I am having a drink this evening with a friend in a Chiswick pub. Two policemen have just come into the pub and asked me to step outside. I have stepped outside and they have threatened me because I tweeted about a councillor banning seating outside pubs in Chiswick. They admit on video (watch it!) that I did not break the law at all. .
This is his own stupid fault for meekly complying. He should have just told them to fuck off.
I am having a drink this evening with a friend in a Chiswick pub. Two policemen have just come into the pub and asked me to step outside. I have stepped outside and they have threatened me because I tweeted about a councillor banning seating outside pubs in Chiswick. They admit on video (watch it!) that I did not break the law at all. .
This is his own stupid fault for meekly complying. He should have just told them to fuck off.
I hope I would at least have told them to talk to me in the pub, in front of everyone. But perhaps I would have folded too.
'Burnham set to ditch Palantir from NHS Left-wing critics have called for deal to be axed over US tech giant’s work with Israeli Defense Forces and US immigration'
As ever, Harrington makes good points, some of which may be true and/or I agree with. Let's go thru them
1: the disciplinary and control models She makes a good point: pre-21st century oppression took the form of discipline - if you do not obey I will hurt you - wheras 21st century takes the form of control - if you do not obey I will change things so you stop. The former requires treating individuals as units (or sub-units of a group), the latter requires or enables treating characteristics of individuals, not the individuals as individuals per se. I'm not sure I agree with this and put forward religious wars or slavery as counter-examples.
2: the importance of borders I agree with her but I would point out that i) this requires a re-adoption of nationalism - if you have borders, then they have to bound something - and ii) that the importance of borders is a subset of the importance of thresholds. Which brings me to...
3: the boundary between “child” and “adult” At last somebody else has pointed this out. I have been saying for years on PB that we need a bright line between "this person is a child" and "this person is a adult". Everybody disagrees with me, but blurring the line results in adultised children and infantilised adults and makes the country stupid.
4: doctor-worship In my assisted suicide article, I pointed out that you solve moral problems with judges, not doctors. But British doctor-worship results in doctors coercing outcomes against patient consent, which is exactly wrong. And her example was...
5: the draft conversion bill This bill contains a clause permitting coerced conversion if the person is a medic working in healthcare [section 1 subsection (3)]. Gender-critical people object to this because it permits doctors but not parents to convert children. Trans people object to this because it permits doctors to convert children. I object to this because everybody has forgotten that gay conversion therapy used to be permitted medical policy and this clause would have permitted Alan Turing's conversion therapy. Harrington is OK with the trans conversion but is correct with the doctor-worship bit...
Where does it say "doctors" ? All I can see is this: .. is not a conversion practice unless the person acts in a way that falls far below the standards reasonably expected of a person in their position...
Which is so broad that I'm not sure what the point of the legislation is at all.
Sorry. i took the fragment "is carried out in the course of providing health care services" [section 1 subsection (3) part (b)] to refer to doctors, but yes in theory it could be anybody in healthcare: doctors, nurses, receptionists, porters, cleaners, the cleaner's dog called Colin, carrier pigeon called Speckled Jim, etc.
"The agency has identified 270 people linked to forums where footage of coordinated sexual abuse is shared online - crimes which echo the case of Gisèle Pelicot, a French woman who was repeatedly drugged by her husband and attacked by dozens of men.
The NCA said the abuse is usually perpetrated by a long-term partner, with offending "often taking place over decades".
The forums encourage men to drug and rape women.
Hopefully, the people in question will be able to be identified and prosecuted. But (a subset of) men being complete shits is not new news, sadly.
This subset - how large a subset is the interesting question rather than the usual "0h, it's only a minority" which smacks of "I hope this is true because otherwise some very uncomfortable questions would need to be asked about the behaviour of the male sex" - includes the long-term partners of the women ie husbands and often the fathers of their children.
The breach of trust is grotesque. We should not accept this by shaking our heads saying that some men are "complete shits, sadly". We should be furious and we should be acting to try and stop this. Instead - and I make no apologies for saying this AGAIN - men's demands are treated like holy writ, any restraints on their behaviour are seen as somehow a breach of their human right to behave like complete shits and women are ethically invisible.
It should not be like this.
Err, surely the point of the investigation is to not "accept this"? The whole point is to identify and prosecute.
'Burnham set to ditch Palantir from NHS Left-wing critics have called for deal to be axed over US tech giant’s work with Israeli Defense Forces and US immigration'
Good. Not because of any IDF or US immigration work, and not because Peter Thiel is a psychopath who would burn down the world if he could make a buck from it, but simply because Palantir is not British. I am tired of the UK government treating UK assets as something to be sold off to any passing foreigner with a big chequebook and fashionable nostrums. "Buy AI or the Singularity will get you! Give me billions!" Just bugger off and try to grow your eyebrows back, you sweaty T-1000.
'Burnham set to ditch Palantir from NHS Left-wing critics have called for deal to be axed over US tech giant’s work with Israeli Defense Forces and US immigration'
'Burnham set to ditch Palantir from NHS Left-wing critics have called for deal to be axed over US tech giant’s work with Israeli Defense Forces and US immigration'
‘Complicated and expensive’: Burnham is right about the risks of nationalisation
Track record of Welsh Water shows changing ownership status is not the answer to all the woes in the utilities sector
Welsh Water is not state owned.
And would we really be worse off if zombie companies like Thames Water or (whisper it) a certain fairly large gas/leccy supplier were properly bankrupted and taken into state ownership without the enormous overhang of debt they have accumulated?
Whether they would be better managed by the government is a different matter - very probably not - but it's hard to imagine they would be much worse managed.
The utter contemptuous folly of the Blair Government was they didn't renationalised before the foreign shareholders ladelled off the cream and a huge amount of everything else too.
Renationalisation now is simply acquiring liability upon liability.
That's not really true: it's only assuming liabilities if bond holders are repaid.
If it goes into administration and the best offer is that the government acquires Thames Water at 20 cents on the pound for their debt, sending a clear message to owners of (and lenders to) privatized utilities: that you will not be bailed out by the government.
Do they actually have to pay the bond holders anything?
I understood that the terms of the public-private partnership meant that if Thames Water becomes insolvent then the state reaquires the assets and responsibilties for water and sewage provision. But does it actually take on the company and its liabilities or does it just leave Thames Water as a shell with no assets but huge debts? Does the state actually have to take on any of the liabilities?
I don't understand why the mad enthusiasm for government ownership.
Currently we have a profitable private business, but with debts it cannot service. All that needs to occur is for the shareholders to get wiped out, the debt to get written off, and the bond holders to either end up owning the business, or get to sell it for whatever they can get to someone else who fancies running a utility.
The only thing the government needs to do is to ensure that this restructuring is an orderly process, and doesn't result in dumb stuff like frontline staff going unpaid, resulting in supply outages. That's not beyond the whit of man.
Some capitalists (well, pension funds) will lose their shirts. Some other capitalists have run off with shirts for which they didn't pay. That's capitalism for you, especially if you buy or lend money to businesses without managing to read the balance sheet properly. None of this has any bearing on the actual supply of water to customers, nor yet does it provide any justification for nationalisation.
One of the things we can say with confidence is that nationalisation will make things worse. Just look at the shambles which is the MOD, and ask yourself if adding similar layers of government morons on top of another form of engineering activity* is likely to either improve services or save any money?
If true, then Sir Keir is indeed giving Andy the best possible start by enabling him to distance himself totally from the prior leadership.
Does Burnham have access to a Civil Service transition team as he would in the lead up to possibly taking power at a GE? If not, then that’s something that should be changed.
The Civil Service is unlikely to help Burnham if they think he will sack them or force them to move to Manchester.
Then they should be sacked and hire new people in Manchester to replace them.
The Civil Service exists to serve the country, not the other way around.
Aiui Burnham has been given a Civil Service transition team. This was reported over a week ago. For instance:-
England are a best-priced 6/4 to beat Mexico in 90 minutes. Tbh, with the doomsters and gloomsters proclaiming Mexico's near-invincibility at altitude, I'd been hoping for something better.
‘Complicated and expensive’: Burnham is right about the risks of nationalisation
Track record of Welsh Water shows changing ownership status is not the answer to all the woes in the utilities sector
Welsh Water is not state owned.
And would we really be worse off if zombie companies like Thames Water or (whisper it) a certain fairly large gas/leccy supplier were properly bankrupted and taken into state ownership without the enormous overhang of debt they have accumulated?
Whether they would be better managed by the government is a different matter - very probably not - but it's hard to imagine they would be much worse managed.
The utter contemptuous folly of the Blair Government was they didn't renationalised before the foreign shareholders ladelled off the cream and a huge amount of everything else too.
Renationalisation now is simply acquiring liability upon liability.
That's not really true: it's only assuming liabilities if bond holders are repaid.
If it goes into administration and the best offer is that the government acquires Thames Water at 20 cents on the pound for their debt, sending a clear message to owners of (and lenders to) privatized utilities: that you will not be bailed out by the government.
Do they actually have to pay the bond holders anything?
I understood that the terms of the public-private partnership meant that if Thames Water becomes insolvent then the state reaquires the assets and responsibilties for water and sewage provision. But does it actually take on the company and its liabilities or does it just leave Thames Water as a shell with no assets but huge debts? Does the state actually have to take on any of the liabilities?
I don't understand why the mad enthusiasm for government ownership.
Currently we have a profitable private business, but with debts it cannot service. All that needs to occur is for the shareholders to get wiped out, the debt to get written off, and the bond holders to either end up owning the business, or get to sell it for whatever they can get to someone else who fancies running a utility.
The only thing the government needs to do is to ensure that this restructuring is an orderly process, and doesn't result in dumb stuff like frontline staff going unpaid, resulting in supply outages. That's not beyond the whit of man.
Some capitalists (well, pension funds) will lose their shirts. Some other capitalists have run off with shirts for which they didn't pay. That's capitalism for you, especially if you buy or lend money to businesses without managing to read the balance sheet properly. None of this has any bearing on the actual supply of water to customers, nor yet does it provide any justification for nationalisation.
One of the things we can say with confidence is that nationalisation will make things worse. Just look at the shambles which is the MOD, and ask yourself if adding similar layers of government morons on top of another form of engineering activity* is likely to either improve services or save any money?
*modern warfare is mostly engineering.
If Thames Water is wiped out then returned to private ownership, how do you stop the same cycle happening again? Incidentally this does seem to be a growing problem across the private sector with companies (and football clubs) being bought up by private equity firms, often foreign-owned, and sucked dry.
‘Complicated and expensive’: Burnham is right about the risks of nationalisation
Track record of Welsh Water shows changing ownership status is not the answer to all the woes in the utilities sector
Welsh Water is not state owned.
And would we really be worse off if zombie companies like Thames Water or (whisper it) a certain fairly large gas/leccy supplier were properly bankrupted and taken into state ownership without the enormous overhang of debt they have accumulated?
Whether they would be better managed by the government is a different matter - very probably not - but it's hard to imagine they would be much worse managed.
The utter contemptuous folly of the Blair Government was they didn't renationalised before the foreign shareholders ladelled off the cream and a huge amount of everything else too.
Renationalisation now is simply acquiring liability upon liability.
That's not really true: it's only assuming liabilities if bond holders are repaid.
If it goes into administration and the best offer is that the government acquires Thames Water at 20 cents on the pound for their debt, sending a clear message to owners of (and lenders to) privatized utilities: that you will not be bailed out by the government.
Do they actually have to pay the bond holders anything?
I understood that the terms of the public-private partnership meant that if Thames Water becomes insolvent then the state reaquires the assets and responsibilties for water and sewage provision. But does it actually take on the company and its liabilities or does it just leave Thames Water as a shell with no assets but huge debts? Does the state actually have to take on any of the liabilities?
I don't understand why the mad enthusiasm for government ownership.
Currently we have a profitable private business, but with debts it cannot service. All that needs to occur is for the shareholders to get wiped out, the debt to get written off, and the bond holders to either end up owning the business, or get to sell it for whatever they can get to someone else who fancies running a utility.
The only thing the government needs to do is to ensure that this restructuring is an orderly process, and doesn't result in dumb stuff like frontline staff going unpaid, resulting in supply outages. That's not beyond the whit of man.
Some capitalists (well, pension funds) will lose their shirts. Some other capitalists have run off with shirts for which they didn't pay. That's capitalism for you, especially if you buy or lend money to businesses without managing to read the balance sheet properly. None of this has any bearing on the actual supply of water to customers, nor yet does it provide any justification for nationalisation.
One of the things we can say with confidence is that nationalisation will make things worse. Just look at the shambles which is the MOD, and ask yourself if adding similar layers of government morons on top of another form of engineering activity* is likely to either improve services or save any money?
*modern warfare is mostly engineering.
Of course people have forgotten, if they ever knew, just how bad the big nationalised industries actually were - when British Airways was known as Bloody Awful, when it took a year to get a new phone line from British Telecom, when British Gas arrogantly refused to supply gas to customers under the personal whim of its chairman, etc.
But I think there is benefit in remembering the practical arguments against nationalisation:
- the subjection of investment decisions to the whims of the Treasury - the politicisation of wage bargaining - the devotion of management time to sucking up to ministers, rather than running their businesses efficiently - the impossibility of effective, transparent regulation when the government has such a glaring conflict of interest since it is regulating itself - the movement of crucial management decisions to Whitehall, which has unerringly poor judgement in industrial matters - the distortion of competition - the lack of incentives to improve operating efficiency - the reduction in government revenue as less efficient businesses yield less corporate tax - the opportunity cost of government funds devoted to nationalisation
etc etc.
Some of these issues can be mitigated, and none of this is meant to idolize the private sector, whose companies often get things wrong, especially when industries are oligopolies or monopolies. But there is simply no equivalent in government to the ever-present threat of bankruptcy in industry, which acts as a powerful discipline on even the most complacent and incompetent of companies. And that is why, however flawed their performance may be, industries are generally better in the private sector than in the public sector.
Give £100k earners free childcare to boost economy, Labour urged Families should receive £7,000 vouchers to avoid punishing tax trap, think tank says
Parents earning more than £100,000 should get free childcare to help boost the economy, Labour has been urged.
A report by the Right-leaning Policy Exchange has called to replace free childcare hours with £7,000 vouchers for all families amid growing pressure to overhaul the “distorting” system.
It proposed scrapping 30 hours of free childcare in favour of a preloaded payment card for all parents regardless of income. It also proposed raising child benefit by £2,500 a year to £4,000 for children under two years old. ... Under the current system, families lose their entitlement to tax-free childcare and 30 free hours for 38 weeks of the year as soon as one parent’s annual salary goes above £100,000. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/news/give-100k-earners-free-childcare-to-boost-economy/ (£££)
‘Complicated and expensive’: Burnham is right about the risks of nationalisation
Track record of Welsh Water shows changing ownership status is not the answer to all the woes in the utilities sector
Welsh Water is not state owned.
And would we really be worse off if zombie companies like Thames Water or (whisper it) a certain fairly large gas/leccy supplier were properly bankrupted and taken into state ownership without the enormous overhang of debt they have accumulated?
Whether they would be better managed by the government is a different matter - very probably not - but it's hard to imagine they would be much worse managed.
The utter contemptuous folly of the Blair Government was they didn't renationalised before the foreign shareholders ladelled off the cream and a huge amount of everything else too.
Renationalisation now is simply acquiring liability upon liability.
That's not really true: it's only assuming liabilities if bond holders are repaid.
If it goes into administration and the best offer is that the government acquires Thames Water at 20 cents on the pound for their debt, sending a clear message to owners of (and lenders to) privatized utilities: that you will not be bailed out by the government.
Do they actually have to pay the bond holders anything?
I understood that the terms of the public-private partnership meant that if Thames Water becomes insolvent then the state reaquires the assets and responsibilties for water and sewage provision. But does it actually take on the company and its liabilities or does it just leave Thames Water as a shell with no assets but huge debts? Does the state actually have to take on any of the liabilities?
I don't understand why the mad enthusiasm for government ownership.
Currently we have a profitable private business, but with debts it cannot service. All that needs to occur is for the shareholders to get wiped out, the debt to get written off, and the bond holders to either end up owning the business, or get to sell it for whatever they can get to someone else who fancies running a utility.
The only thing the government needs to do is to ensure that this restructuring is an orderly process, and doesn't result in dumb stuff like frontline staff going unpaid, resulting in supply outages. That's not beyond the whit of man.
Some capitalists (well, pension funds) will lose their shirts. Some other capitalists have run off with shirts for which they didn't pay. That's capitalism for you, especially if you buy or lend money to businesses without managing to read the balance sheet properly. None of this has any bearing on the actual supply of water to customers, nor yet does it provide any justification for nationalisation.
One of the things we can say with confidence is that nationalisation will make things worse. Just look at the shambles which is the MOD, and ask yourself if adding similar layers of government morons on top of another form of engineering activity* is likely to either improve services or save any money?
*modern warfare is mostly engineering.
Fool you twice, shame on you.
It's a basic premise, since Adam Smith delineated the basics of market capitalism, that monopolies will be abused. Free of debt, it's a profitable business (depending on pricing set by the a regulator), and ind which will be exploited in the same way all over again.
If you don't think government is up to running the business, why do you imagine it is any any way up to the probably much harder task of regulating it - something which requires understanding the business as well, or better than its managers. - from the outside ?
Just an utter logic fail.
The experiment has already cost the customers (and the country, since the money went overseas) many tens of billions. And you want to repeat the process.
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6snGqZnBGo
https://bsky.app/profile/mikegalsworthy.bsky.social/post/3mplybewva22j
Quite right too. We should not expand the anti-democratic power of the Broligarchy.
https://bsky.app/profile/mikegalsworthy.bsky.social/post/3mplybewva22j
Quite right too. We should not expand the anti-democratic power of the Broligarchy.
Croatia 1
94 mins
Currently we have a profitable private business, but with debts it cannot service.
All that needs to occur is for the shareholders to get wiped out, the debt to get written off, and the bond holders to either end up owning the business, or get to sell it for whatever they can get to someone else who fancies running a utility.
The only thing the government needs to do is to ensure that this restructuring is an orderly process, and doesn't result in dumb stuff like frontline staff going unpaid, resulting in supply outages. That's not beyond the whit of man.
Some capitalists (well, pension funds) will lose their shirts. Some other capitalists have run off with shirts for which they didn't pay. That's capitalism for you, especially if you buy or lend money to businesses without managing to read the balance sheet properly. None of this has any bearing on the actual supply of water to customers, nor yet does it provide any justification for nationalisation.
One of the things we can say with confidence is that nationalisation will make things worse. Just look at the shambles which is the MOD, and ask yourself if adding similar layers of government morons on top of another form of engineering activity* is likely to either improve services or save any money?
*modern warfare is mostly engineering.
Burnham and Starmer hold ‘frosty’ meeting to thrash out transition of power
With Burnham and his team potentially having only weeks before he becomes PM, Starmer has agreed to give him access to civil service
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/23/burnham-and-starmer-hold-frosty-meeting-to-thrash-out-transition-of-power
https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1uls1lw/andy_burnham_here_ama/
But I think there is benefit in remembering the practical arguments against nationalisation:
- the subjection of investment decisions to the whims of the Treasury
- the politicisation of wage bargaining
- the devotion of management time to sucking up to ministers, rather than running their businesses efficiently
- the impossibility of effective, transparent regulation when the government has such a glaring conflict of interest since it is regulating itself
- the movement of crucial management decisions to Whitehall, which has unerringly poor judgement in industrial matters
- the distortion of competition
- the lack of incentives to improve operating efficiency
- the reduction in government revenue as less efficient businesses yield less corporate tax
- the opportunity cost of government funds devoted to nationalisation
etc etc.
Some of these issues can be mitigated, and none of this is meant to idolize the private sector, whose companies often get things wrong, especially when industries are oligopolies or monopolies. But there is simply no equivalent in government to the ever-present threat of bankruptcy in industry, which acts as a powerful discipline on even the most complacent and incompetent of companies. And that is why, however flawed their performance may be, industries are generally better in the private sector than in the public sector.
Families should receive £7,000 vouchers to avoid punishing tax trap, think tank says
Parents earning more than £100,000 should get free childcare to help boost the economy, Labour has been urged.
A report by the Right-leaning Policy Exchange has called to replace free childcare hours with £7,000 vouchers for all families amid growing pressure to overhaul the “distorting” system.
It proposed scrapping 30 hours of free childcare in favour of a preloaded payment card for all parents regardless of income. It also proposed raising child benefit by £2,500 a year to £4,000 for children under two years old.
...
Under the current system, families lose their entitlement to tax-free childcare and 30 free hours for 38 weeks of the year as soon as one parent’s annual salary goes above £100,000.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/news/give-100k-earners-free-childcare-to-boost-economy/ (£££)
Luxury cars pile up at a site operated by car thieves who now ‘steal to order’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/consumer-affairs/track-down-stolen-cars-as-police-give-up/ (£££)
It's not just the BBC and Channel 4 donning their bat capes.
It's a basic premise, since Adam Smith delineated the basics of market capitalism, that monopolies will be abused.
Free of debt, it's a profitable business (depending on pricing set by the a regulator), and ind which will be exploited in the same way all over again.
If you don't think government is up to running the business, why do you imagine it is any any way up to the probably much harder task of regulating it - something which requires understanding the business as well, or better than its managers. - from the outside ?
Just an utter logic fail.
The experiment has already cost the customers (and the country, since the money went overseas) many tens of billions. And you want to repeat the process.