(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 14m Going to be a lot of policy and textual analysis of Andy Burnham's speech. But all that really matters at the moment is that he looks a bit different and sounds a bit different. And that should be enough to get him a hearing from the British public. Which is what he needs.
I’m certainly happy with what I heard. Snippets only I’ve been out for a bike ride earlier.
Like all,here, I wish him well and hope he succeeds. I’ve said I won’t vote Labour again after the Starmer disaster. I’ve even said I’d consider Reform. However if he does succeed in, at least turning it around, and does start doing stuff that genuinely helps the regions I’d consider labour again
However Burnham needs to realise the North is not JUST Manchester.
Is Manchester really the North? Same with Yorkshire. Growing up in Scotland and Tyneside I've always struggled to think of places you can drive to from London in time for breakfast as the "North"...
You can tell a true northerner: he believes that the north ends 15 miles south of where he was born.
I'm a true northener, by residence. And the north ends somewhere around Basildon
Where’s the furthest North sign on the M1, A1 or M6, that says “THE NORTH” on it?
ISTR one on the M1 around Sheffield, but it’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere near there.
Have we really turned A/C into another fucking culture war?
If we have I am blameless. No strong view either way. I'm an A/C centrist.
It's quite simple. If the temperature goes over25 degrees, the excess deaths begin. By the time we get the 37 degrees, there are quite a lot of them.
For added hilarity, hospitals are part of this problem.
I can confirm that my hospital appointment had an airconditioned waiting room.
Yes, there are reports of heat exhausted doctors having to take time out in the air conditioned receptions of some hospitals; inpatients not so lucky..
A lot of hospitals just aren't set up for excessively hot weather, and changing that will be very expensive.
Do Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband understand that the Western world’s most expensive electricity is a massive drag on economic growth yet?
Of course they understand the problem and the solution to build lots of cheap renewables rather than more expensive fossil fuel and nuclear is the answer to bringing the costs down and the vulnerability to global threats too for that matter
Do they understand?
Quite a few people are locked into the "expensive electricity encourages efficiency and efficiency is how we beat global warming" mindset.
Which had some use when the grid of 80% coal. But is like promoting phlogiston now.
Borrowed from elsewhere, this is a decent take on the market inefficiency/perversity problem: ..1. The costs of keeping the grid going, like transmission and balancing, are spread over every unit of electricity sold. This means the price of an extra unit of electricity is vastly higher than the social cost of providing that unit. The cost of having a grid connection at all is, conversely, much lower than it actually costs society to provide you one.
Economically, this amounts to a crippling price cap on grid connections, which is part of why we can't expand infrastructure to plug people in: they don't pay for it. It also amounts to an enormous tax, over 2/3 of the price of electricity, on using an extra unit of it.
Which is presumably why electricity use has cratered since 2003, when we started driving up the cost of our grid like this.
Note how perverse the incentive is here. We are heading into a situation where electricity is extremely expensive because the ratio of grid costs to the amount of electricity put through that grid. Our high prices incentivise everyone to have a connection, but then to use it as little as possible, the EXACT opposite of what we need.
2. We impose carbon taxes on electricity produced through gas that we don't impose on gas used directly. This is part of why electricity is so expensive, and means people electrify less than we would like, which leads to less decarbonisation overall. A child, with a basic understanding of supply and demand, would see how perverse this is.
3. We charge the same price for electricity nationwide, and pay the same amount, in a single market, even though electricity is worth more and less at different places. This is part of why people are building solar farms in Scotland, where it is not only less sunny, but which is on the other side of massive grid congestion that we are paying BILLIONS of pounds to relieve. Yet we keep paying people to make the problem worse.
4. We keep buying Contracts for Difference off (renewable) electricity generators...pay them £90 per megawatt hour when the megawatts they are producing are worth 1p each!)
Renewables Obligations Certificates were a lot more honest. They just paid producers a top up on what they got on the open market: a straightforward subsidy. CfDs are a totally hidden subsidy. The amount of subsidy is set by the market trajectory after today. So, for example, every time we sign a new wind CfD we increase the subsidy for past tranches.
The really messed up thing is that CfD recipients do not cover for when they don't provide any power. If the CfD was set on quantity as well, so generators had to pay back money when they didn't produce, to cover the cost of running the grid to accommodate them, and for the gas needed to keep the lights on, then we would get a good sense of how much we were actually paying...
Where was that borrowed from as without attribution it's worthless - and personal anyone who posts stuff without attribution isn't worthy of debate.
@DeborahMeaden Me neither… Quote Heather Jeeves 🇪🇺 @HeatherJeeves · Jun 28 Do Labour not understand that a lot of people voted for them because of Starmer? I would never have voted for them with Burnham at the helm.
And - the problem is that SKS was beyond crap.
Burnham at least knows how to present things (i.e. not allowing questions which would just sidetrack an announcement) and seems to have realised our biggest problem is how Londoncentric the UK is..
I bet a lot of the people moaning about the leader switch were active members of the 'Starmer worst PM ever' club.
On topic, Supreme Court judgement just handed down a 5-4 loss to the administration, holding that California is allowed to spend a month counting votes.
Unexpected result. Barrett and Roberts the conservative dissenters.
Why unexpected ? Is it common currency that the court is now completely corrupt, as opposed to extremely politically biased ?
(Apols, wrong judgment.)
The link Sandpit gives for the voting case says "Alito nailed it", which is pretty well entirely wrong.
It doesn't go "against centuries of practice", as that has varied greatly from state to state, and time to time. And the states, not the federal government, are constitutionally entirely responsible for the manner in which they conduct elections.
On topic, Supreme Court judgement just handed down a 5-4 loss to the administration, holding that California is allowed to spend a month counting votes.
Unexpected result. Barrett and Roberts the conservative dissenters.
Why unexpected ? Is it common currency that the court is now completely corrupt, as opposed to extremely politically biased ?
(Apols, wrong judgment.)
The link Sandpit gives for the voting case says "Alito nailed it", which is pretty well entirely wrong.
It doesn't go "against centuries of practice", as that has varied greatly from state to state, and time to time. And the states, not the federal government, are constitutionally entirely responsible for the manner in which they conduct elections.
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
So social housing will cost the same as private housing. The only question is whether the government will swallow the loss. Or try and make house building cheaper for everyone.
It may not be a loss. There will be rental income and possibly a reduction in housing benefit. The NPV may well be positive. It is essential that both sides of the balance sheet are considered in public investment, not just the upfront cost.
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
So social housing will cost the same as private housing. The only question is whether the government will swallow the loss. Or try and make house building cheaper for everyone.
Provide the land and prices will be cheaper. Insist on a design that maximises the use of the land (1 recent scheme round here was a set of terrace houses) and again you save money.
@DeborahMeaden Me neither… Quote Heather Jeeves 🇪🇺 @HeatherJeeves · Jun 28 Do Labour not understand that a lot of people voted for them because of Starmer? I would never have voted for them with Burnham at the helm.
Kensington and Bayswater, Chelsea and Fulham and Cities of London and Westminster nailed on Tory gains at the next GE then (as their councils went blue in May). Burnham may be King of the North but Kemi is clearly Queen of central West London. Go Kemi!
Not long back from rural Derbyshire - is it "the north" ? I'm not getting involved with that nonsense.
As an aside, a nice ride on one of the new Aurora trains on EMR - a significant step forward from the Meridians but as usual, five coach trains on a ,line which really needs eight to ten coaches per service isn't really the answer.
I don't know why (well, I do) Conservatives are so hostile to Burnham's ideas. It is a significant nod to the kind of devolution proposed by Nick Hurd in the Cameron years and pays more than lip service to some of Boris Johnson's rhetoric from 2019. It also borrows heavily from the Liberal Democrat devolution playbook.
Decentraliation or devolution (there is a difference) relies, to be effective, on financial authority (not just responsibility) and accountability passing from Whitehall/Westminster to more local power structures.
What do the Conservatives offer in response? More centralisation, more power to Whitehall - that's where Boris Johnson ended up for all his rhetoric, taking powers and responsibilities (often newly liberated from Brussels) from Westminster and Parliament to Whitehall and Ministers.
I am not hostile to Burnham's ideas but then I was born in Greater Manchester of English father and Welsh mother
I welcome a lot of what he has said but my concern is how long it will take and will the benefits be felt before GE29 ?
Burnham is laser focused on domestic issues and not a word on Gaza, Ukraine and Iran which is probably where most of his audience are
MY concern is pace so many aspiring leaders what he says in seeking office will be quite different to what he does in office.
I'd love to see the kind of devolution and decentralisation Burnham is proposing but Cameron achieved very little (despite having Coalition partners who would likely have strongly supported a weakening of Whitehall/Westminster control) while Boris, to be honest, talked his usual toffee about "levelling up" but was happy to take powers (especially of scrutiny) from Westminster and give them to Ministers.
In all fairness, I didn't see Starmer seeking to repattriate those powers but as we've seen so often, when one side centralises, the other is never quick or willing to return the powers.
As for Gaza, Ukraine, Iran - let's be honest - elections are won on how the British electorate "feel" not on foreign policy. 18 months of solid if unspectacular growth will achieve a lot.
Do Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband understand that the Western world’s most expensive electricity is a massive drag on economic growth yet?
Of course they understand the problem and the solution to build lots of cheap renewables rather than more expensive fossil fuel and nuclear is the answer to bringing the costs down and the vulnerability to global threats too for that matter
Do they understand?
Quite a few people are locked into the "expensive electricity encourages efficiency and efficiency is how we beat global warming" mindset.
Which had some use when the grid of 80% coal. But is like promoting phlogiston now.
Borrowed from elsewhere, this is a decent take on the market inefficiency/perversity problem: ..1. The costs of keeping the grid going, like transmission and balancing, are spread over every unit of electricity sold. This means the price of an extra unit of electricity is vastly higher than the social cost of providing that unit. The cost of having a grid connection at all is, conversely, much lower than it actually costs society to provide you one.
Economically, this amounts to a crippling price cap on grid connections, which is part of why we can't expand infrastructure to plug people in: they don't pay for it. It also amounts to an enormous tax, over 2/3 of the price of electricity, on using an extra unit of it.
Which is presumably why electricity use has cratered since 2003, when we started driving up the cost of our grid like this.
Note how perverse the incentive is here. We are heading into a situation where electricity is extremely expensive because the ratio of grid costs to the amount of electricity put through that grid. Our high prices incentivise everyone to have a connection, but then to use it as little as possible, the EXACT opposite of what we need.
2. We impose carbon taxes on electricity produced through gas that we don't impose on gas used directly. This is part of why electricity is so expensive, and means people electrify less than we would like, which leads to less decarbonisation overall. A child, with a basic understanding of supply and demand, would see how perverse this is.
3. We charge the same price for electricity nationwide, and pay the same amount, in a single market, even though electricity is worth more and less at different places. This is part of why people are building solar farms in Scotland, where it is not only less sunny, but which is on the other side of massive grid congestion that we are paying BILLIONS of pounds to relieve. Yet we keep paying people to make the problem worse.
4. We keep buying Contracts for Difference off (renewable) electricity generators...pay them £90 per megawatt hour when the megawatts they are producing are worth 1p each!)
Renewables Obligations Certificates were a lot more honest. They just paid producers a top up on what they got on the open market: a straightforward subsidy. CfDs are a totally hidden subsidy. The amount of subsidy is set by the market trajectory after today. So, for example, every time we sign a new wind CfD we increase the subsidy for past tranches.
The really messed up thing is that CfD recipients do not cover for when they don't provide any power. If the CfD was set on quantity as well, so generators had to pay back money when they didn't produce, to cover the cost of running the grid to accommodate them, and for the gas needed to keep the lights on, then we would get a good sense of how much we were actually paying...
Where was that borrowed from as without attribution it's worthless - and personal anyone who posts stuff without attribution isn't worthy of debate.
That's remarkably ad hom, since the arguments stand for themselves. The facts about the operation of our electricity market are easily confirmed.
@DeborahMeaden Me neither… Quote Heather Jeeves 🇪🇺 @HeatherJeeves · Jun 28 Do Labour not understand that a lot of people voted for them because of Starmer? I would never have voted for them with Burnham at the helm.
Maybe the Tories just need to get a Cameron-type leader again and people like that will quietly switch allegiance.
Looks like they already have anyway apart from a few going LD, Cameron didn't have a Farage led party polling as well as Reform are now though taking votes to his right, even in 2015
Russia pounds on the gates of Ukraine's 'fortress belt' ... ... Putin said last week Russia was close to capturing Kostiantynivka, whose pre-war population of nearly 70,000 has fallen to around 2,000. In comments to Ukrainian media, senior commanders of Kyiv's 19th Army Corps dismissed that claim as an exaggeration and said their troops were picking off small groups of Russians that had managed to enter. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-pounds-gates-ukraines-fortress-belt-2026-06-29/ (£££)
@DeborahMeaden Me neither… Quote Heather Jeeves 🇪🇺 @HeatherJeeves · Jun 28 Do Labour not understand that a lot of people voted for them because of Starmer? I would never have voted for them with Burnham at the helm.
Maybe the Tories just need to get a Cameron-type leader again and people like that will quietly switch allegiance.
It depends where Burnham goes. In particular his CoE and tax/spend choices. If it's perceived to be a shift to the left that will probably push some centre ground voters towards the Cons. Otoh he'll win votes back from the Greens and also from Reform - mainly by being a more appealing persona than the dear departed.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 14m Going to be a lot of policy and textual analysis of Andy Burnham's speech. But all that really matters at the moment is that he looks a bit different and sounds a bit different. And that should be enough to get him a hearing from the British public. Which is what he needs.
I’m certainly happy with what I heard. Snippets only I’ve been out for a bike ride earlier.
Like all,here, I wish him well and hope he succeeds. I’ve said I won’t vote Labour again after the Starmer disaster. I’ve even said I’d consider Reform. However if he does succeed in, at least turning it around, and does start doing stuff that genuinely helps the regions I’d consider labour again
However Burnham needs to realise the North is not JUST Manchester.
Is Manchester really the North? Same with Yorkshire. Growing up in Scotland and Tyneside I've always struggled to think of places you can drive to from London in time for breakfast as the "North"...
You can tell a true northerner: he believes that the north ends 15 miles south of where he was born.
I'm a true northener, by residence. And the north ends somewhere around Basildon
Where’s the furthest North sign on the M1, A1 or M6, that says “THE NORTH” on it?
ISTR one on the M1 around Sheffield, but it’s been a while since I’ve been anywhere near there.
On topic, Supreme Court judgement just handed down a 5-4 loss to the administration, holding that California is allowed to spend a month counting votes.
Unexpected result. Barrett and Roberts the conservative dissenters.
Why unexpected ? Is it common currency that the court is now completely corrupt, as opposed to extremely politically biased ?
(Apols, wrong judgment.)
The link Sandpit gives for the voting case says "Alito nailed it", which is pretty well entirely wrong.
It doesn't go "against centuries of practice", as that has varied greatly from state to state, and time to time. And the states, not the federal government, are constitutionally entirely responsible for the manner in which they conduct elections.
On topic, Supreme Court judgement just handed down a 5-4 loss to the administration, holding that California is allowed to spend a month counting votes.
Unexpected result. Barrett and Roberts the conservative dissenters.
Why unexpected ? Is it common currency that the court is now completely corrupt, as opposed to extremely politically biased ?
(Apols, wrong judgment.)
The link Sandpit gives for the voting case says "Alito nailed it", which is pretty well entirely wrong.
It doesn't go "against centuries of practice", as that has varied greatly from state to state, and time to time. And the states, not the federal government, are constitutionally entirely responsible for the manner in which they conduct elections.
The corrupt rapist rightly failed to prevail.
Which corrupt rapist?
Trump. (I use the term here as shorthand for someone found legally liable for penetrative sexual assault. Trump is also, of course, variously alleged to be a rapist.)
btw the voting decision was not totally unexpected. Seems to me #SCOTUS likely to deliver a defeat to Trump and rule states can count ballots received after Election Day, with Roberts, Barrett and maybe Kavanaugh joining the liberals https://x.com/joshgerstein/status/2036164533933244729 (Mar 23rd)
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
If Social Landlords knew they had exclusive access to HMG's budget for Housing Benefit, they'd build like there was no tomorrow.
Siphoning off taxpayers' money to the Private Rented sector because an ideology said Councils should sell their assets (only for it to be reversed by Boris) was criminal.
Reflecting on Burnham, and how cross some media seem to be that they can't bounce their narratives off him so have to either report what he said or make it up completely, I think the speech was quite well pitched.
I think we will get an overhaul of Council Tax, because that is an opportunity to shift revenue raising south, with a built-in covering narrative around fairness after 35 years of unequal property price rises. And it is a difficult one for opposition parties to attack without looking at least awkward.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Do Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband understand that the Western world’s most expensive electricity is a massive drag on economic growth yet?
Of course they understand the problem and the solution to build lots of cheap renewables rather than more expensive fossil fuel and nuclear is the answer to bringing the costs down and the vulnerability to global threats too for that matter
Do they understand?
Quite a few people are locked into the "expensive electricity encourages efficiency and efficiency is how we beat global warming" mindset.
Which had some use when the grid of 80% coal. But is like promoting phlogiston now.
Borrowed from elsewhere, this is a decent take on the market inefficiency/perversity problem: ..1. The costs of keeping the grid going, like transmission and balancing, are spread over every unit of electricity sold. This means the price of an extra unit of electricity is vastly higher than the social cost of providing that unit. The cost of having a grid connection at all is, conversely, much lower than it actually costs society to provide you one.
Economically, this amounts to a crippling price cap on grid connections, which is part of why we can't expand infrastructure to plug people in: they don't pay for it. It also amounts to an enormous tax, over 2/3 of the price of electricity, on using an extra unit of it.
Which is presumably why electricity use has cratered since 2003, when we started driving up the cost of our grid like this.
Note how perverse the incentive is here. We are heading into a situation where electricity is extremely expensive because the ratio of grid costs to the amount of electricity put through that grid. Our high prices incentivise everyone to have a connection, but then to use it as little as possible, the EXACT opposite of what we need.
2. We impose carbon taxes on electricity produced through gas that we don't impose on gas used directly. This is part of why electricity is so expensive, and means people electrify less than we would like, which leads to less decarbonisation overall. A child, with a basic understanding of supply and demand, would see how perverse this is.
3. We charge the same price for electricity nationwide, and pay the same amount, in a single market, even though electricity is worth more and less at different places. This is part of why people are building solar farms in Scotland, where it is not only less sunny, but which is on the other side of massive grid congestion that we are paying BILLIONS of pounds to relieve. Yet we keep paying people to make the problem worse.
4. We keep buying Contracts for Difference off (renewable) electricity generators...pay them £90 per megawatt hour when the megawatts they are producing are worth 1p each!)
Renewables Obligations Certificates were a lot more honest. They just paid producers a top up on what they got on the open market: a straightforward subsidy. CfDs are a totally hidden subsidy. The amount of subsidy is set by the market trajectory after today. So, for example, every time we sign a new wind CfD we increase the subsidy for past tranches.
The really messed up thing is that CfD recipients do not cover for when they don't provide any power. If the CfD was set on quantity as well, so generators had to pay back money when they didn't produce, to cover the cost of running the grid to accommodate them, and for the gas needed to keep the lights on, then we would get a good sense of how much we were actually paying...
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
If you’re in the room where something’s decided, and then run straight to the bookie before it’s announced, that’s as clear a case of insider trading as you’re ever going to see.
Do that as an official of a listed company and you’re getting the book thrown at you.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
BIG WIN just moments ago at the Supreme Court, in the Slaughter Case, confirming Presidential Power in our Country to remove Executive Branch Officers and Agency Appointees, or Representatives, under Article II. This Decision was long sought by United States Presidents, dating all the way back to the 1930s. It is such an Honor to be the sitting President who won this Historic and Unprecedented Ruling, one of the most important ever given with respect to Presidential Powers. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116833954690924756
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
It can
It can try.
The legal challenges would be interesting.
The idea that the government can build cheaper, because it wants to be cheaper, is magical thinking.
Until the cult of the Planning Industrial Complex is swept away, this will continue.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
So it looks like 3 does not constitute an offence under the 2005 Gambling Act, but 4 does since it is a knowing act. But, the Gambling Commission would not typically prosecute, but leave disciplinary steps to employers.
@DeborahMeaden Me neither… Quote Heather Jeeves 🇪🇺 @HeatherJeeves · Jun 28 Do Labour not understand that a lot of people voted for them because of Starmer? I would never have voted for them with Burnham at the helm.
Kensington and Bayswater, Chelsea and Fulham and Cities of London and Westminster nailed on Tory gains at the next GE then (as their councils went blue in May). Burnham may be King of the North but Kemi is clearly Queen of central West London. Go Kemi!
Burnham's charm and style will get him a long way, but not until the next GE without it being framed against him.
I could start to shape a potent Conservative campaign message just off the back of what he's said today alone, and it will resonate when there's some facts behind it.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
If you’re in the room where something’s decided, and then run straight to the bookie before it’s announced, that’s as clear a case of insider trading as you’re ever going to see.
Do that as an official of a listed company and you’re getting the book thrown at you.
You should but you don't. Its a middle class crime so not prosecuted.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
So it looks like 3 does not constitute an offence under the 2005 Gambling Act, but 4 does since it is a knowing act. But, the Gambling Commission would not typically prosecute, but leave disciplinary steps to employers.
The Guardian suggests that quite a few people are involved, indicating, perhaps, some form of conspiracy. However, due to the state the criminal justice system was allowed to sink into by the Conservatives, further trials will not take place until Sept. 2027 and Jan 2028. Apparently, although Williams has pleaded guilty he will not be sentenced until the second trial has concluded.
Which, IMHO anyway, stretches the concept of 'justice' almost to breaking point. If he's self-employed, presumably he can go on doing whatever it is he does. However it seems a dreadfully long time to have this hanging over him.
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
It can
It can try.
The legal challenges would be interesting.
The idea that the government can build cheaper, because it wants to be cheaper, is magical thinking.
Until the cult of the Planning Industrial Complex is swept away, this will continue.
You can’t challenge primary legislation it’s a basic tenet of our constitution
A fascinating speech. It's against so much of what the Labour movement stands for. And he didn't mention the Labour party once. But he did talk up his other party by referring to the Rochdale pioneers who responded to food poverty by starting the Co-operative movement.
He namedropped you personally? You’re honoured!
No. @RochdalePioneers is *a* Rochdale Pioneer, but the Rochdale Pioneers were *the* Rochdale Pioneers. The original, you might say.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
So it looks like 3 does not constitute an offence under the 2005 Gambling Act, but 4 does since it is a knowing act. But, the Gambling Commission would not typically prosecute, but leave disciplinary steps to employers.
Gambling Commission won't, SFAIK have the power of prosecution. It's a straightforward police/CPS thing.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
The ex MP was charged under section 42 of the Gambling Act:
42 Cheating (1)A person commits an offence if he—
(a)cheats at gambling
the link to the Gambling Commission above may help in deciding what 'cheating' means. There may well be case law but I have not looked.
People being people insider betting must happen quite a bit by using proxies. It seems a very bad idea to get caught.
If you think horseracing owners, trainers and stable staff don't bet, or don't have access to inside information (for some values of inside information)...
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
So it looks like 3 does not constitute an offence under the 2005 Gambling Act, but 4 does since it is a knowing act. But, the Gambling Commission would not typically prosecute, but leave disciplinary steps to employers.
Gambling Commission won't, SFAIK have the power of prosecution. It's a straightforward police/CPS thing.
The Commission can investigate and bring prosecutions regarding criminal offences under Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 (opens in new tab). If convicted, a person could face up to two years in jail plus a fine.
The Commission can also securely exchange information with the police, which is important as match-fixing can also involve criminal offences such as bribery and fraud, which the Commission does not have statutory powers to investigate.
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
It can
It can try.
The legal challenges would be interesting.
The idea that the government can build cheaper, because it wants to be cheaper, is magical thinking.
Until the cult of the Planning Industrial Complex is swept away, this will continue.
You can’t challenge primary legislation it’s a basic tenet of our constitution
It ain't quite as simple as that. The HRA gives an interpretative rule about primary legislation, all primary legislation is open to courts to interpret anyway in the light of precedent and 800 years of other legislation, and all decisions under legislation are open to administrative review.
Finally, the Supreme Court has the power to make rulings it hasn't made before, and to overturn its own previous rulings, which means it can, but obviously won't normally, declare primary legislation invalid since there is no authority higher than it to say it can't.
The prorogation case in the SC has to some extent a parallel significance. Before it happened most assumed that prorogation of parliament was a non litigable/justiciable sovereign prerogative. The SC did a workaround so that it wasn't. The world has kept spinning round.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
So it looks like 3 does not constitute an offence under the 2005 Gambling Act, but 4 does since it is a knowing act. But, the Gambling Commission would not typically prosecute, but leave disciplinary steps to employers.
Gambling Commission won't, SFAIK have the power of prosecution. It's a straightforward police/CPS thing.
The Commission can investigate and bring prosecutions regarding criminal offences under Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 (opens in new tab). If convicted, a person could face up to two years in jail plus a fine.
The Commission can also securely exchange information with the police, which is important as match-fixing can also involve criminal offences such as bribery and fraud, which the Commission does not have statutory powers to investigate.
Thanks. I stand corrected. One more body to come knocking on my door. You can be prosecuted even if, like me, you never win, which feels rather hard.
I'm not sure he's promising any more than Johnson, Truss, Sunak or Starmer when they took office.
You can't win if you don't make promises (or hostages to fortune if you prefer) and whether you like Labour Prime Ministers or not, the truth is they are no worse in the "all things to all people" than most Conservatives.
The council housing pledge is also clever politics.
The Left NIMBYS (such as a chunk of the Greens) use “enriching evil property developers building houses for the rich” to oppose building.
Forcing them to either acquiesce or oppose council house building puts them in a quandary.
And is the kind of policy that ex-Labour voters would like.
He could enrage the right even more if Housing Benefit / Housing Element was only paid to tenants in Council or Social rented properties. The Private Rental sector would have to up their game rather than passing off crap properties to those who have little choice and lack the funds to buy. Closed loop where tax gets circulated back to councils for providing local people with local affordable accommodation built to the Decent Homes Standards
Trouble with that is that millions of people are currently paid HB and occupy private rentals. There is currently no socal housing for them to live in. Building enough council house not to have waiting lists would wipe out the scummy end of the private rental market without needing to alter HB.
It's not going to happen anyway, as we haven't got the money to build that level of council housing even if we solved the other problems about where to build it and who is going to build it.
I suspect there is money to build a fair amount of social housing - it just needs a means of keeping building costs in check.
The government can't exempt itself from all the regulation and legislation it has passed.
It can
It can try.
The legal challenges would be interesting.
The idea that the government can build cheaper, because it wants to be cheaper, is magical thinking.
Until the cult of the Planning Industrial Complex is swept away, this will continue.
You can’t challenge primary legislation it’s a basic tenet of our constitution
Good luck trying to use primary legislation in a such a manner, in this day and age.
I'm not sure he's promising any more than Johnson, Truss, Sunak or Starmer when they took office.
You can't win if you don't make promises (or hostages to fortune if you prefer) and whether you like Labour Prime Ministers or not, the truth is they are no worse in the "all things to all people" than most Conservatives.
Well those who have the power to kill those promises stillborn seem to have received them quite well so far:
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
So a quick scan suggests that the bets ought to have been voided, rather than being a criminal case.
The ex MP was charged under section 42 of the Gambling Act:
42 Cheating (1)A person commits an offence if he—
(a)cheats at gambling
the link to the Gambling Commission above may help in deciding what 'cheating' means. There may well be case law but I have not looked.
People being people insider betting must happen quite a bit by using proxies. It seems a very bad idea to get caught.
If you think horseracing owners, trainers and stable staff don't bet, or don't have access to inside information (for some values of inside information)...
OGH and I regularly receive embargoed polling, we never bet on them but it was frustrating because we often see people betting based on the embargoed poll and there's nothing we can do. I would not do well in prison.
A lot i get these days is 'there's a poll in the field' or 'there's a polling going to be published tomorrow'.
Former Tory MP Craig Williams pleads guilty to cheating at gambling with election bets
Silly sod should have pleaded not guilty so we can establish what the law is when it comes to "cheating".
Yep. It seems to me that he has fallen for the old thing of pleading guilty for a lighter sentence. Others on here will know far more than me about the ins and outs of this. If you work at Man City and get wind that the manager intends to field a weakened side in the upcoming match and bet accordingly, have you committed an offence? If not, then where is the line? Is betting intended to be a game of skill or of chance?
I think this is a matter of settled law now.
I recommend you look at the ratio deciendi in Ivey v Genting Casinos (2017( and the so-called 'Ivey test' applied as a result, namely 'What did the defendant know at the time? and - was the conduct dishonest by the standards of ordinary, decent people?'
Simon French @Frencheconomics The most regular comment from investors (beyond Miliband) right now on UK macro is whether there will be a four-month run-in from (the inevitable) Burnham coronation to his first Budget as PM. If his team have learnt anything from 2024/25 it is that a long run-in (punctuated by endless stories over tax changes) will be damaging for confidence/ economic momentum. You would have to assume that the odds are shortening for an early autumn Budget....
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
@DeborahMeaden Me neither… Quote Heather Jeeves 🇪🇺 @HeatherJeeves · Jun 28 Do Labour not understand that a lot of people voted for them because of Starmer? I would never have voted for them with Burnham at the helm.
Kensington and Bayswater, Chelsea and Fulham and Cities of London and Westminster nailed on Tory gains at the next GE then (as their councils went blue in May). Burnham may be King of the North but Kemi is clearly Queen of central West London. Go Kemi!
Do Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband understand that the Western world’s most expensive electricity is a massive drag on economic growth yet?
Of course they understand the problem and the solution to build lots of cheap renewables rather than more expensive fossil fuel and nuclear is the answer to bringing the costs down and the vulnerability to global threats too for that matter
Do they understand?
Quite a few people are locked into the "expensive electricity encourages efficiency and efficiency is how we beat global warming" mindset.
Which had some use when the grid of 80% coal. But is like promoting phlogiston now.
Borrowed from elsewhere, this is a decent take on the market inefficiency/perversity problem: ..1. The costs of keeping the grid going, like transmission and balancing, are spread over every unit of electricity sold. This means the price of an extra unit of electricity is vastly higher than the social cost of providing that unit. The cost of having a grid connection at all is, conversely, much lower than it actually costs society to provide you one.
Economically, this amounts to a crippling price cap on grid connections, which is part of why we can't expand infrastructure to plug people in: they don't pay for it. It also amounts to an enormous tax, over 2/3 of the price of electricity, on using an extra unit of it.
Which is presumably why electricity use has cratered since 2003, when we started driving up the cost of our grid like this.
Note how perverse the incentive is here. We are heading into a situation where electricity is extremely expensive because the ratio of grid costs to the amount of electricity put through that grid. Our high prices incentivise everyone to have a connection, but then to use it as little as possible, the EXACT opposite of what we need.
2. We impose carbon taxes on electricity produced through gas that we don't impose on gas used directly. This is part of why electricity is so expensive, and means people electrify less than we would like, which leads to less decarbonisation overall. A child, with a basic understanding of supply and demand, would see how perverse this is.
3. We charge the same price for electricity nationwide, and pay the same amount, in a single market, even though electricity is worth more and less at different places. This is part of why people are building solar farms in Scotland, where it is not only less sunny, but which is on the other side of massive grid congestion that we are paying BILLIONS of pounds to relieve. Yet we keep paying people to make the problem worse.
4. We keep buying Contracts for Difference off (renewable) electricity generators...pay them £90 per megawatt hour when the megawatts they are producing are worth 1p each!)
Renewables Obligations Certificates were a lot more honest. They just paid producers a top up on what they got on the open market: a straightforward subsidy. CfDs are a totally hidden subsidy. The amount of subsidy is set by the market trajectory after today. So, for example, every time we sign a new wind CfD we increase the subsidy for past tranches.
The really messed up thing is that CfD recipients do not cover for when they don't provide any power. If the CfD was set on quantity as well, so generators had to pay back money when they didn't produce, to cover the cost of running the grid to accommodate them, and for the gas needed to keep the lights on, then we would get a good sense of how much we were actually paying...
Simon French @Frencheconomics The most regular comment from investors (beyond Miliband) right now on UK macro is whether there will be a four-month run-in from (the inevitable) Burnham coronation to his first Budget as PM. If his team have learnt anything from 2024/25 it is that a long run-in (punctuated by endless stories over tax changes) will be damaging for confidence/ economic momentum. You would have to assume that the odds are shortening for an early autumn Budget....
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who will grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who wil grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who wil grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
I genuinely want Burnham to do well because we so need a government that knows what it wants to do. But, I have to ask, is that it? That's his vision? Don't get me wrong, its closer to that vision thing than Starmer ever got, but jeez. We have so many horrendous problems that our entire political class of every stripe has tried so hard to avoid talking about for a very, very long time and we are worrying about devolution and having part of the government in the north. Wow.
Anyone here share my view that Japan are stonking good value at 9/2 in their upcoming match against Brazil?
They're a serious team and despite Brazil's performance against Scotland, the boys from Brazil look eminently beatable to me.
Maybe laying Brazil at 4/5 is the bet, as the longer it goes the more it is likely to favour Japan, and they certainly won't mind going into extra team.
Should make for a cracking rest of the game, Brazil will have to go at them but Japan are really disciplined/hard to break down and dangerous on the counter.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who wil grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
One of my unfulfilled ambitions is to pay CGT. Never quite managed it, sadly.
All I can say is you aren't trying hard enough. We have found a wheeze that might avoid it but then it does require one of us to die sadly. Even then it is a challenge.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who wil grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
There's an established procedure for changing the text of the constitution. It does not involve the Supreme Court doing so by dictat.
The intention of the framers was to cover slaves and the children of slaves, not to allow birth tourism from the 3rd world.
The constitution didn’t codify abortion or gay marriage either, but that didn’t stop the Supreme Court ruling as they did.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Look, I prefer our system of Parliamentary supremacy over the US written constitution. But the GOP seem to worship the founding farmers, in particular when it comes to the right to bear arms applying to mentally unstable men carrying assault rifles. If they don't like some of the clear cut constitutional lines such as the above that go against their politics, then they need to change the constitution.
I genuinely want Burnham to do well because we so need a government that knows what it wants to do. But, I have to ask, is that it? That's his vision? Don't get me wrong, its closer to that vision thing than Starmer ever got, but jeez. We have so many horrendous problems that our entire political class of every stripe has tried so hard to avoid talking about for a very, very long time and we are worrying about devolution and having part of the government in the north. Wow.
I'm at a loss as to what you are complaining about.
Shifting some significant part of Government out of Westminster is essential to start resolving all Treasury related problems. And there are a lot of Treasury related problems that need to be fixed.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
I can’t see Barrett doing away with birthright citizenship.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who will grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
So change the Constitution. That’s what the Founding Fathers intended. They definitely didn’t intend for a Supreme Court to become a partisan body effectively inventing new laws.
President Trump's Truth Social account is full of his reactions to various defeats and victories in the Supreme Court as it wraps things up for holibobs. I can't be bothered to go through them.
Has he had any victories lately?
There's a theory that the SC has given the liberals the voting case decision, as they are softening up public opinion, since they're intending to do away with birthright citizenship, which would be a massively controversial (and constitutionally extremely dubious) decision.
The estimate is 100,000 Chinese nationals giving birth in the US every year.
Kids who wil grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
There's an established procedure for changing the text of the constitution. It does not involve the Supreme Court doing so by dictat.
The intention of the framers was to cover slaves and the children of slaves, not to allow birth tourism from the 3rd world.
The constitution didn’t codify abortion or gay marriage either, but that didn’t stop the Supreme Court ruling as they did.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."
Look, I prefer our system of Parliamentary supremacy over the US written constitution. But the GOP seem to worship the founding farmers, in particular when it comes to the right to bear arms applying to mentally unstable men carrying assault rifles. If they don't like some of the clear cut constitutional lines such as the above that go against their politics, then they need to change the constitution.
Can't have it both ways.
I think that it could be argued anyone not living in the USA (ie actual tourists) are not subject to the jurisdiction and don't reside in any state so aren't covered.
But anyone living there? It is damn black and white.
Comments
This is the one you want - on the A970.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/cGgZwFb4VHEgaapE8
A lot of hospitals just aren't set up for excessively hot weather, and changing that will be very expensive.
The NPV may well be positive.
It is essential that both sides of the balance sheet are considered in public investment, not just the upfront cost.
I'd love to see the kind of devolution and decentralisation Burnham is proposing but Cameron achieved very little (despite having Coalition partners who would likely have strongly supported a weakening of Whitehall/Westminster control) while Boris, to be honest, talked his usual toffee about "levelling up" but was happy to take powers (especially of scrutiny) from Westminster and give them to Ministers.
In all fairness, I didn't see Starmer seeking to repattriate those powers but as we've seen so often, when one side centralises, the other is never quick or willing to return the powers.
As for Gaza, Ukraine, Iran - let's be honest - elections are won on how the British electorate "feel" not on foreign policy. 18 months of solid if unspectacular growth will achieve a lot.
The facts about the operation of our electricity market are easily confirmed.
But knock yourself out:
https://x.com/bswud/status/2043942711842029853
...
...
Putin said last week Russia was close to capturing Kostiantynivka, whose pre-war population of nearly 70,000 has fallen to around 2,000.
In comments to Ukrainian media, senior commanders of Kyiv's 19th Army Corps dismissed that claim as an exaggeration and said their troops were picking off small groups of Russians that had managed to enter.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-pounds-gates-ukraines-fortress-belt-2026-06-29/ (£££)
The pointless SMO grinds on.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116833168246538290
(I use the term here as shorthand for someone found legally liable for penetrative sexual assault.
Trump is also, of course, variously alleged to be a rapist.)
btw the voting decision was not totally unexpected.
Seems to me #SCOTUS likely to deliver a defeat to Trump and rule states can count ballots received after Election Day, with Roberts, Barrett and maybe Kavanaugh joining the liberals
https://x.com/joshgerstein/status/2036164533933244729
(Mar 23rd)
Siphoning off taxpayers' money to the Private Rented sector because an ideology said Councils should sell their assets (only for it to be reversed by Boris) was criminal.
https://x.com/andyburnham/status/2071618705025355817
Reflecting on Burnham, and how cross some media seem to be that they can't bounce their narratives off him so have to either report what he said or make it up completely, I think the speech was quite well pitched.
I think we will get an overhaul of Council Tax, because that is an opportunity to shift revenue raising south, with a built-in covering narrative around fairness after 35 years of unequal property price rises. And it is a difficult one for opposition parties to attack without looking at least awkward.
Not you, DJ, him. Mr Ludicrous. And boring now tbh.
https://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/policy/misuse-of-inside-information-policy-position-paper/appendix-1-misuse-of-inside-information
One has to feel sorry for his wife at this point!
Do that as an official of a listed company and you’re getting the book thrown at you.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116833954690924756
There you go.
The legal challenges would be interesting.
The idea that the government can build cheaper, because it wants to be cheaper, is magical thinking.
Until the cult of the Planning Industrial Complex is swept away, this will continue.
I could start to shape a potent Conservative campaign message just off the back of what he's said today alone, and it will resonate when there's some facts behind it.
https://www.fca.org.uk/freedom-information/information-insider-dealing-statistics-november-2022
2018-21
68 FCA investigations - 2 convictions.
The vast majority of cases won't even be investigated.
Apparently, although Williams has pleaded guilty he will not be sentenced until the second trial has concluded.
Which, IMHO anyway, stretches the concept of 'justice' almost to breaking point. If he's self-employed, presumably he can go on doing whatever it is he does. However it seems a dreadfully long time to have this hanging over him.
https://bsky.app/profile/pentadact.com/post/3mpgulu2crk2z
42 Cheating
(1)A person commits an offence if he—
(a)cheats at gambling
the link to the Gambling Commission above may help in deciding what 'cheating' means. There may well be case law but I have not looked.
People being people insider betting must happen quite a bit by using proxies. It seems a very bad idea to get caught.
The Commission can investigate and bring prosecutions regarding criminal offences under Section 42 of the Gambling Act 2005 (opens in new tab). If convicted, a person could face up to two years in jail plus a fine.
The Commission can also securely exchange information with the police, which is important as match-fixing can also involve criminal offences such as bribery and fraud, which the Commission does not have statutory powers to investigate.
Finally, the Supreme Court has the power to make rulings it hasn't made before, and to overturn its own previous rulings, which means it can, but obviously won't normally, declare primary legislation invalid since there is no authority higher than it to say it can't.
The prorogation case in the SC has to some extent a parallel significance. Before it happened most assumed that prorogation of parliament was a non litigable/justiciable sovereign prerogative. The SC did a workaround so that it wasn't. The world has kept spinning round.
You can't win if you don't make promises (or hostages to fortune if you prefer) and whether you like Labour Prime Ministers or not, the truth is they are no worse in the "all things to all people" than most Conservatives.
UK government borrowing costs dip and pound rises as City welcomes Burnham speech – as it happened
Makerfield MP’s plans for good-quality growth around the UK, and commitment to fiscal rules, are welcomed by investors and economists
https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/jun/29/bank-of-england-inflation-warning-ai-stock-markets-oil-burnham-bond-yields-live-news-updates
in contrast to eg. Truss
A lot i get these days is 'there's a poll in the field' or 'there's a polling going to be published tomorrow'.
Or 'does this poll sound credible?'
I recommend you look at the ratio deciendi in Ivey v Genting Casinos (2017( and the so-called 'Ivey test' applied as a result, namely 'What did the defendant know at the time? and - was the conduct dishonest by the standards of ordinary, decent people?'
However, it was billed as the 'Biggly Economics' speech rather than other matters.
Electoral reform is just as much a priority as the economy.
@Frencheconomics
The most regular comment from investors (beyond Miliband) right now on UK macro is whether there will be a four-month run-in from (the inevitable) Burnham coronation to his first Budget as PM. If his team have learnt anything from 2024/25 it is that a long run-in (punctuated by endless stories over tax changes) will be damaging for confidence/ economic momentum. You would have to assume that the odds are shortening for an early autumn Budget....
https://x.com/Frencheconomics/status/2071618561957597346
https://x.com/dadsaysjokes/status/2071189887517151377
My wife said, "I can think of 14 reasons to leave you, plus your obsession with Tennis.
I replied, "That's 15 love."
I’m out, good night PB!
Maybe there will be another speech next week on constitutional issues.
I once dated a tennis player, love meant nothing to her.
https://x.com/bswud/status/2043942711842029853
There's a lot of overlap on this stuff from those wanting reform.
Kids who will grow up in China, learning Chinese values, but have a right to live and vote in the US once they turn 18.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/huge-scale-of-chinese-birth-tourism-may-impact-scotus-ruling-on-birthright-citizenship-author-says/ar-AA1UCH7d
For China, this is a long-term project.
It does not involve the Supreme Court doing so by dictat.
If you think the constitution needs changing there is a way to do that.
The constitution didn’t codify abortion or gay marriage either, but that didn’t stop the Supreme Court ruling as they did.
Look, I prefer our system of Parliamentary supremacy over the US written constitution. But the GOP seem to worship the founding farmers, in particular when it comes to the right to bear arms applying to mentally unstable men carrying assault rifles. If they don't like some of the clear cut constitutional lines such as the above that go against their politics, then they need to change the constitution.
Can't have it both ways.
Shifting some significant part of Government out of Westminster is essential to start resolving all Treasury related problems. And there are a lot of Treasury related problems that need to be fixed.
But anyone living there? It is damn black and white.