops on the Home Office’s public register of licensed visa sponsors. ‘Guardian Vapes Ltd’ in South Shields is licensed to sponsor overseas workers via the ‘Skilled Worker Visa’ route
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
"....unlike Sturgeon"? Who are you trying to kid?
1. Sturgeon wants us to believe that she innocently showed a monumental lack of interest in where all the trappings of personal wealth she wallowed in were coming from. 2. Then when others in the SNP did show interest in where the supposedly earmarked funds had disappeared to, she closed investigations down within the party leading to numerous resignations from those she blocked and with them gone took the opportunity to take direct responsibility for the party's finances herself. 3. And when the police came calling she likewise blocked all their questioning by taking a vow of omerta in the style of a mafia don, while all the time claiming that she was actively cooperating with them.
There's an appalling stench coming from this decaying Sturgeon and her accomplices.
The Milburn interim report does not mention ghost jobs - at all. It recognises a mismatch in the employment/vacancy stats, but assumes the vacancies are real. This means the crisis is (wrongly!) positioned as a "transition" problem, requiring changes to welfare policy
I know there is real concern in the US about the use of ghost jobs. Is there any handle on how widespread the practice is in the UK?
In the care home industry, vacancies went down quite a bit, after they closed off the visa comedy.
The US ghost job concern is it is a way of basically data scraping loads of people, then in the future maybe you go back to them when you do have a job. Maybe you just use the data for other purposes.
Enfield council now Conservative led after the Greens abstain on both leadership votes. What a turnaround in two cycles after hitting an all time low of just 17 out if 63 councillors.
Hopefully they can undo a lot of the damage Labour have done over the last decade and bin the ridiculous developments that are completely overcrowding the area. I hope they tell the mayor to go fuck himself, paving over every bit of green space in outer London with unwanted flats and high rises needs to stop. Enfield is functionally full much like the rest of London and it's time for councils to take a stand.
I see...
Not so long ago, it was "build, build, build" and scrap planning legislation because we need houses (or indeed flats).
Now, Enfield is apparently "full" - well, if it is, Newham must be full as well so presuambly our Council should join the anti-development Conservatives and block new developments.
Yet Sadiq is criticised for the low number of houses being built in London....
I'd start with net emigration for 5 years, halting all the fake student visas and expiring all visas for workers (plus dependents) who don't meet a £60k salary threshold in London. Reduce the non-citizen population before concreting over our green spaces.
Can I just be clear about the second point?
Anyone who is not a British citizen but has legal right to live here but doesn't earn £60k in London would be deported, thrown out of the country or simply told they can live somewhere else in England so Cornwall or Liverpool or Derby or wherever?
I'm trying to establish if there is a coherent policy underpinning this and even if you could get all these people and their dependents to leave London, is it your belief there are enough "natives" to do the jobs?
What number should the "non citizen" population be?
Also- are you sure about putting the line at £60k? That's a fair few of my colleagues gone, and I'm not sure I can cover all their lessons. I recognise that it's relative peanuts in finance...
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
The Milburn interim report does not mention ghost jobs - at all. It recognises a mismatch in the employment/vacancy stats, but assumes the vacancies are real. This means the crisis is (wrongly!) positioned as a "transition" problem, requiring changes to welfare policy
I know there is real concern in the US about the use of ghost jobs. Is there any handle on how widespread the practice is in the UK?
In the care home industry, vacancies went down quite a bit, after they closed off the visa comedy.
There are 79 vape shops on the Home Office’s public register of licensed visa sponsors. ‘Guardian Vapes Ltd’ in South Shields is licensed to sponsor overseas workers via the ‘Skilled Worker Visa’ route
Sir Keir Starmer has been following my examples of humblebrags/legendary modesty.
With characteristic lucidity, Tony Blair has set out his own contribution to the debate about the future of our country and the Labour Party. This is welcome, not least because I respect his opinion. He is one of few people in this country who knows what it is like to serve as Prime Minister and the only other living person to have secured a Labour majority. When he speaks on politics, I find it usually pays to listen.
Actually, this Starmer piece is worth a read if anybody can be bothered. It's a pretty good rebuttal of Blair's essay. And it's also a pretty good defence of the government's achievements so far, and its plans for the future. Maybe he should stand to be leader of the Labour Party.
I also found it compelling. Probably too late for him, but he's right to claim he has steadied the ship on economy whilst shifting away from austerity.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
There's a semi-decent case for starting again from scratch. But you'd still need to fund that properly.
"Police treated stab victim as a racist while he lay dying Officers handcuffed teenager as he bled to death after they fell for attacker’s ‘wicked’ lies" (£)
A Restore Britain Government will ban the Kirpan in public spaces.
One rule for all.
He's targeting Sikhs, not kirpans, as we would expect. Under "one rule for all" he would be addressing the nature of the blade, not the ritual object attached to an Indian religion.
If he's going "one rule for all" he also needs to deal with preppers who can take their otherwise illegal knives away on weekends in the wild, historical re-enactors, and all the other current lawful uses if you can prove a relevant purpose.
A kirpan can have no sharp blade and be an item hung around your neck like a pendant.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
I think is about what the process has always been, which all Governments lost track of.
1 - What are our requirements? 2 - What do we need to meet those requirements? 3 - Invest in 2 to meet 1, or GOTO 1 and try again.
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
The problem is that the PSA test is asymmetric - very very low false negative, high false positive.
So it’s very very unlikely to tell you that you don’t have cancer if you do have it. But it’s much more likely to tell you have cancer when you don’t.
If you get a positive, you check the result. Many people would, they think, collapse into a funk at this stage.
It's more than a funk though isn't it? They get treatment and the treatment is negative for their health e.g. impotence and there is actually no reason for the treatment.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
"Police treated stab victim as a racist while he lay dying Officers handcuffed teenager as he bled to death after they fell for attacker’s ‘wicked’ lies" (£)
A Restore Britain Government will ban the Kirpan in public spaces.
One rule for all.
Will they ban sgian dubhs as well?
They're generally plastic. Don't think there are many Scots attending weddings with offensive weapons these days.
Plenty are not plastic. Will they get banned too? It's a simple question, I'd be interested in the answer, as a Scot I don't like to see my culture coming under attack like this.
If they are seriously stabby, I would suggest a ban wouldn't be an extraordinary step. Highland dress is frequently worn to occasions with a lot of alcohol being consumed. As UD suggests, I think it's very rare to see one that would be more dangerous than a table knife.
So "Restore Britain" wants to ban part of a traditional British costume? What exactly is it they are restoring here?
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
"....unlike Sturgeon"? Who are you trying to kid?
1. Sturgeon wants us to believe that she innocently showed a monumental lack of interest in where all the trappings of personal wealth she wallowed in were coming from. 2. Then when others in the SNP did show interest in where the supposedly earmarked funds had disappeared to, she closed investigations down within the party leading to numerous resignations from those she blocked and with them gone took the opportunity to take direct responsibility for the party's finances herself. 3. And when the police came calling she likewise blocked all their questioning by taking a vow of omerta in the style of a mafia don, while all the time claiming that she was actively cooperating with them.
There's an appalling stench coming from this decaying Sturgeon and her accomplices.
Does this mean the SNP can no longer count on your vote?
Enfield council now Conservative led after the Greens abstain on both leadership votes. What a turnaround in two cycles after hitting an all time low of just 17 out if 63 councillors.
Hopefully they can undo a lot of the damage Labour have done over the last decade and bin the ridiculous developments that are completely overcrowding the area. I hope they tell the mayor to go fuck himself, paving over every bit of green space in outer London with unwanted flats and high rises needs to stop. Enfield is functionally full much like the rest of London and it's time for councils to take a stand.
I see...
Not so long ago, it was "build, build, build" and scrap planning legislation because we need houses (or indeed flats).
Now, Enfield is apparently "full" - well, if it is, Newham must be full as well so presuambly our Council should join the anti-development Conservatives and block new developments.
Yet Sadiq is criticised for the low number of houses being built in London....
I'd start with net emigration for 5 years, halting all the fake student visas and expiring all visas for workers (plus dependents) who don't meet a £60k salary threshold in London. Reduce the non-citizen population before concreting over our green spaces.
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
Sunak is wrong. It’s not about money. It’s about effectiveness. If you screen, you get large numbers of false positives.
Also those resulting follow up tests can have damaging lasting side effects largely to people who don't have cancer in the first place because of false positives. Also many true positives are for a harmless cancer that the person will live with and die with without the cancer ever impacting them. However once detected one can't know if it is safe or not so results in evasive treatment.
It is science not money for not giving the PSA routinely, but anyone can request one.
An AI consultant tells Axios one of their clients recently spent half a billion dollars in a single month after failing to put usage limits on Claude licenses for employees.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
Indeed, surely it would be worth building complimentary armed service vessels that accompany the aircraft carriers that act as motherships for multiple variants of drone type boats which can be at various distances from the carrier with anti aircraft and anti drone/ship eaponary which can be rotated into the mothership for rearming and maintenance so that you only need a couple of these motherships and the aircraft Carrie to replicate a carrier group in the sort of situations they might be exposed to. They also should only be in the North Atlantic and North Sea/Baltic and not involved in the pacific or gulf preferably.
An AI consultant tells Axios one of their clients recently spent half a billion dollars in a single month after failing to put usage limits on Claude licenses for employees.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
In the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
Sunak is wrong. It’s not about money. It’s about effectiveness. If you screen, you get large numbers of false positives.
Also those resulting follow up tests can have damaging lasting side effects largely to people who don't have cancer in the first place because of false positives. Also many true positives are for a harmless cancer that the person will live with and die with without the cancer ever impacting them. However once detected one can't know if it is safe or not so results in evasive treatment.
It is science not money for not giving the PSA routinely, but anyone can request one.
The clinical benefit of screening is under regular review. As techniques and treatments advance, universal screening might become the recommendation.
But for now that are a lot more cancers where early detection would have far larger benefits (pancreatic, for example).
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
I'm the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
A single E7 could set you back $0.75 Billion.
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
Indeed, surely it would be worth building complimentary armed service vessels that accompany the aircraft carriers that act as motherships for multiple variants of drone type boats which can be at various distances from the carrier with anti aircraft and anti drone/ship eaponary which can be rotated into the mothership for rearming and maintenance so that you only need a couple of these motherships and the aircraft Carrie to replicate a carrier group in the sort of situations they might be exposed to. They also should only be in the North Atlantic and North Sea/Baltic and not involved in the pacific or gulf preferably.
Carriers are only really useful outside the range of land based aircraft, either ours or the enemy, so are blue ocean vessels. Everywhere else they are just targets, and often sitting ducks.
A friend who is a retired RN submariner reckons that no surface warship lasts a week in a major war. Maybe he would say that, but it rings true to me
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
In the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
SpaceX is looking to do a version of Starlink for surveillance
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
The problem is that the PSA test is asymmetric - very very low false negative, high false positive.
So it’s very very unlikely to tell you that you don’t have cancer if you do have it. But it’s much more likely to tell you have cancer when you don’t.
If you get a positive, you check the result. Many people would, they think, collapse into a funk at this stage.
The follow up to test if it's cancer is invasive and unpleasant. It's not a no-brainer. But most people will feel they should. Then for the majority it will be all clear or a 'watch and wait' situation which means periodic scans. Depending on your psychology it can be better not to have the screening (psa) test in the first place unless you're high risk or symptomatic. I don't think I would.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
Carney is right about this and Blair is wrong. We need to remove our dependence on America.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
There's a semi-decent case for starting again from scratch. But you'd still need to fund that properly.
Yes, we are at the point where we need to regard our entire defence budget as sunk costs which produce absolutely no meaningful return and look to start meeting our defence needs with new money. We simply get nothing of any utility for our existing budget.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
I'm the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
A single E7 could set you back $0.75 Billion.
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
Which would you rather have?
LEO doesn't give you the full capability. What's lacking is medium orbit satellites , and it's a lot more difficult to out up quickly.
In the US, most wives as unhappy with their husbands as Nicola says she is would "file for divorce". Is there some reason she can't do that in Scotland?
Or is there some practical reason for her not doing so. (For example: Commonly in the US a wife can not be forced to testify against her husband (and vice versa). Is the same true in Scotland?)
In Scotland, unlike in England, you still need to prove that a marriage has irretrievably broken down before a divorce can be granted. There's a list of ways to prove it, the most common being separation of two years with the consent of the other party, or five years without consent. I'm not sure if they have been separated for two years, and if Murrell is refusing divorce I'm fairly sure they have not been separated for five years.
Interestingly another ground is behaviour so that it would be unreasonable to expect the spouse to live with the other. I would imagine this would qualify.
I'm afraid that you are a bit out of date. These were the original numbers but it was changed to 1 year with consent and 2 years without consent in 2006, 20 years ago now. Convictions for fraud in the realm of £400k is also undoubtedly unreasonable behaviour, especially when your wife was former first Minister and head of the party he was stealing from.
The complications here are that there are undoubtedly proceeds of crime orders in place against Murrell. The extent of these and their implications, not least on the matrimonial home but also on the matrimonial property generally, will have made working out a financial settlement not straightforward.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
"....unlike Sturgeon"? Who are you trying to kid?
1. Sturgeon wants us to believe that she innocently showed a monumental lack of interest in where all the trappings of personal wealth she wallowed in were coming from. 2. Then when others in the SNP did show interest in where the supposedly earmarked funds had disappeared to, she closed investigations down within the party leading to numerous resignations from those she blocked and with them gone took the opportunity to take direct responsibility for the party's finances herself. 3. And when the police came calling she likewise blocked all their questioning by taking a vow of omerta in the style of a mafia don, while all the time claiming that she was actively cooperating with them.
There's an appalling stench coming from this decaying Sturgeon and her accomplices.
Otoh after a police investigation she wasn't charged with being party to the embezzlement. That for me carries more weight than people who are very anti her politically opining that she must have been.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
"....unlike Sturgeon"? Who are you trying to kid?
1. Sturgeon wants us to believe that she innocently showed a monumental lack of interest in where all the trappings of personal wealth she wallowed in were coming from. 2. Then when others in the SNP did show interest in where the supposedly earmarked funds had disappeared to, she closed investigations down within the party leading to numerous resignations from those she blocked and with them gone took the opportunity to take direct responsibility for the party's finances herself. 3. And when the police came calling she likewise blocked all their questioning by taking a vow of omerta in the style of a mafia don, while all the time claiming that she was actively cooperating with them.
There's an appalling stench coming from this decaying Sturgeon and her accomplices.
Otoh after a police investigation she wasn't charged with being party to the embezzlement. That for me carries more weight than people who are very anti her politically opining that she must have been.
It wasn't just that she wasn't charged, the police openly stated they believed there was no case against her. It's also quite possible to believe she's dodgy, and at the same time there's no serious prospect of proving anything criminal in court.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
In the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
SpaceX is looking to do a version of Starlink for surveillance
Sure. There's also a European system already with satellites in orbit doing something similar.
But managing air operations, vectoring long range air to air missiles ageist adversaries, etc, from orbit, to replace what an E-7 can do, is still a ways off, AFAIK.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
I'm the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
A single E7 could set you back $0.75 Billion.
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
Which would you rather have?
LEO doesn't give you the full capability. What's lacking is medium orbit satellites , and it's a lot more difficult to out up quickly.
The higher the altitude, the more power to run the radars.
The medium altitude idea is an attempt to design a system that won’t, inevitably, end up as a single source bid from SpaceX. Fewer, larger satellites, which can be expensive enough for the legacy vendors to have a go.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
"....unlike Sturgeon"? Who are you trying to kid?
1. Sturgeon wants us to believe that she innocently showed a monumental lack of interest in where all the trappings of personal wealth she wallowed in were coming from. 2. Then when others in the SNP did show interest in where the supposedly earmarked funds had disappeared to, she closed investigations down within the party leading to numerous resignations from those she blocked and with them gone took the opportunity to take direct responsibility for the party's finances herself. 3. And when the police came calling she likewise blocked all their questioning by taking a vow of omerta in the style of a mafia don, while all the time claiming that she was actively cooperating with them.
There's an appalling stench coming from this decaying Sturgeon and her accomplices.
Even if you ignore the fact. as I said, that Sturgeon didn't do the fraud whereas Farage did do the much larger bribe, has Reform even had any investigations into its leader's behaviour that it can close down? You seem remarkably uninterested in stench coming from that direction.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
If the government wanted to "interfere" with Russian ships in la manche then they could do it by boarding from helicopters launched from Yeovil or similar. It's got fuck all to do with availability of ships. The UK just doesn't want to do it, probably because of the risk of it all fucking up live on Sky News and the very tenuous legal basis for it.
I didn't watch the Felton video because if I want to watch a baldy heart attack case crying over nothing I've got Paddy on Emmerdale.
It's no mystery how we got here:
Cost of Trident boats leads to force imbalance. Ditto carriers. Basing all subs in Scotland for political reasoms leads to mass exodus of technical trades. Continuous erosion of pension rights and service conditions leads to the retention apocalypse.
A perceived lack of surface escorts (what would we be doing differently if we had them?) is a symptom and not in the top ten problems facing the RN.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
I'm the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
A single E7 could set you back $0.75 Billion.
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
Which would you rather have?
That's the feud with Musk on one side, is it not? But aiui it's done and dusted. The USAF killed the ecosystem by cancelling their order for 26 E7 in mid-late 2025, which made it not viable.
Then NATO followed by pivoting their joint order for 6 to Saab Gobaleye instead, which will be one European standard. Do Airbus have something in the same area (I don't know)?
Then iirc Italy were the only European country to decide, and they went away too.
Then finally Canada have done this.
We are still up in the air, as iirc we have 3 half way through procurement, and I think we have the expensive kits of parts from a further two already here. Australia have an established fleet.
Apparently it contains no sex scenes though, contrary to its billing. I'm not really sure it's that bad that he's had a crack at a novel and put it out there. If anything it enhances my judgement of him.
I think the anti-Plumberism is getting more than a little silly now. I expect we will soon be reading scandalised accusations that he refused to eat spinach as a young boy and that multiple people have said he has smelly feet.
Apparently it contains no sex scenes though, contrary to its billing. I'm not really sure it's that bad that he's had a crack at a novel and put it out there. If anything it enhances my judgement of him.
I think the anti-Plumberism is getting more than a little silly now. I expect we will soon be reading scandalised accusations that he refused to eat spinach as a young boy and that multiple people have said he has smelly feet.
The scurinty he has gone under seems really OTT, he isn't standing to be PM and isn't leader of a party. I think highlighting some of the dodgy views is absolutely valid*, no issue with that, but it has got quite silly now, bloke writes an e-book scandal. I think if we went through every thing every MP has ever done in their lives it would fill every page of the papers daily forever.
* although the spin on some of those was ridicilious i.e. man advocates torture was actually man makes joke about people eating their chips by the sea.
“We have taught AI to manipulate us into outsourcing our human connection through a tiny little screen”
AI pioneer Mo Gawdat says it is “very dangerous” to encourage “vulnerable” people to form connections with AI chatbots, when we should have “human connection”
This really bugs me. He was business dev at Google which he left years ago and now he an author and podcaster who interviews people. I am sure a very smart guy, but AFAIK he has zero academic publications, he certainly not seen a "AI pioneer", that is reserved for the likes of Hinton, LeCun, Kaparthy, the guys who came up with Transformers or Diffusion (Score Matching) Models that drive LLMs and Gen AI, etc etc etc.
US government just teased out aliens.gov, Leon spunked his load....to find it was a bait and switch and redirect takes you to a live interactive map of illegal immigrant arrests, as it seems the “alien” hype was meant to prelude the interface that tracks ICE’s activities apprehending criminal illegal aliens.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
The Russian black sea fleet, which was quite a bit bigger operationally than our navy, has been almost entirely destroyed by a country that doesn't even have a navy but does have a series of ever more ingenious drones. I frankly wonder if the navies of 20 years hence will be manned at all. I certainly see no role for conventional ships with the possible exception of carriers that can project air power long distances.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
Indeed, surely it would be worth building complimentary armed service vessels that accompany the aircraft carriers that act as motherships for multiple variants of drone type boats which can be at various distances from the carrier with anti aircraft and anti drone/ship eaponary which can be rotated into the mothership for rearming and maintenance so that you only need a couple of these motherships and the aircraft Carrie to replicate a carrier group in the sort of situations they might be exposed to. They also should only be in the North Atlantic and North Sea/Baltic and not involved in the pacific or gulf preferably.
Carriers are only really useful outside the range of land based aircraft, either ours or the enemy, so are blue ocean vessels. Everywhere else they are just targets, and often sitting ducks.
A friend who is a retired RN submariner reckons that no surface warship lasts a week in a major war. Maybe he would say that, but it rings true to me
Don't think the manned submersibles would last either with the rise of USVs. The nuclear deterrent might not be the deterrent we thought it was when its being shadowed by long range drones.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
I'm the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
A single E7 could set you back $0.75 Billion.
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
There hasn't been a major sea battle since WW2. We've had Nuclear hunter killers since the sixties and only fired once, and that was sinking the Begrano. Include Trident and we spend more on the Navy than any other service yet the other services are used more often and the Army, which gets least, the most.
We talk about our global role but apart from a cluster of small colonial left overs we have no real important assets.
The Telegraph fumes about Diego Garcia but without the Americans we couldn't aafford to keep it open. What we we do if we could, threaten India? Realistically beyond our own teritorial waters almost everything we have costs more to defend than it's worth or is in no real danger.
We aren't masters of our destiny, we are prisoners of our past. We portray ourselves as a trading nation but we trade more by keyboard than sea, we send most of our exports to a continent we can see on a clear day.
The basic premise of his criticisms are sound but they miss the point.
Even if we did have sixteen frigates, which we won't, at best we would be able to put two in each of the North and South Atlantic ,the Indian and perhaps three in the Pacific, or we could send out two small Taskforces around each of our two Carriers. What could they do. Possibly see off Argentina again but what else. There are over 5Ok sea going merchant vessels in the world, even with ten Frigates at seas they have to protect 5,000 ships each.
Even if the UK was to rebuild the Navy it wouldn't be able to come anywhere near being able to play a decisive role in any major conflict let alone take on a major adversary on it's own.
Now two points here!
First as an SNP member I know that my Party has the silly idea that we will build and operate Frigates too, but seriously we can do pretty much anything we need to do with UAV's far more cheaply than with frigates as we have nothing to protect beyond 200 miles and the bit that far out beyond Rockall is too deep for oil and like UK overseas territories would cost more to patrol to protect fish than the fish are worth.
That policy has nothing to do with how best to protect Scottland and everything to do with protecting shipbuilding jobs.
Secondly, I think you can sum up much of UK post war defence and foreign policy as "The Importance of Being Important!"
Advocates of a large Navy talk about British Interest and the Important role we play, but is that because it's true or because they need it to be. Are they focusing on what they want to believe we should be doing and want to believe we coudld do, rather than being realistic about what even a bigger Navy would be capable of?
Peter.
I think is about what the process has always been, which all Governments lost track of.
1 - What are our requirements? 2 - What do we need to meet those requirements? 3 - Invest in 2 to meet 1, or GOTO 1 and try again.
That is how the Royal Navy ended up with two aircraft carriers designed to operate alongside US carrier groups.
Enfield council now Conservative led after the Greens abstain on both leadership votes. What a turnaround in two cycles after hitting an all time low of just 17 out if 63 councillors.
Hopefully they can undo a lot of the damage Labour have done over the last decade and bin the ridiculous developments that are completely overcrowding the area. I hope they tell the mayor to go fuck himself, paving over every bit of green space in outer London with unwanted flats and high rises needs to stop. Enfield is functionally full much like the rest of London and it's time for councils to take a stand.
Thanks for proving (not that it was needed) that once people get a bit of money they become NIMBYs...
I've been saying for the last three years the housing crisis should be solved by reducing the population, not by concreting over green spaces. If only the Tories had been paying attention to the insane population growth under Boris then they might still be in power.
The 'native' population is reducing according to the ONS with deaths outnumbering births from 2026 onwards. The choice is whether we want this to continue, or to 'top up', and how much to 'top up' by. Fully within the control of the government via the Visa programmes.
Canada buys European. Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States. https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
There is a faction fight in US DoD procurement - one group wants to ditch E-7 and follow ons and go with satellite based systems. The other is demanding more money for Boeing.
It's not either or; for now they are complementary.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ? And that will take some time.
I'm the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
A single E7 could set you back $0.75 Billion.
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
Which would you rather have?
That's the feud with Musk on one side, is it not? But aiui it's done and dusted. The USAF killed the ecosystem by cancelling their order for 26 E7 in mid-late 2025, which made it not viable.
Then NATO followed by pivoting their joint order for 6 to Saab Gobaleye instead, which will be one European standard. Do Airbus have something in the same area (I don't know)?
Then iirc Italy were the only European country to decide, and they went away too.
Then finally Canada have done this.
We are still up in the air, as iirc we have 3 half way through procurement, and I think we have the expensive kits of parts from a further two already here. Australia have an established fleet.
GlobalEye, as delivered so far, is not a top tier system being compromised by its size (for both crew and sensors) and its multi-role capabilities.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
If Farage's £5,000,000 is not a bribe, then will you accept it is at least "contingent corruption"?
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Except that Farage himself said it wasn't a political donation which is why it didn't need to be declared.
Now I agree Farage is untrustworthy but it does make your argument difficult.
Today’s decision on prostate cancer screening will be hugely disappointing to the thousands of brave men who have campaigned for a targeted screening programme to prevent more families from losing a father, a son or a brother before their time. For just 0.01% of the NHS budget, we could've had a targeted screening programme that would have saved lives.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
The problem is that the PSA test is asymmetric - very very low false negative, high false positive.
So it’s very very unlikely to tell you that you don’t have cancer if you do have it. But it’s much more likely to tell you have cancer when you don’t.
If you get a positive, you check the result. Many people would, they think, collapse into a funk at this stage.
As you say, that false positives outweigh genuine ones, coupled with the invasive and potentially damaging nature of further investigation and treatment, coupled with the fact that many of the genuine positives are developing so slowly that the already elderly patients will die with rather than of it, makes taking the test a real double edged sword. I’ve had one and thankfully it came back negative, but I am not sure I’d rush to have another.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Farage started talking a lot more about how cryptocurrencies are good and Reform have adopted very pro-crypto policies. Reform get most of their money from a crypto billionaire. Coincidence?
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Farage started talking a lot more about how cryptocurrencies are good and Reform have adopted very pro-crypto policies. Reform get most of their money from a crypto billionaire. Coincidence?
Apparently it is not just Reform councillors finding life gets in the way of campaign promises.
Good news. Pedestrianisation of Oxford Street is desperately needed and is in the interests of London as a whole, despite what a few vocal Westminster residents think.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
If Farage's £5,000,000 is not a bribe, then will you accept it is at least "contingent corruption"?
Nothing at all wrong with secret multi-million pound bungs from foreign billionaires to our political leaders is there?
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Farage started talking a lot more about how cryptocurrencies are good and Reform have adopted very pro-crypto policies. Reform get most of their money from a crypto billionaire. Coincidence?
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Sorry to be blunt, but what utter tosh.
Farage's gift is now under investigation for its "gift" status and whether Farage should have declared it once in the HoC. We await the result.
Nathan Gill took money from Russia in order to promote Russia. A distinct and illegal conflict of interest. Farage took money from a Crypto billionaire and has spoken favourably about Crypto. At the very least the media chasing down Nicola Sturgeon should be having a look. But it's Farage, so we can give him a free pass.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Sorry to be blunt, but what utter tosh.
Farage's gift is now under investigation for its "gift" status and whether Farage should have declared it once in the HoC. We await the result.
Nathan Gill took money from Russia in order to promote Russia. A distinct and illegal conflict of interest. Farage took money from a Crypto billionaire and has spoken favourably about Crypto. At the very least the media chasing down Nicola Sturgeon should be having a look. But it's Farage, so we can give him a free pass.
He’s under investigation in Parliament and the Electoral Commission are looking into the matter too. There are numerous headlines about multiple aspects of the £5 million and he’s frequently asked questions about it. I don’t think he’s being given a free pass.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
If Farage's £5,000,000 is not a bribe, then will you accept it is at least "contingent corruption"?
Nothing at all wrong with secret multi-million pound bungs from foreign billionaires to our political leaders is there?
IMO MPs should not be getting donations or contributions to office costs etc from anyone. They have a salary and expenses to run their offices. And that should be it. No donations or benefits in kind from lobby groups, charities or anyone else. These create a conflict of interest and simply listing them on a register is not sufficient to deal with the impression - and in some cases, the reality - that some MPs are bought.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Sorry to be blunt, but what utter tosh.
Farage's gift is now under investigation for its "gift" status and whether Farage should have declared it once in the HoC. We await the result.
Nathan Gill took money from Russia in order to promote Russia. A distinct and illegal conflict of interest. Farage took money from a Crypto billionaire and has spoken favourably about Crypto. At the very least the media chasing down Nicola Sturgeon should be having a look. But it's Farage, so we can give him a free pass.
Added to that, it's money from someone domiciled overseas, with a very large commercial interest in crypto policy.
..As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected... Farage's "policy aims" on that are hardly the reason for his popularity with the parts of the electorate which are keen on him to do what "he was always going to do".
Emmeline Pankhurst did not win women the right to vote, but it would also be fun to see her defend the Empire in argument with Gandhi.
I suppose there’s a kind of balance there, 2 Conservative eugenicists v. 2 panel members who afaik were not in favour of sterilising the feeble minded.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
If Farage's £5,000,000 is not a bribe, then will you accept it is at least "contingent corruption"?
Nothing at all wrong with secret multi-million pound bungs from foreign billionaires to our political leaders is there?
IMO MPs should not be getting donations or contributions to office costs etc from anyone. They have a salary and expenses to run their offices. And that should be it. No donations or benefits in kind from lobby groups, charities or anyone else. These create a conflict of interest and simply listing them on a register is not sufficient to deal with the impression - and in some cases, the reality - that some MPs are bought.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
If Farage's £5,000,000 is not a bribe, then will you accept it is at least "contingent corruption"?
Nothing at all wrong with secret multi-million pound bungs from foreign billionaires to our political leaders is there?
IMO MPs should not be getting donations or contributions to office costs etc from anyone. They have a salary and expenses to run their offices. And that should be it. No donations or benefits in kind from lobby groups, charities or anyone else. These create a conflict of interest and simply listing them on a register is not sufficient to deal with the impression - and in some cases, the reality - that some MPs are bought.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Sorry to be blunt, but what utter tosh.
Farage's gift is now under investigation for its "gift" status and whether Farage should have declared it once in the HoC. We await the result.
Nathan Gill took money from Russia in order to promote Russia. A distinct and illegal conflict of interest. Farage took money from a Crypto billionaire and has spoken favourably about Crypto. At the very least the media chasing down Nicola Sturgeon should be having a look. But it's Farage, so we can give him a free pass.
Labour took millions from an eco energy giant. They promote eco energy and block new oil and gas. Where’s the difference ?
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Apart from the fact the money went to Farage personally so it wasn't a party donation, many bribes don't come with a direct quid pro quo "If I give you X, you will do Y". Which is why the Bribery Act doesn't require an explicit quid pro quo. The important important is whether the financial advantage Harborne gave to Farage is a proper one. The inappropriately large amount of money, that it wasn't declared, that no bona fide reason has been given for the gift, strongly indicates a bribe.
Sky News came to Ireland in an attempt to question Nicola Sturgeon about claims she shut down scrutiny of SNP finances at the same time her ex-husband Peter Murrell stole £400k from party. She entered the kitchen to avoid questions with security pushing me away.
I hope the kitchen was well stocked with 7 kettles and 3 coffee machines so she felt at home.
Sky could spend one tenth of the effort questioning Nigel Farage about his £5 million bribe. Yes I understand bribery is a different thing from theft but (a) he actually did it unlike Sturgeon; (b) he is still party leader liable to become Prime Minister; and (c) it's a lot more money.
I know I sound like a broken record on this, but what "Bribe"? As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected.
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash. Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
The difference is that Labour and the trade unions don't lie about this. Whereas Farage has continually changed his story about where he gets his income from.
Comments
We are not doing a national screening because the test is basically shit.
Dr Robert Laurenson
@RobLaurensonD4P
We need innovation to find better tests.
This isn’t shutting the door on prostate cancer screening programmes. This is simply saying that our current means of testing, if done by a screening programme, would cause more harm.
This is also not saying if you have symptoms there are no tests.
If you are worried about your prostate come to your doctor and have a fully informed conversation. You may need to be tested!
https://x.com/RobLaurensonD4P/status/2059984152619819296
https://x.com/elladorn_/status/2060036342302617653?s=20
I know there is real concern in the US about the use of ghost jobs. Is there any handle on how widespread the practice is in the UK?
The complications here are that there are undoubtedly proceeds of crime orders in place against Murrell. The extent of these and their implications, not least on the matrimonial home but also on the matrimonial property generally, will have made working out a financial settlement not straightforward.
So it’s very very unlikely to tell you that you don’t have cancer if you do have it. But it’s much more likely to tell you have cancer when you don’t.
If you get a positive, you check the result. Many people would, they think, collapse into a funk at this stage.
Anyone who is not a British citizen but has legal right to live here but doesn't earn £60k in London would be deported, thrown out of the country or simply told they can live somewhere else in England so Cornwall or Liverpool or Derby or wherever?
I'm trying to establish if there is a coherent policy underpinning this and even if you could get all these people and their dependents to leave London, is it your belief there are enough "natives" to do the jobs?
What number should the "non citizen" population be?
https://x.com/procurementfile/status/2060091840859128316?s=20
1. Sturgeon wants us to believe that she innocently showed a monumental lack of interest in where all the trappings of personal wealth she wallowed in were coming from.
2. Then when others in the SNP did show interest in where the supposedly earmarked funds had disappeared to, she closed investigations down within the party leading to numerous resignations from those she blocked and with them gone took the opportunity to take direct responsibility for the party's finances herself.
3. And when the police came calling she likewise blocked all their questioning by taking a vow of omerta in the style of a mafia don, while
all the time claiming that she was actively cooperating with them.
There's an appalling stench coming from this decaying Sturgeon and her accomplices.
It is an absolute disgrace that our navy was allowed to run down to the extent it has, that Russian shadow ships can daily run through the north sea and the channel with us having no capability of interfering and that we have lost the ability to project power or even aid around the world. But having got to this catastrophic situation I really don't think that the answer is building the ships we should have in service now. They will be obsolete before they come into service.
But you'd still need to fund that properly.
If he's going "one rule for all" he also needs to deal with preppers who can take their otherwise illegal knives away on weekends in the wild, historical re-enactors, and all the other current lawful uses if you can prove a relevant purpose.
A kirpan can have no sharp blade and be an item hung around your neck like a pendant.
Not exactly a shocker, but certainly a significant policy change.
Massive procurement shocker out of Ottawa. PM Mark Carney just announced Canada is bypassing the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, and picking Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred AEW platform. The GlobalEye will be built on Canada’s home-grown Bombardier Global 6500 airframe, which will be a huge win for domestic tech transfer. However, it's also being seen as a clear political move to reduce reliance on the United States.
https://x.com/RealAirPower1/status/2059963938188505126
1 - What are our requirements?
2 - What do we need to meet those requirements?
3 - Invest in 2 to meet 1, or GOTO 1 and try again.
It is science not money for not giving the PSA routinely, but anyone can request one.
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs
Its been reported it was Amazon. I bet Jeff was really happy about that.
Without a lot more satellites in more orbits, you can't duplicate AEW capability, I think ?
And that will take some time.
In the meantime, the US's existing AEW fleet is barely adequate for serious operations, even when it's flyable.
As techniques and treatments advance, universal screening might become the recommendation.
But for now that are a lot more cancers where early detection would have far larger benefits (pancreatic, for example).
So for a fleet of 20, you could buy enough LEO satellites to give you global, 24/7 coverage. That’s been demo’s already to the Pentagon.
Which would you rather have?
A friend who is a retired RN submariner reckons that no surface warship lasts a week in a major war. Maybe he would say that, but it rings true to me
What's lacking is medium orbit satellites , and it's a lot more difficult to out up quickly.
Exact details classified.
It's also quite possible to believe she's dodgy, and at the same time there's no serious prospect of proving anything criminal in court.
There's also a European system already with satellites in orbit doing something similar.
But managing air operations, vectoring long range air to air missiles ageist adversaries, etc, from orbit, to replace what an E-7 can do, is still a ways off, AFAIK.
The medium altitude idea is an attempt to design a system that won’t, inevitably, end up as a single source bid from SpaceX. Fewer, larger satellites, which can be expensive enough for the legacy vendors to have a go.
I didn't watch the Felton video because if I want to watch a baldy heart attack case crying over nothing I've got Paddy on Emmerdale.
It's no mystery how we got here:
Cost of Trident boats leads to force imbalance.
Ditto carriers.
Basing all subs in Scotland for political reasoms leads to mass exodus of technical trades.
Continuous erosion of pension rights and service conditions leads to the retention apocalypse.
A perceived lack of surface escorts (what would we be doing differently if we had them?) is a symptom and not in the top ten problems facing the RN.
@SangitaMyska
EXCLUSIVE: Makerfield's Reform candidate wrote racy book packed with Nazis, "throbbing" and cleavage - FULL REVIEW
https://x.com/SangitaMyska/status/2060097460740014467
The link for anyone who wants to buy it:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blood-Waltz-Rob-Kenyon-ebook/dp/B073VP4LLX/
Then NATO followed by pivoting their joint order for 6 to Saab Gobaleye instead, which will be one European standard. Do Airbus have something in the same area (I don't know)?
Then iirc Italy were the only European country to decide, and they went away too.
Then finally Canada have done this.
We are still up in the air, as iirc we have 3 half way through procurement, and I think we have the expensive kits of parts from a further two already here. Australia have an established fleet.
I think the anti-Plumberism is getting more than a little silly now. I expect we will soon be reading scandalised accusations that he refused to eat spinach as a young boy and that multiple people have said he has smelly feet.
* although the spin on some of those was ridicilious i.e. man advocates torture was actually man makes joke about people eating their chips by the sea.
AI pioneer Mo Gawdat says it is “very dangerous” to encourage “vulnerable” people to form connections with AI chatbots, when we should have “human connection”
https://x.com/bbcquestiontime/status/2060097542247899174?s=20
This really bugs me. He was business dev at Google which he left years ago and now he an author and podcaster who interviews people. I am sure a very smart guy, but AFAIK he has zero academic publications, he certainly not seen a "AI pioneer", that is reserved for the likes of Hinton, LeCun, Kaparthy, the guys who came up with Transformers or Diffusion (Score Matching) Models that drive LLMs and Gen AI, etc etc etc.
Nicola Sturgeon never saw some of Peter Murrell's illegally bought items because she didn't spend 'any time' in her kitchen
To bribe someone requires them to do something they wouldn't otherwise do in return for the cash.
Giving a political donation merely indicates that donor is probably aligned with the policy aims of the person they are hoping will be elected.
The only notable things about this particular donation are a) that it's large by UK standards, and b) that Farage possibly played fast and loose with the rules around declaring it.
If we want to talk about dirty political donations, and organisation which do get to influence policy in return for hard cash, can I interest anyone in the self serving relationship between a number of large trade unions and the Labour Party? Or is it only dirty cash when it's large donations to causes with which we disagree?
Jeff not having a good few weeks. Amazon spending $500 million on AI credits then this.
After his three-year investigation, Gabriel Gatehouse is starting to believe that the US spy agency could actually have spiked goalkeeper Gordon Banks’s beer in Mexico
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/did-the-cia-poison-englands-chance-of-being-1970-world-cup-champions
It's basically a long plug for a podcast but... maybe.
The leader of Westminster City Council said a legal challenge against pedestrianisation was ‘simply impossible at this late stage’
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/oxford-street-pedestrianisation-tories-judicial-review-b1284031.html
Apparently it is not just Reform councillors finding life gets in the way of campaign promises.
The most spectacular rocket explosion since N1 just happened in Florida
New Glenn was due to play a starring role in NASA’s Artemis Program.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/05/blue-origins-new-glenn-rocket-just-exploded-during-a-static-fire-test/
The RAF would literally rather have nothing.
Now I agree Farage is untrustworthy but it does make your argument difficult.
LibDem GAIN from Con.
🔶 LibDem, Beth Rowe, 240, 29.3%
🔴 LAB, 185, 22.6%
➡️ REF, 139, 17.0%
🏘️ Ind1, 94, 11.5%
🔵 Con, 84, 10.3%
🙋🏼♂️ Ind2, 77, 9.4%
Close though.
Ah, first past the post, were you can win by getting less than a third of the votes.
https://x.com/bbcquestiontime/status/2060089645673640380?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Farage's gift is now under investigation for its "gift" status and whether Farage should have declared it once in the HoC. We await the result.
Nathan Gill took money from Russia in order to promote Russia. A distinct and illegal conflict of interest. Farage took money from a Crypto billionaire and has spoken favourably about Crypto. At the very least the media chasing down Nicola Sturgeon should be having a look. But it's Farage, so we can give him a free pass.
And as for second jobs I set out a workable and sensible solution here - https://www.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2021/11/12/honourable-members/
NEW THREAD
..As far as I can see, he’s has a shed load of money not to *change* something, but in the hopes that he will be elected, and then do what he was always going to do once elected...
Farage's "policy aims" on that are hardly the reason for his popularity with the parts of the electorate which are keen on him to do what "he was always going to do".