Important judgement today for France, and possibly the whole of Europe, whether Marine Le Pen can stand for the upcoming presidential election. If she wins the case she will be the candidate for the far right Rassemblement National in the upcoming presidential election. If she loses it will be her deputy Jordan Bardella who on current polling is a bit more likely to win the presidency. Her appeal against a five year ban on political office for misusing EU funds doesn't look likely to succeed.
Why on earth does the MP gift code for any gifts upto 12 months before becoming an MP have exemptions for personal or family gifts.
FFS.
Everything. All of it. In the open.
I might say family gifts below £1,000. Otherwise you get disclosure of the £20 your aunt puts under the tree at Christmas
Even all gifts from immediate family being exempt is fine. Gifts from "friends" is a completely different kettle of fish.
In that case I can see adoptions taking off. Very slightly connectedly, I read something about Cocteau the other day which informed me that gay men in 20th century France or possibly earlier would adopt their male lovers otherwise the lads would have no inheritance rights in the event of the (presumably older) gay men dying.
As any law student in England & Wales can tell you, a contract requires an offer, acceptance, consideration*, and an intent to create legal relations. A gift has no such strings. A contract for a gift is an oxymoron.
(*PB pedants please note I am aware of the exception when executed as a deed)
To be fair, genuinely for once, I suspect contract is being used colloquially rather than legally here. He means documented.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
We're still in the stage of angrily believing that 'it's all lies from the old parties',aren't we?
And Good Morning everyone. Lovely morning again, if a little breezy.
Looking ahead it seems to me that these figures continue to be bad for Reform, despite appearances. The next election will depend on two great factors: how the contest is framed and tactical voting.
Because of the fragmentation and general uselessness of the traditional parties most of us have mentally forgotten that on its own '25%' isn't very many votes. It's only a lot if there is no combined opposition, in which case it is not enough.
Assume that Farage will continue to have a Trumpian style of support among those for whom he can do no wrong, this won't go much higher. For the other 70+% the latest turmoil confirms that a principal contest in 2029 is Not Reform v Reform. Over time I think the Tories will decide they are firmly on the 'Never In Bed With Reform' side (Katie Lam was suggesting that on, I think, Times Radio recently.)
The obviously awfulness of Farage and co mean that they will face a combined Not Reform assault which leads to much more informed tactical voting.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
Not many people are paying attention, its hot and there is a World Cup on.
The damage from scandals is often much slower than people expect rather than at the time of the reveal. From now on, for the next few months at least, every time he is interviewed he will get questioned about it and look slippery. Even when talking about other things, (some) voters will be less inclined to trust and respect him and therefore his message won't cut through as clearly.
Luckily for him, his core support will mostly think all politicians are "at it" and they are going after Farage as he is a threat. So he won't slip below 20% but might drift gradually towards it and it certainly makes getting back to the low thirties much tougher.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
I heard a bit of a vox pop on Today this morning where one didn’t seem sure whether it would change his vote away from Reform and the other where a lady said “they’re all at it” so it wouldn’t affect her views. The last one is the saddest as the continual grift by politicians over time has meant that big deals like this just get lumped in as normal.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
They have done the slipping already. The days of 33-35% are over, and not coming back. Their base is large but has got boundaries. The effect of the awesome grifting is mostly on the non Reform 65+%. It confirms the contest as Not Reform v Reform rather than Lab v Con, or Lab v Reform. Once the election is on us in 28/29 this will affect minds and tactics over voting.
Looking ahead it seems to me that these figures continue to be bad for Reform, despite appearances. The next election will depend on two great factors: how the contest is framed and tactical voting.
Because of the fragmentation and general uselessness of the traditional parties most of us have mentally forgotten that on its own '25%' isn't very many votes. It's only a lot if there is no combined opposition, in which case it is not enough.
Assume that Farage will continue to have a Trumpian style of support among those for whom he can do no wrong, this won't go much higher. For the other 70+% the latest turmoil confirms that a principal contest in 2029 is Not Reform v Reform. Over time I think the Tories will decide they are firmly on the 'Never In Bed With Reform' side (Katie Lam was suggesting that on, I think, Times Radio recently.)
The obviously awfulness of Farage and co mean that they will face a combined Not Reform assault which leads to much more informed tactical voting.
Indeed in 1983 25% was enough votes to win just 23 seats, if your 25% is fairly evenly spread. And that was without the contest being framed as Alliance v Not Alliance.
Looking ahead it seems to me that these figures continue to be bad for Reform, despite appearances. The next election will depend on two great factors: how the contest is framed and tactical voting.
Because of the fragmentation and general uselessness of the traditional parties most of us have mentally forgotten that on its own '25%' isn't very many votes. It's only a lot if there is no combined opposition, in which case it is not enough.
Assume that Farage will continue to have a Trumpian style of support among those for whom he can do no wrong, this won't go much higher. For the other 70+% the latest turmoil confirms that a principal contest in 2029 is Not Reform v Reform. Over time I think the Tories will decide they are firmly on the 'Never In Bed With Reform' side (Katie Lam was suggesting that on, I think, Times Radio recently.)
The obviously awfulness of Farage and co mean that they will face a combined Not Reform assault which leads to much more informed tactical voting.
I wonder whether Farage may decide to move to the USA, where his grifting is more acceptable.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
Not many people are paying attention, its hot and there is a World Cup on.
The damage from scandals is often much slower than people expect rather than at the time of the reveal. From now on, for the next few months at least, every time he is interviewed he will get questioned about it and look slippery. Even when talking about other things, (some) voters will be less inclined to trust and respect him and therefore his message won't cut through as clearly.
Luckily for him, his core support will mostly think all politicians are "at it" and they are going after Farage as he is a threat. So he won't slip below 20% but might drift gradually towards it and it certainly makes getting back to the low thirties much tougher.
Most voters are sceptical but have gradations of wrongness. Like Boris, with Farage there will always be X% for whom he can do no wrong. But Boris had to resign in the end fundamentally because most voters could not take his amoral stance. Most voters won't deal with an amoral Farage either and will vote accordingly.
What would be best of course would be if other parties actually upped their game and made better offers than Reform, and when in government ran the country very well.
I was expecting a big Reform surge. Seen loads of their flags go up recently on houses and even cars.
At the risk of appearing to be contrary for the sake of it, and I’m not being so, I’d honestly expect them to slip a little due to the Farage grifting story.
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
Not many people are paying attention, its hot and there is a World Cup on.
The damage from scandals is often much slower than people expect rather than at the time of the reveal. From now on, for the next few months at least, every time he is interviewed he will get questioned about it and look slippery. Even when talking about other things, (some) voters will be less inclined to trust and respect him and therefore his message won't cut through as clearly.
Luckily for him, his core support will mostly think all politicians are "at it" and they are going after Farage as he is a threat. So he won't slip below 20% but might drift gradually towards it and it certainly makes getting back to the low thirties much tougher.
Most voters are sceptical but have gradations of wrongness. Like Boris, with Farage there will always be X% for whom he can do no wrong. But Boris had to resign in the end fundamentally because most voters could not take his amoral stance. Most voters won't deal with an amoral Farage either and will vote accordingly.
What would be best of course would be if other parties actually upped their game and made better offers than Reform, and when in government ran the country very well.
Boris had to resign because his MPs gave up on him, not voters. He would probably have polled at least as well as Truss or Rishi with voters.
@kinabalu (and with apologies to everyone else for carrying out a time-lagged conversation)
- "Back Home" - it's brilliant isn't it? Like the football of its time - very route one and direct, but somehow no less charming for that. If you distilled all football songs before 1990, this is what you would get. It was also, of course, adapted as the theme from Fantasy Football, and also used for all the interstitials (e.g. for a brief section on an awkward 1930s televised post-FA Cup celebration (to the tune of 'Back Home') "Old Football / Banquets were rubbish / There were only two men there") Which increases my nostalgic affection for it. But it was used because it is so perfect, so completely the distillation of all pre-1990 football songs.
It does however illustrate my oft-trotted-out point that culture came to a halt in the 90s. Consider this: when the excellent "World in Motion" was released, "Back Home" was 20 years old, yet felt like it was from another era. Musically it didn't feel too far from the theme from Dad's Army. "World in Motion", of course, is now 36 years old, yet still feels contemporary.
In that graph, there are two apparent upward shifts in Reform support: the first appears to be directly from Labour, the second from the Tories. All seems too clean and convenient...
It's odd he doesn't just stonewall and say "wait for the committee to report". Maybe shutting up isn't his millieu.
Is it wise to let your opponents control the story?
Also, the committee is probably going to say he was wrong. He needs to get his defence out there in advance.
That requires him to have a defence. And that defence needs to work with both a formal committee and an informal court of public opinion. So far, he seems to have bluster that makes things worse.
The only advice I can give would-be MPs and PMs is don't take huge piles of spondoolicks from anyone until after you retire.
Oh, indeed, and that’s a problem for Farage.
Defence 1 was to talk about his personal security. There are problems with that argument, but it still feels better than defence 2, it was a reward for Brexit. However, he’s now on defence 3, the none-of-your-business line.
The voters will make it their business. By not voting for him whilst he keeps coming up with wanky excuses for taking multi-millions.
It must be nice to be such a thoroughly good egg that your friends just feel the need to give you presents like millions of pounds and free housing.
Until Nigel came along I thought I was popular, I would get invited to parties, openings, lunches all the time, I have loads of friends on social media but I’ve realised now that this was all a bit shallow as I haven’t been given material things and tonnes of lovely money.
What do I have to do to move into this Boss level of friendships?
It is not you that needs to change, but your friends. What has recently happened here, a few years behind America, is emergence of billionaires whose wealth is mainly in cash or near-cash, not oil tankers or big buildings. For them, £5 million to Nigel Farage is chicken feed. Naive mathematics says that someone with £10 billion giving £5 million away is like you or me winning £1 million on the premium bonds and giving away £500. In fact the contrast will be even greater because the billionaire is not worried about paying off the mortgage and booking his dear old mum into a higher class of nursing home.
@kinabalu (and with apologies to everyone else for carrying out a time-lagged conversation)
- "Back Home" - it's brilliant isn't it? Like the football of its time - very route one and direct, but somehow no less charming for that. If you distilled all football songs before 1990, this is what you would get. It was also, of course, adapted as the theme from Fantasy Football, and also used for all the interstitials (e.g. for a brief section on an awkward 1930s televised post-FA Cup celebration (to the tune of 'Back Home') "Old Football / Banquets were rubbish / There were only two men there") Which increases my nostalgic affection for it. But it was used because it is so perfect, so completely the distillation of all pre-1990 football songs.
It does however illustrate my oft-trotted-out point that culture came to a halt in the 90s. Consider this: when the excellent "World in Motion" was released, "Back Home" was 20 years old, yet felt like it was from another era. Musically it didn't feel too far from the theme from Dad's Army. "World in Motion", of course, is now 36 years old, yet still feels contemporary.
It feels contemporary to people who grew up with it. I don't know what the answer you'd get from a 20 year old is but suspect it would be that its from grandads era.....
With all the adverse media coverage of Farage Reform tick up another point
Is he really a Teflon politician, or is the anti establishment electorate not for moving, or is it a slow fuse to Farage going and reform imploding ?
I have no answer to these questions
While there are uncertainties as to mode and method, it is a racing certainty that Reform can't get back to where they were in the polls, and that the anti Reform majority will make every effort to ensure Reform don't form or lead a government. The chance of 'Not Reform' being successful is high. Another certainty is that there will be a core Reform group for whom Farage can do no wrong.
@kinabalu (and with apologies to everyone else for carrying out a time-lagged conversation)
- "Back Home" - it's brilliant isn't it? Like the football of its time - very route one and direct, but somehow no less charming for that. If you distilled all football songs before 1990, this is what you would get. It was also, of course, adapted as the theme from Fantasy Football, and also used for all the interstitials (e.g. for a brief section on an awkward 1930s televised post-FA Cup celebration (to the tune of 'Back Home') "Old Football / Banquets were rubbish / There were only two men there") Which increases my nostalgic affection for it. But it was used because it is so perfect, so completely the distillation of all pre-1990 football songs.
It does however illustrate my oft-trotted-out point that culture came to a halt in the 90s. Consider this: when the excellent "World in Motion" was released, "Back Home" was 20 years old, yet felt like it was from another era. Musically it didn't feel too far from the theme from Dad's Army. "World in Motion", of course, is now 36 years old, yet still feels contemporary.
Some of that cultural halt is due to increased ease of access to other cultural block's culture. It’s going to take a while for us to eat our way through that and come out of the other side.
With all the adverse media coverage of Farage Reform tick up another point
Is he really a Teflon politician, or is the anti establishment electorate not for moving, or is it a slow fuse to Farage going and reform imploding ?
I have no answer to these questions
While there are uncertainties as to mode and method, it is a racing certainty that Reform can't get back to where they were in the polls, and that the anti Reform majority will make every effort to ensure Reform don't form or lead a government. The chance of 'Not Reform' being successful is high. Another certainty is that there will be a core Reform group for whom Farage can do no wrong.
Another certainty is that there will be a core Reform group for whom Farage can do no wrong.
I'm somewhat doubtful whether that group will turn out to be very big. I suspect it'll be very patchy; cf the Liberals in the 50's.
Can't see this doing much for their future economic management.
On Sunday, June 28, 2026, former Tsinghua University associate professor Dr. Zheng Yuhuang was giving a high-ticket business lecture at the Hilton Beijing Capital Airport. During the session, he characterized China's trajectory as "macroeconomically pessimistic," warning of a potential 20 to 30-year stagnation period mirroring Japan's lost decades.He frankly argued that internal structural failures such as unequal pension distributions and the rigid household registration system are fueling the downturn rather than global economic trends.
Mid-lecture, two police officers suddenly marched into the venue and escorted Dr. Zheng out for interrogation under suspicion of hosting an "illegal gathering." The intervention occurred after an audience member reportedly called the authorities to denounce the professor's "defeatist" economic analysis. While he was permitted to return and finish the seminar after a brief five-minute clarification, a massive digital purge followed shortly after.
By July 1, 2026, Dr. Zheng's short-video profiles, Weibo, and WeChat accounts were entirely wiped and permanently banned across all major mainland platforms. The swift deletion destroyed 16 years of accumulated educational content, marketing research, and public media archives overnight. This extreme response underscores a broader pattern where Beijing treats objective economic data as a national security threat, weaponizing citizen-on-citizen surveillance to enforce absolute narrative control... https://x.com/Unveiled_ChinaX/status/2073559356482949240
This sort of thing should allow democracies to outperform China, but in democracies these sorts of warnings are made repeatedly by economists and then simply ignored.
Ireland, for example, is being repeatedly warned about relying on corporate tax receipts that will not last, and it is doing exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. You can be sure that Ireland will experience a government debt crisis in the future when the tide goes out on its corporate tax receipts.
With all the adverse media coverage of Farage Reform tick up another point
Is he really a Teflon politician, or is the anti establishment electorate not for moving, or is it a slow fuse to Farage going and reform imploding ?
I have no answer to these questions
While there are uncertainties as to mode and method, it is a racing certainty that Reform can't get back to where they were in the polls, and that the anti Reform majority will make every effort to ensure Reform don't form or lead a government. The chance of 'Not Reform' being successful is high. Another certainty is that there will be a core Reform group for whom Farage can do no wrong.
Another certainty is that there will be a core Reform group for whom Farage can do no wrong.
I'm somewhat doubtful whether that group will turn out to be very big. I suspect it'll be very patchy; cf the Liberals in the 50's.
It is also likely to be strongest with those who do not vote.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
In that graph, there are two apparent upward shifts in Reform support: the first appears to be directly from Labour, the second from the Tories. All seems too clean and convenient...
There is only one vertical shift in the graph. That is immediately after the 2024 election when the graph moves from the exponential moving average of polls to the actual result of the 2024 GE. Labour and Reform underperformed the polls. Tory, LD and Green out performed the polls.
Since then the graph reverts to the exponential moving average of all polls with a decay factor of 10%. The weight of a poll decays by 10% each time there is a new poll. So the weight of a poll 10 polls old (typically two weeks old) is reduced to 38% of its original value. A poll 20 polls old (typically a month old) is reduced to 13% of its original value, and so on.
When there is an apparent poll movement from party A to party B, it shouldn't be interpreted as voters switching from A to B. There is churn going on. It could be switching from A to C and at the same time others switching from C to B.
With all the adverse media coverage of Farage Reform tick up another point
Is he really a Teflon politician, or is the anti establishment electorate not for moving, or is it a slow fuse to Farage going and reform imploding ?
I have no answer to these questions
a 1 point change is basically meaningless
We all used to wait for moves outside the margin of error before declaring a trend, but since journalists do not understand the statistical process they seize on the slightest thing and so meaningless moves are declared to be the final word. In fact there is also quite a bit of inertia and time lag in polls so I would not be confident about the current state of play unless there are very sharp and clear moves in the data or a trend is established over a longer time frame. FWIW I think the "Farage is a grifter" meme is getting established, but the cut through has not been immediate. However, I think any forced by election in Clacton will polarize the data- the loyalists may go with "he's a victim", but the majority will take a strongly negative view.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
My condolences for your loss. I hope your wife's made a full recovery. The gaslighting sounds infuriating.
It's nothing like your example, but a female friend of mine told me of a friend of hers who had had a blood test to confirm whether she had a certain condition. She ended up having the test 3-4 times because the information wasn't relayed and the staff wouldn't take her word for it.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
Condolences. What an horrific thing to have endured. A side-order of (at best) callousness just makes it all the worse.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
What an appalling experience; I'm not at all surprised your poor wife was in 'a state'. Every sympathy, and I hope she, and you, recover somewhat.
It's odd he doesn't just stonewall and say "wait for the committee to report". Maybe shutting up isn't his millieu.
Is it wise to let your opponents control the story?
Also, the committee is probably going to say he was wrong. He needs to get his defence out there in advance.
Blaming the process or the rules themselves is tried and tested, it works in supporters all the time and sometimes even beyond them.
So you get people delaying and overcomplicating and then complaining things were delayed and complex, or apply a ridiculously high standard and complain that no crime was committed.
Because as we know if conduct is not criminal its impossible for it to be criticised.
Farage's problem with that sort of process complaint is that the heart of the story is immediately and obviously easy to understand: politician gets £5m in exchange for 'nothing' and doesn't declare it.
To reiterate, it seems entirely reasonable to me, and I'm baffled why no crypto billionaires have accepted my generous offer to receive £5m in exchange for nothing.
Exactly. The simplest way to clear this up is for crypto billionaires to reveal that they've given £5m to several random people on a politics blog, for no reason at all.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
What a horrible experience for you both. Every sympathy. I hope your wife is at least recovering from the physical trauma/illness.
@kinabalu (and with apologies to everyone else for carrying out a time-lagged conversation)
- "Back Home" - it's brilliant isn't it? Like the football of its time - very route one and direct, but somehow no less charming for that. If you distilled all football songs before 1990, this is what you would get. It was also, of course, adapted as the theme from Fantasy Football, and also used for all the interstitials (e.g. for a brief section on an awkward 1930s televised post-FA Cup celebration (to the tune of 'Back Home') "Old Football / Banquets were rubbish / There were only two men there") Which increases my nostalgic affection for it. But it was used because it is so perfect, so completely the distillation of all pre-1990 football songs.
It does however illustrate my oft-trotted-out point that culture came to a halt in the 90s. Consider this: when the excellent "World in Motion" was released, "Back Home" was 20 years old, yet felt like it was from another era. Musically it didn't feel too far from the theme from Dad's Army. "World in Motion", of course, is now 36 years old, yet still feels contemporary.
It feels contemporary to people who grew up with it. I don't know what the answer you'd get from a 20 year old is but suspect it would be that its from grandads era.....
I don't think that's true. I have three teenage daughters and know lots of other teens; they are as easily familiar with the musical offerings of my generation as they are with that of their own. When I was their age, in the early 90s, perhaps 80% of our musical consumption was present day to present day minus 5 years with another 15% being back to present day minus 15 years and another 5% being back to present day minus 25 years. And absolutely nothing before that. Nowadays, they and their counterparts will happily consume music from 25-50 years ago in a way we absolutely didn't do.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
That is awful, Maffew. I’m so sorry.
The “not listening” point is the bit that keeps coming up again and again in these cases. Even where outcomes might not have been changed, being dismissed, contradicted, or treated as unreliable about your own body adds another layer of harm on top of the original trauma.
I hope your wife has recovered as well as possible, and that both of you have had proper support since.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
That's dreadful. I'm so sorry. It does sound very familiar from the interactions I and my family have had with the NHS over the years.
There appears to be a reflexive assumption that everyone presenting with symptoms is, "worried well," and just needs to be reassured and sent home, rather than any investigation done to work out what is going on.
This is why the NHS is rather good where it comes to undeniable conditions - like a bone broken so badly it punctures the skin - but really bad with a lot else.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
What a horrendous experience. Truly sorry to hear that and I hope you’re both healing now.
It matches what an obstetrician told me a year or too back. He could trust the staff to do a planned section safely, while had concerns about how well they could monitor and manage a vaginal delivery, particularly when short staffed and not working as a team out of hours.
Perhaps rather sad, but there we are.
What she said about staff not listening to women rings true.
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
I'm so sorry to hear what you and your wife have been through. Condolences on your loss. I hope you can both heal in time.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
An interesting access case that hit the national media this morning.
TLDR: A Cornwall "hotel on a headland" owner wanting to do a development closed a path used by the public to access the beach since the 19C by putting an iron gate and shuttering across it. There was an imbroglio involving the then Liberal MP around 1900. There is no alternative access afaics.
The solution would have been to claim it as a Public Right of Way decades ago, or to have had it made a condition of his Planning Permission, as these are more difficult to protect later.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
An interesting access case that hit the national media this morning.
TLDR: A Cornwall "hotel on a headland" owner wanting to do a development closed a path used by the public to access the beach since the 19C by putting an iron gate and shuttering across it. There was an imbroglio involving the then Liberal MP around 1900. There is no alternative access afaics.
The solution would have been to claim it as a Public Right of Way decades ago, or to have had it made a condition of his Planning Permission, as these are more difficult to protect later.
“ The body of the main suspect in the assassination attempt on Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Yermolaev in Monaco was found buried near Kyiv.
The body of Anastasia Berezovskaya, who was the main suspect of planting a homemade bomb near the home of the fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Yermolaev in Monaco, was found on Monday evening buried near Kyiv, according to Ukrainian media citing sources.
According to available information, two suspects have been detained.
Interpol had previously issued an official “red notice” for the search of the main suspect — 39-year-old Ukrainian citizen Anastasia Berezovskaya
The oligarch Vadim Yermolaev recently came out of a coma, Nice Matin reports.
His companion, who was with him during the incident, had both legs amputated, the publication claims. The life of the oligarch’s 13-year-old son is not in danger.
Yermolaev, who was among the top 100 richest people in Ukraine, was placed on Ukraine’s sanctions list because his company “Alef-Vinal-Crimea” continued doing business in Crimea after Russian occupation”
An interesting access case that hit the national media this morning.
TLDR: A Cornwall "hotel on a headland" owner wanting to do a development closed a path used by the public to access the beach since the 19C by putting an iron gate and shuttering across it. There was an imbroglio involving the then Liberal MP around 1900. There is no alternative access afaics.
The solution would have been to claim it as a Public Right of Way decades ago, or to have had it made a condition of his Planning Permission, as these are more difficult to protect later.
I have a bit of knowledge of the law here from being on the receiving end of a not dissimilar situation a couple of years back.
Specifically, I don't think the time limit for claims under the rights of way legislation is yet in operation. If so there is nothing to stop it being retrospectively designated as a Public Right of Way providing that it can be evidenced to have been used as such up to the point where the owner first contested its use by the public. eg. If they put up a notice stating "no public access" 5 years ago you would have to find lots of witnesses that used the path 6 years ago.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
I only know a little bit about the details of the Berlin airlift, but I found out something about it when looking into the history of some data standards I was working with.
Apart from the physical challenges involved in terms of the number of aircraft, crew, etc, it was a massive task simply to organise it all, and new data standards were created to help simplify that.
You'd think that nearly eight decades of technological progress would make it much more feasible for Russia, but they've traditionally relied on railway logistics. On which note, there's video going round recently of a steam locomotive being used to pull a cargo train in Russia, so all is not well there either.
Acquiescing to Farage on the basis of him being a lesser evil is the very definition of defeatism.
And will who/whatever follows Farage have the same degree of popular support?
It's not impossible s/he could assemble more. Farage is a very divisive figure (as befits a knobend).
However, the likeliest successors are Anderson, Jenrick and Braverman.
Anyone thinking they would do better than Farage, may I ask what you will offer me for the bridge I have for sale right now?
There's nothing much any of us can do about him anyway as far as whether he continues or not. There's a process now to assess whether he broken the parliamentary rules and if that forces a by-election then it is down to the folk of Clacton.
If he decides to walk because he's fed up, then there again there's nothing any of us can do about it.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
This is a complicated question, complicated further by Russian attempts since 2014 to Russify the territory by encouraging Russians to move there and being hostile to the Crimean Tartars.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
@kinabalu (and with apologies to everyone else for carrying out a time-lagged conversation)
- "Back Home" - it's brilliant isn't it? Like the football of its time - very route one and direct, but somehow no less charming for that. If you distilled all football songs before 1990, this is what you would get. It was also, of course, adapted as the theme from Fantasy Football, and also used for all the interstitials (e.g. for a brief section on an awkward 1930s televised post-FA Cup celebration (to the tune of 'Back Home') "Old Football / Banquets were rubbish / There were only two men there") Which increases my nostalgic affection for it. But it was used because it is so perfect, so completely the distillation of all pre-1990 football songs.
It does however illustrate my oft-trotted-out point that culture came to a halt in the 90s. Consider this: when the excellent "World in Motion" was released, "Back Home" was 20 years old, yet felt like it was from another era. Musically it didn't feel too far from the theme from Dad's Army. "World in Motion", of course, is now 36 years old, yet still feels contemporary.
It feels contemporary to people who grew up with it. I don't know what the answer you'd get from a 20 year old is but suspect it would be that its from grandads era.....
I don't think that's true. I have three teenage daughters and know lots of other teens; they are as easily familiar with the musical offerings of my generation as they are with that of their own. When I was their age, in the early 90s, perhaps 80% of our musical consumption was present day to present day minus 5 years with another 15% being back to present day minus 15 years and another 5% being back to present day minus 25 years. And absolutely nothing before that. Nowadays, they and their counterparts will happily consume music from 25-50 years ago in a way we absolutely didn't do.
Just a comment as a sidewind to this issue, but may have some bearing on it.
A professional musician I know believes that ultimately in music there is no replacement for good tunes, and that this explains what survives and what doesn't, and he explains the decline of the classical/complex/serious music tradition to the 20th century movement away from good tunes (Schoenberg, Webern and all that.)
(Good tunes don't have to be just simplistic music. Schubert was the among greatest of all great tune writers.)
As parallel insights, I would conjecture the decline of poetry since, perhaps the death of Larkin, to the decline of form, simplicity, and having something interesting to say.
And great novels are intimately related to great story telling, in which the reader is invited to engage but is not invited to construct a 5,000 piece jigsaw from a complex of fragments; which is why Joyce's Ulysses is not a page turner and so few read modern literary novels.
And great TV/film requires a decent and authentic script a million times more than it needs elaborate settings.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
This is a complicated question, complicated further by Russian attempts since 2014 to Russify the territory by encouraging Russians to move there and being hostile to the Crimean Tartars.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
Jamala, a Crimean Tatar, won Eurovision for Ukraine in 2016 with a song called "1944".
With all the adverse media coverage of Farage Reform tick up another point
Is he really a Teflon politician, or is the anti establishment electorate not for moving, or is it a slow fuse to Farage going and reform imploding ?
I have no answer to these questions
a 1 point change is basically meaningless
In itself it is but reform seem to be quite resilient for now
Those who want to defeat Reform should not rely on the flakiness of the 25% but the solidity of the 60%+ who don't want it. reform is only a real danger if it has 35%+ solid support and can hold its own therefore against most others.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
I only know a little bit about the details of the Berlin airlift, but I found out something about it when looking into the history of some data standards I was working with.
Apart from the physical challenges involved in terms of the number of aircraft, crew, etc, it was a massive task simply to organise it all, and new data standards were created to help simplify that.
You'd think that nearly eight decades of technological progress would make it much more feasible for Russia, but they've traditionally relied on railway logistics. On which note, there's video going round recently of a steam locomotive being used to pull a cargo train in Russia, so all is not well there either.
It was considered impossible, given the failures at Stalingrad.
Organising the Berlin Airlift was a master piece of logistics. It required just about every top end heavy lift aircraft available, required next to no interference from the Russians and was marginal as to what it could deliver - strict rationing in Berlin, during the blockade, next to no civilian car usage etc.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
I only know a little bit about the details of the Berlin airlift, but I found out something about it when looking into the history of some data standards I was working with.
Apart from the physical challenges involved in terms of the number of aircraft, crew, etc, it was a massive task simply to organise it all, and new data standards were created to help simplify that.
You'd think that nearly eight decades of technological progress would make it much more feasible for Russia, but they've traditionally relied on railway logistics. On which note, there's video going round recently of a steam locomotive being used to pull a cargo train in Russia, so all is not well there either.
It was considered impossible, given the failures at Stalingrad.
Organising the Berlin Airlift was a master piece of logistics. It required just about every top end heavy lift aircraft available, required next to no interference from the Russians and was marginal as to what it could deliver - strict rationing in Berlin, during the blockade, next to no civilian car usage etc.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
This is a complicated question, complicated further by Russian attempts since 2014 to Russify the territory by encouraging Russians to move there and being hostile to the Crimean Tartars.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
Thanks; thought it wasn't simple. Are Crimean Tartars Russian (your post suggests not), Ukrainian, or 'plague on both your houses' Tartars?
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
Given Russia's only stategy seems to be blasting missiles into Ukrainian residential blocks, Ukraine will have no qualms about destroying any planes trying to lift the siege of Crimea. I don't doubt it will be as successful as the rest of the siege.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
This is a complicated question, complicated further by Russian attempts since 2014 to Russify the territory by encouraging Russians to move there and being hostile to the Crimean Tartars.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
Thanks; thought it wasn't simple. Are Crimean Tartars Russian (your post suggests not), Ukrainian, or 'plague on both your houses' Tartars?
Jamala, a Crimean Tatar, won Eurovision for Ukraine in 2016 with a song called "1944".
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
This is a complicated question, complicated further by Russian attempts since 2014 to Russify the territory by encouraging Russians to move there and being hostile to the Crimean Tartars.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
Thanks; thought it wasn't simple. Are Crimean Tartars Russian (your post suggests not), Ukrainian, or 'plague on both your houses' Tartars?
My general impression is that Crimean Tartars are roughly analogous to the Welsh. They don't see themselves as Russian or Ukrainian from an ethnic point of view, but they're mostly not in favour of independence and prefer to be an autonomous part of Ukraine than of Russia, just as the Welsh mostly don't think of themselves as British or English, but they're mostly content to be a part of Britain with devolution, rather than independent, or part of Ireland.
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
I only know a little bit about the details of the Berlin airlift, but I found out something about it when looking into the history of some data standards I was working with.
Apart from the physical challenges involved in terms of the number of aircraft, crew, etc, it was a massive task simply to organise it all, and new data standards were created to help simplify that.
You'd think that nearly eight decades of technological progress would make it much more feasible for Russia, but they've traditionally relied on railway logistics. On which note, there's video going round recently of a steam locomotive being used to pull a cargo train in Russia, so all is not well there either.
I can see why they’re doing it - steam trains run on fuels that the Ukrainians are not currently bombing.
Can't see this doing much for their future economic management.
On Sunday, June 28, 2026, former Tsinghua University associate professor Dr. Zheng Yuhuang was giving a high-ticket business lecture at the Hilton Beijing Capital Airport. During the session, he characterized China's trajectory as "macroeconomically pessimistic," warning of a potential 20 to 30-year stagnation period mirroring Japan's lost decades.He frankly argued that internal structural failures such as unequal pension distributions and the rigid household registration system are fueling the downturn rather than global economic trends.
Mid-lecture, two police officers suddenly marched into the venue and escorted Dr. Zheng out for interrogation under suspicion of hosting an "illegal gathering." The intervention occurred after an audience member reportedly called the authorities to denounce the professor's "defeatist" economic analysis. While he was permitted to return and finish the seminar after a brief five-minute clarification, a massive digital purge followed shortly after.
By July 1, 2026, Dr. Zheng's short-video profiles, Weibo, and WeChat accounts were entirely wiped and permanently banned across all major mainland platforms. The swift deletion destroyed 16 years of accumulated educational content, marketing research, and public media archives overnight. This extreme response underscores a broader pattern where Beijing treats objective economic data as a national security threat, weaponizing citizen-on-citizen surveillance to enforce absolute narrative control... https://x.com/Unveiled_ChinaX/status/2073559356482949240
This sort of thing should allow democracies to outperform China, but in democracies these sorts of warnings are made repeatedly by economists and then simply ignored.
Ireland, for example, is being repeatedly warned about relying on corporate tax receipts that will not last, and it is doing exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. You can be sure that Ireland will experience a government debt crisis in the future when the tide goes out on its corporate tax receipts.
In the long run.
In the near term, China continues to decimate western manufacturing, and although we're at long last waking up to that, the remedies are far from clear.
Acquiescing to Farage on the basis of him being a lesser evil is the very definition of defeatism.
In any event, "we" are not bringing down Farage - he's done it to himself. Lilico appears to be suggesting that we just ignore the huge sums of money and the dodgy sources.
Adding VAT to private school fees has failed to trigger an exodus of pupils into the state sector despite widespread speculation that it would, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has said.
The Labour government applied 20% VAT to private school fees from the start of 2025. They had previously been exempt from the tax. Newly published admissions data for England showed there had been no influx towards state schools since then.
The DfE said that VAT on private school fees was raising more than had been initially forecast, and is now likely to bring in £1.8bn annually by 2029-30.
Great News for the 94% that the 6% are paying VAT for the privilege of privilege
Ukraine claims to have hit 10 Russian ships in the Sea of Azov overnight. 8 fuel tankers, 1 cargo ship and a ferry. At least some of them were successful enough to be picked up by the NASA FIRMS system (that's normally used for tracking forest fires). The operation to isolate Crimea continues.
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
Airlifts only tend to work when your cargo planes aren’t being shot at (eg Stalingrad v Berlin). I imagine that though Ukraine might not contest a retreat from Crimea, air transports to sustain occupation would be very much fair game.
Russia is still operating military fixed-wing aviation out of Crimean airbases, so I'd guess the main problems would be a general lack of aviation fuel (due to the ongoing attacks on oil refineries), lack of spare parts for the aircraft, and drones attacking aircraft on the ground.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
You also need a huge airlift capability to do much resupply. And even then that has serious limits - replacing land/sea shipping is a a vast task.
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
How many of the residents of Crimea are likely to be sympathetic to the Russian and Ukrainian causes? My, admittedly poor, understanding is that Crimea isn't particularly Ukrainian.
This is a complicated question, complicated further by Russian attempts since 2014 to Russify the territory by encouraging Russians to move there and being hostile to the Crimean Tartars.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
Thanks; thought it wasn't simple. Are Crimean Tartars Russian (your post suggests not), Ukrainian, or 'plague on both your houses' Tartars?
And more importantly why is their sauce so good with fish!
Important judgement today for France, and possibly the whole of Europe, whether Marine Le Pen can stand for the upcoming presidential election. If she wins the case she will be the candidate for the far right Rassemblement National in the upcoming presidential election. If she loses it will be her deputy Jordan Bardella who on current polling is a bit more likely to win the presidency. Her appeal against a five year ban on political office for misusing EU funds doesn't look likely to succeed.
Yeah, I have no time for Le Pen who, in my opinion, is just better at hiding her monstrous views than her father was, but I really don't like lawyers and courts deciding who can stand and who people can vote for. It just feels wrong.
Even when they commit fraud, let's call a spade a spade, actually steal, €4 million euros? Le Pen didn't have to do that.
Explanation from Wikipedia. I don't think Le Pen was treated harshly
On 31 March 2025, eight MEPs, 12 assistants from the National Rally, and Le Pen were found guilty of embezzling European Union funds by a Paris court.[25][26][27][28] Le Pen received a four-year prison sentence, two years of which were suspended, in addition to a €100,000 fine. She did not begin serving the two years' house arrest immediately as all appeals must be exhausted before this part of the sentence is executed. Similarly, she did not lose her seat in the lower house of the French parliament immediately.[234] On the other hand, the court also banned her, effective immediately, from standing for political office for five years, making her ineligible to run in the 2027 French presidential election.[235]
Acquiescing to Farage on the basis of him being a lesser evil is the very definition of defeatism.
In any event, "we" are not bringing down Farage - he's done it to himself. Lilico appears to be suggesting that we just ignore the huge sums of money and the dodgy sources.
The glaring thing to any lanyarder who has ever done a corporate compliance course, indeed to any brickie who has ever filled in a VAT form is just how crushingly entry level / 101 this all is. It's like stuff simply doesn't apply.
I mean, the parliamentary system that allows a hell of a lot on expenses, practical gifts and a level of security / VIP separation is borderline asking for trouble already, and the Farage stuff just blows even that system to smithereens.
Adding VAT to private school fees has failed to trigger an exodus of pupils into the state sector despite widespread speculation that it would, the education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, has said.
The Labour government applied 20% VAT to private school fees from the start of 2025. They had previously been exempt from the tax. Newly published admissions data for England showed there had been no influx towards state schools since then.
The DfE said that VAT on private school fees was raising more than had been initially forecast, and is now likely to bring in £1.8bn annually by 2029-30.
Great News for the 94% that the 6% are paying VAT for the privilege of privilege
Leaving aside the fact that (even in the absence of a link) Bridget Phillipson is a fluent liar with the intellectual capacity of a donkey and so are the civil servants of the DfE, we need a few caveats:
1) Where is the data from and which data point is it up to? If it only goes to the 6th April it's more useless than Amanda Spielman.
2) Have they checked to see if it shows any excess outflow at the change of key stage?
3) Have they adjusted by region to show whether or not a shift is being masked by demographic decline?
All the figures I have seen show that the exodus is about bang in the middle of the two year forecast.
I'd also add that since these utter loons propose to spank any money on disastrous failed projects including expanding academy chains and throttling teacher training further by diverting yet more money to Teach First, rather than by getting serious by cutting class sizes, more money isn't going to help in any meaningful way even if it materialises.
Farage to make a statement on his future in public life at 2.00pm
"I'm a fighter, not a quitter" etc etc
I recall, before his defenestration, Lord Mandelson remarking that "Nigel has peaked too soon." Whatever else you may say about Mandy, he's always been pretty shrewd about politics, if not his own conduct.
Farage to make a statement on his future in public life at 2.00pm
"I'm a fighter, not a quitter" etc etc
Given Oakeshott's tweet it seems likely he's going to go full QAnon over the deep state trying to silence him, shadowy figures in the establishment, etc, etc.
All very tedious when it's a simple matter of being bought for £5m by a billionaire.
Comments
I know little of French politics so presumably her deputy is more popular
Very slightly connectedly, I read something about Cocteau the other day which informed me that gay men in 20th century France or possibly earlier would adopt their male lovers otherwise the lads would have no inheritance rights in the event of the (presumably older) gay men dying.
YouGov
@YouGov
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4m
Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention, 5-6 July 2026
Reform UK: 25% (+1 from 28-29 Jun)
Conservatives: 21% (+1)
Labour: 20% (=)
Greens: 13% (=)
Lib Dems: 12% (-1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Restore Britain: 3% (=)
Plaid Cymru: 2% (+1)
Your Party: 0% (-1)
https://x.com/YouGov/status/2074409849023021140?s=20
https://x.com/trakse1904/status/2074099253606076747
But it’s not appearing to do that yet.
And Good Morning everyone. Lovely morning again, if a little breezy.
Because of the fragmentation and general uselessness of the traditional parties most of us have mentally forgotten that on its own '25%' isn't very many votes. It's only a lot if there is no combined opposition, in which case it is not enough.
Assume that Farage will continue to have a Trumpian style of support among those for whom he can do no wrong, this won't go much higher. For the other 70+% the latest turmoil confirms that a principal contest in 2029 is Not Reform v Reform. Over time I think the Tories will decide they are firmly on the 'Never In Bed With Reform' side (Katie Lam was suggesting that on, I think, Times Radio recently.)
The obviously awfulness of Farage and co mean that they will face a combined Not Reform assault which leads to much more informed tactical voting.
The damage from scandals is often much slower than people expect rather than at the time of the reveal. From now on, for the next few months at least, every time he is interviewed he will get questioned about it and look slippery. Even when talking about other things, (some) voters will be less inclined to trust and respect him and therefore his message won't cut through as clearly.
Luckily for him, his core support will mostly think all politicians are "at it" and they are going after Farage as he is a threat. So he won't slip below 20% but might drift gradually towards it and it certainly makes getting back to the low thirties much tougher.
What would be best of course would be if other parties actually upped their game and made better offers than Reform, and when in government ran the country very well.
Reform second recent bounce seems to be over.
Green bounce definitely over
Labour uptick just discernable.
With all the adverse media coverage of Farage Reform tick up another point
Is he really a Teflon politician, or is the anti establishment electorate not for moving, or is it a slow fuse to Farage going and reform imploding ?
I have no answer to these questions
(and with apologies to everyone else for carrying out a time-lagged conversation)
- "Back Home" - it's brilliant isn't it? Like the football of its time - very route one and direct, but somehow no less charming for that. If you distilled all football songs before 1990, this is what you would get.
It was also, of course, adapted as the theme from Fantasy Football, and also used for all the interstitials (e.g. for a brief section on an awkward 1930s televised post-FA Cup celebration (to the tune of 'Back Home') "Old Football / Banquets were rubbish / There were only two men there") Which increases my nostalgic affection for it. But it was used because it is so perfect, so completely the distillation of all pre-1990 football songs.
It does however illustrate my oft-trotted-out point that culture came to a halt in the 90s. Consider this: when the excellent "World in Motion" was released, "Back Home" was 20 years old, yet felt like it was from another era. Musically it didn't feel too far from the theme from Dad's Army. "World in Motion", of course, is now 36 years old, yet still feels contemporary.
I'm somewhat doubtful whether that group will turn out to be very big. I suspect it'll be very patchy; cf the Liberals in the 50's.
Ireland, for example, is being repeatedly warned about relying on corporate tax receipts that will not last, and it is doing exactly the opposite of what it should be doing. You can be sure that Ireland will experience a government debt crisis in the future when the tide goes out on its corporate tax receipts.
https://medium.com/@rkilner/will-reliability-cost-mercedes-the-title-d55cfe8f59a0
My wife (and I) lost twins last year and she nearly died, in part because of medical professionals simply dismissing symptoms. She had serious symptoms and was repeatedly told things like "it's normal for pregnancy" (it wasn't) "you must have always had blood pressure issues, you're just wrong/lying" (she never had) "you probably just bumped yourself" (in response to massive bruising). Even after a multi-day stay in hospital everything kept being dismissed. They only started taking things seriously when she was readmitted for dangerously high blood pressure and one baby died. By that point she was in serious decline culminating in a relatively late abortion of the other to save her life and an operation to remove a tumour a month later. Some staff were very kind, a few were horrendously callous, but most just didn't listen.
I don't know if it would have been possible to save the pregnancy with earlier intervention and for obvious reasons it's not something that we particularly want to explore, but regardless of that, the repeated gas lighting and dismissal of issues made everything worse and left my wife in much worse condition at the end of it than might have been achieved with earlier intervention.
Labour and Reform underperformed the polls. Tory, LD and Green out performed the polls.
Since then the graph reverts to the exponential moving average of all polls with a decay factor of 10%.
The weight of a poll decays by 10% each time there is a new poll.
So the weight of a poll 10 polls old (typically two weeks old) is reduced to 38% of its original value.
A poll 20 polls old (typically a month old) is reduced to 13% of its original value, and so on.
When there is an apparent poll movement from party A to party B, it shouldn't be interpreted as voters switching from A to B. There is churn going on. It could be switching from A to C and at the same time others switching from C to B.
It's nothing like your example, but a female friend of mine told me of a friend of hers who had had a blood test to confirm whether she had a certain condition. She ended up having the test 3-4 times because the information wasn't relayed and the staff wouldn't take her word for it.
PM me generous crypto billionaires.
The “not listening” point is the bit that keeps coming up again and again in these cases. Even where outcomes might not have been changed, being dismissed, contradicted, or treated as unreliable about your own body adds another layer of harm on top of the original trauma.
I hope your wife has recovered as well as possible, and that both of you have had proper support since.
Like many of Trump's big ideas it achieves a quick gain which sooner or later (sooner in this case) has overall negative consequences.
There appears to be a reflexive assumption that everyone presenting with symptoms is, "worried well," and just needs to be reassured and sent home, rather than any investigation done to work out what is going on.
This is why the NHS is rather good where it comes to undeniable conditions - like a bone broken so badly it punctures the skin - but really bad with a lot else.
Voices like yours need listening to. Not ignoring
The Berlin Airlift started just over 78 years ago, and I wonder whether a Russian attempt to do something similar is in the near future.
An interesting access case that hit the national media this morning.
TLDR: A Cornwall "hotel on a headland" owner wanting to do a development closed a path used by the public to access the beach since the 19C by putting an iron gate and shuttering across it. There was an imbroglio involving the then Liberal MP around 1900. There is no alternative access afaics.
The solution would have been to claim it as a Public Right of Way decades ago, or to have had it made a condition of his Planning Permission, as these are more difficult to protect later.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy491z8yej9o
We thought it would be a right of way, people would have right of access. Clearly not.
“ The body of the main suspect in the assassination attempt on Ukrainian oligarch Vadim Yermolaev in Monaco was found buried near Kyiv.
The body of Anastasia Berezovskaya, who was the main suspect of planting a homemade bomb near the home of the fugitive Ukrainian oligarch Yermolaev in Monaco, was found on Monday evening buried near Kyiv, according to Ukrainian media citing sources.
According to available information, two suspects have been detained.
Interpol had previously issued an official “red notice” for the search of the main suspect — 39-year-old Ukrainian citizen Anastasia Berezovskaya
The oligarch Vadim Yermolaev recently came out of a coma, Nice Matin reports.
His companion, who was with him during the incident, had both legs amputated, the publication claims. The life of the oligarch’s 13-year-old son is not in danger.
Yermolaev, who was among the top 100 richest people in Ukraine, was placed on Ukraine’s sanctions list because his company “Alef-Vinal-Crimea” continued doing business in Crimea after Russian occupation”
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2074411032034853330?s=61
Specifically, I don't think the time limit for claims under the rights of way legislation is yet in operation. If so there is nothing to stop it being retrospectively designated as a Public Right of Way providing that it can be evidenced to have been used as such up to the point where the owner first contested its use by the public. eg. If they put up a notice stating "no public access" 5 years ago you would have to find lots of witnesses that used the path 6 years ago.
I wouldn't expect it to work, but if the supply situation by land and sea continues to deteriorate they will very likely make the attempt.
@andrew_lilico
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2s
I fear that if you bring down Farage you'll like what follows a great deal less.
https://x.com/andrew_lilico
@andrew_lilico
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2s
I fear that if you bring down Farage you'll like what follows a great deal less.
https://x.com/andrew_lilico
Russia’s fleet of military cargo aircraft is aging and has serious availability issues.
However, the likeliest successors are Anderson, Jenrick and Braverman.
Anyone thinking they would do better than Farage, may I ask what you will offer me for the bridge I have for sale right now?
Apart from the physical challenges involved in terms of the number of aircraft, crew, etc, it was a massive task simply to organise it all, and new data standards were created to help simplify that.
You'd think that nearly eight decades of technological progress would make it much more feasible for Russia, but they've traditionally relied on railway logistics. On which note, there's video going round recently of a steam locomotive being used to pull a cargo train in Russia, so all is not well there either.
If he decides to walk because he's fed up, then there again there's nothing any of us can do about it.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-ukraine-crisis-poll-intl/index.html
..gives some idea. This poll has upset several “realists” on the Ukraine situation, since it doesn’t say what they want it to say.
https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-ukraine-crisis-poll-intl/index.html
..gives some idea. This poll has upset several “realists” on the Ukraine situation, since it doesn’t say what they want it to say.
I would say that, among the population who were resident in 2013, they are likely to be much more pro-Ukrainian than they were before the Russian seizure in 2014, but a lot of current residents were not living in Crimea at that time.
A professional musician I know believes that ultimately in music there is no replacement for good tunes, and that this explains what survives and what doesn't, and he explains the decline of the classical/complex/serious music tradition to the 20th century movement away from good tunes (Schoenberg, Webern and all that.)
(Good tunes don't have to be just simplistic music. Schubert was the among greatest of all great tune writers.)
As parallel insights, I would conjecture the decline of poetry since, perhaps the death of Larkin, to the decline of form, simplicity, and having something interesting to say.
And great novels are intimately related to great story telling, in which the reader is invited to engage but is not invited to construct a 5,000 piece jigsaw from a complex of fragments; which is why Joyce's Ulysses is not a page turner and so few read modern literary novels.
And great TV/film requires a decent and authentic script a million times more than it needs elaborate settings.
Organising the Berlin Airlift was a master piece of logistics. It required just about every top end heavy lift aircraft available, required next to no interference from the Russians and was marginal as to what it could deliver - strict rationing in Berlin, during the blockade, next to no civilian car usage etc.
Organising the Berlin Airlift was a master piece of logistics. It required just about every top end heavy lift aircraft available, required next to no interference from the Russians and was marginal as to what it could deliver - strict rationing in Berlin, during the blockade, next to no civilian car usage etc.
I'm actually happier Belgium won last night than I am when England won Sunday night!
In the near term, China continues to decimate western manufacturing, and although we're at long last waking up to that, the remedies are far from clear.
If standards aren't maintained they cease to exist.
Lilico appears to be suggesting that we just ignore the huge sums of money and the dodgy sources.
On that score, the FT has a report on Cottrell:
Damning - Cottrell describing how to bribe politicians etc...
https://x.com/Starcourse/status/2074371799513530808
The Labour government applied 20% VAT to private school fees from the start of 2025. They had previously been exempt from the tax. Newly published admissions data for England showed there had been no influx towards state schools since then.
The DfE said that VAT on private school fees was raising more than had been initially forecast, and is now likely to bring in £1.8bn annually by 2029-30.
Great News for the 94% that the 6% are paying VAT for the privilege of privilege
A new Prime Minister must take social care off the "too difficult" pile
He previously proposed replacing inheritance tax with a "national care levy" ensuring all adults contribute while the wealthiest pay the most.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?sca_esv=fb771978cd7fbbec&sxsrf=APpeQnswBTp9iLlQmTvELzX9Db2u49Z5rg:1783422905253&udm=2&fbs=ABfTbFVyMZGZf1hfvX9uKjN_-G8cqCQj_06QnZs315LoFmPf5bBLHMJ0vMQmTbuI72DM7jnxvATrUU2Yg9dwuUGnsUHcA8ltRxGSueAm4xbJB7-U9dUVXdUUUBKez4bad6LuBL0vMB19lFszB4gP8QG4a5HAYCwNbaWDeHUMg3aZg1dFyqz3j9lf_iAcutKfO6uVLnbDXIGC-9hzfE9LW_FBZRSpMh8bXw&q=no+future&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQwYGGuMCVAxVzVKQEHepSG8gQtKgLegQIIBAB&biw=1396&bih=632&dpr=1.38#sv=CAMSURoyKhBlLTlVZXZlWEtEeGFIc0hNMg45VWV2ZVhLRHhhSHNITToOanNLVVZrcmJ5TVNaaU0gBCoXCgFzEhBlLTlVZXZlWEtEeGFIc0hNGAEwARgHINH5rKMMSggQARgBIAEoAQ
@IsabelOakeshott
Explanation from Wikipedia. I don't think Le Pen was treated harshly
On 31 March 2025, eight MEPs, 12 assistants from the National Rally, and Le Pen were found guilty of embezzling European Union funds by a Paris court.[25][26][27][28] Le Pen received a four-year prison sentence, two years of which were suspended, in addition to a €100,000 fine. She did not begin serving the two years' house arrest immediately as all appeals must be exhausted before this part of the sentence is executed. Similarly, she did not lose her seat in the lower house of the French parliament immediately.[234] On the other hand, the court also banned her, effective immediately, from standing for political office for five years, making her ineligible to run in the 2027 French presidential election.[235]
I mean, the parliamentary system that allows a hell of a lot on expenses, practical gifts and a level of security / VIP separation is borderline asking for trouble already, and the Farage stuff just blows even that system to smithereens.
1) Where is the data from and which data point is it up to? If it only goes to the 6th April it's more useless than Amanda Spielman.
2) Have they checked to see if it shows any excess outflow at the change of key stage?
3) Have they adjusted by region to show whether or not a shift is being masked by demographic decline?
All the figures I have seen show that the exodus is about bang in the middle of the two year forecast.
I'd also add that since these utter loons propose to spank any money on disastrous failed projects including expanding academy chains and throttling teacher training further by diverting yet more money to Teach First, rather than by getting serious by cutting class sizes, more money isn't going to help in any meaningful way even if it materialises.
The pig...
All very tedious when it's a simple matter of being bought for £5m by a billionaire.