More voters think Reform are on the side of the establishment than the people – politicalbetting.com
More voters think Reform are on the side of the establishment than the people – politicalbetting.com
The Green Party is most likely to be on the side of "the people" (39%), followed by the Liberal Democrats at 33% and Reform UK at 28%. The Conservative Party is most likely to be seen as on the side of "the establishment" (62%) ? https://tinyurl.com/5n8er7mc
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Investigators are considering whether leftwing, anarchist and single-issue terrorism (LASIT) played a role in the suspect’s alleged motivation, but are keeping an open mind as new material emerges.
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The inquiry is also looking into the suspect’s history of mental health and neurodivergence.
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While the killing is being investigated by counter-terrorism police, it has not been formally designated as a terrorist attack. That is a decision made by the senior national coordinator for counter-terrorism.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jul/14/ann-widdecombe-killing-police-investigating-possible-leftwing-motivation
FPT Dr Suzy Morrissey is due to report imminently with her findings after last years call for evidence for the third state pension age review following the 2014 act. The govt then works on that.
So there’s a bit of pre emoting of that although the scope also included how future state pension age will be determined.
https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/third-state-pension-age-review-independent-report-call-for-evidence
Final govt report/decision was supposedly not due til 2029
Given the govt is supposedly committed to a 10 year notification of any change in state pension age if that holds this change would need to go through next year. If it is an actual proposed change rather than an assumption.
Reform are not champions of the working class. They are emotional exploiters of the working class.
That's a tale as old as time, but with a couple of unhelpful recent additions. One is the concentration of political/business/media power in fewer bodies. The other is the refusal of some people to leave the stage until they've had a full go under the spotlight.
What the hell is that word today ?
I only got it as I had the last four letters and just went along putting every free letter in until,it was right
On the fifth go.
A Sky article describes here as Burger Flipper - Burger Flipper to PM is a great story.
She was also brought up on the mean streets of Lagos as part of the Nigerian diaspora (a big voting bloc).
She had a real job as a "script kiddie" and web designer. I won't use the term "code monkey" as it could be misinterpreted but it was a real modern job in comparison to those that came through the Conservative research department.
And she is a birthright citizen, one of the last after the UK changed its laws to remove that form of citizenship.
So she could portray herself as definitely not the establishment and yet fails to use her advantages against the old school Tories in Reform. That's why Kemi is a dud.
https://news.sky.com/story/who-is-kemi-badenoch-from-flipping-burgers-to-being-in-with-a-chance-to-be-the-next-prime-minister-12654976
E.g. in the 240 page resilience report it’s mentioned once. I do my best to be balanced about the conduct of public servants, but it really is a disgraceful abrogation of duty. Entirely unserious.
Part of the CramponsAndIceAxeAtTheDinerTable* social climbing, associated with the Nu10K, is their desperate efforts to Make It to ever higher levels.
See the Mandlebrot.
*Read Dune
One of those nonsensical polls that tells you nothing.
Who are "the Establishment" ? Who are "the People" ?
By many metrics, most of us on here would be "the Establishment" and at what point in the glorious revolution (we haven't had one for over 350 years so we're probably due one) do "the People" become "the Establishment" and who will be "the People" once we have all broken wind in the palaces of the mighty?
"We go on a train?"
"No, not today."
"People go on the train?"
"Yes, people go on the train."
"We people".
"Yes..."
"We go on the train?"
At this point I knew I was in a lot of trouble.
Move to an average or wages less bonuses or something to slow the rate of growth.
If we creep the triple lock, eventually, the pensionable age will be raised to 27 minutes before the end of average life expectancy.
This is because there is no political stomach for raising taxes to pay for the Triple Lock.
And the solution that he has fairly consistently pushed- gentle active travel builds enough physical activity into people's lives- is on the right lines and is inherently political. It's all about how we divvy up finite shared space, after all.
Unfortunately, both Sunak and Starmer blinked, panicked and drove away when they saw the opposition to measures that made cars a bit less convenient.
A minor example - the Aberfan Disaster showed that former mine union officials became part of The Thing, the moment they assumed office. They became The Mine Owners they hated, almost instantly.
A minor example - the Aberfan Disaster showed that former mine union officials became part of The Thing, the moment they assumed office. They became The Mine Owners they hated, almost instantly.
So we’vehad the so called soda tax, advertising bans, BOGOF bans, bans on placing sweets near checkouts and other drivel that hasn’t worked which was advocated by well organised and well remunerated lobbying groups.
TFL even had to pull one of its own ads for places to visit in London as food featured in it was HFSS.
Yet obesity still increases
We now have an initiative coming where people will get vouchers and rewards if they walk a certain amount of time in the week.
The answer is probably to get people on the jabs rather than all of this ineffective bullshit.
Most of his 'donations' are a lot less than that.
Let’s see what happens
https://www.londoncentric.media/p/lime-bike-london-lime-leg-new-design
Yes, the failure to mention obesity during covid times absolutely contributed to the mortality rate.
At least we’re pushing up,the state pension age to save 6 Billion a year
The economically inactive dependents need funding somehow !!
“ Give the Boriswave - 1.6m migrants - the right to settle permanently in the UK after 5 years and the cost is £30bn. It would have been cheaper to pay the unemployed already in the UK £150k plus each a year each to do the care work. Incentives etc.”
https://x.com/merrynsw/status/2077286495707169233?s=61
It’s that Not the Nine OClock News sketch in real life.
During my week in Manchester, I saw a lot more vaping among young people than I see in London. Is vaping absent of health risk?
As for the "jabs" (which will likely be pills before long), we'll see. There are those who might argue appetite suppression and reduced size has other economic consequences.
Indeed, one of those consequences would be to make the manufacturers of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and the rest extremely wealthy to an extent the drug cartels can only dream.
When you have 40 million journeys a year you inevitably have a few injuries. The biggest risk factor for urban cycling is air pollution (you really don’t want to be stuck behind an old bus, but this is less of an issue now), followed by getting knocked over by a driver. Both are massively outweighed by the positives.
Starting to get royally irritated by my local party branch whatsapp group, one part of the branch is very Lib Dem so whenever the LDs stir up some NIMBY protest they react by trying to get on board rather than making the case for what the Council (that the local party control!!) is doing.
Prime example "Why aren't we opposing the plans for that 3 storey office block being replaced by a 4 storey office block like the Lib Dems?" weary councillor "As explained, the legal advice is that we'd lose because there's already a 4 storey building next to it, so it would just be a waste of money."
The catch is when inflation spikes. Because wages lag prices, you tend to get a 5-10% real-terms pension rise that stays forever. The trouble is that, no matter how good your internal economic management, external shocks will happen from time to time.
It's written into law (by a prior government) that they have to review it.
Torsten Bell, who you would expect to know, yesterday explicitly denied any change was planned or proposed. FWIW
Any student of Economics 1A knows that an insurance system like the NHS collapses if you don’t align the incentives properly. It’s the great fatal flaw of a public health system, and that’s why people are so keen on vouchers for exercise , or tax discounts for being a healthy weight- because that’s precisely what private insurance systems do to correct for moral hazard.
The evidence is exceptionally strong that they work.
On which note, the US govt is now doling out $3m grants to MAGA aligned "free speech" advocacy groups in Europe and the UK.
Then I'd have expected it to be motorised vehicles, but I supposed air pollution doesn't appear in KSI stats, be interested to know if RTAs and pollution risk were combined in some study.
(Yes, I nicked that one.)
https://abcnews.com/GMA/Wellness/wegovy-daily-pill-now-costs/story?id=128898797
Better that regulated ‘big’ pharma makes money and pays taxes, than the profits going to the other end of the drug business.
We should be thanking them not reviling them and how many products do they spend billions on and flop. AZ shares took a tumble this week due to one such failure.
Biopharma businesses use their profits to, partly, fund development of new drugs.
Plenty of businesses make money at the moment on weight loss and weight managements. Slimming world, weight watchers, those bloody JanePlan ads.
There are already pills.
Obesity is increasing. From NHS England
1993: 13% of men and 16% of women were living with obesity.
2008: Obesity prevalence sharply increased to 25% across the adult population.
2024: 30% of adults aged 16+ were classified as obese, with a further 36% classified as overweight
"People (unquantified) go on train
I am a people
therefore I go on a train"
really won't do. If she had added 'all' in front of the first 'people' it would be fine.
Edited extra bit: on obesity, I had a recent health checkup. My waist was recorded at 75cm (30").
If only my wallet weren't similarly thinner than average.
I've been very interested listening to memories and commentary about Ann Widdecombe. The Rest is Politics were especially good in capturing her nature as a bit of a political and personal smorgasboard, with unexpected areas of attention and interest. * Alistair Campbell noted that when she was asked for his greatest contribution, she was the only one who mentioned his mental health: 'he shows that someone with mental health problems can hold down a role at the highest level' (paraphrase).
I think of Anne Widdecombe as a Curate's Egg, someone capable of intense personal kindness and interest, but also old style high-handed indifferent, symbolic cruelty; there is something bizarre about a (probably) avowed lifelong virgin insisting that women in labour be kept in handcuffs to prevent them running away from hospital. If I make a "style" comparison, it would perhaps be with Roger Scruton.
And Harvey Proctor. The piece linked earlier was a dignified reply to Zia Yusuf's trolling. I can't put a handle on Proctor either. For 2 decades, he was quite like one of Farage's proteges (Monday club secretary 1989-1971) and is now a more sympathetic figure.
Plus Lord Hogan-Howe, former Met Commissioner. He was responsible for Operation Midland in the 2010s looking into historic child abuse allegations, and had to personally apologise to Proctor for the Met doing him over, and the Met paid £900k as a compensation package.
I know him as one of the more ignorant of the cyclist-obsessed gang who fester in a corner of the House of Lords, and every time he wastes the Lords' time by making a speech on the subject I can tick off the tropes on my bingo-card.
Hogan-Howe running the review into how our police should be structured.
* The Rest is Politics on Widdecombe. 35 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWVCsgwV4s0
Yes
"Oh, cool! Boys or girls?"
Lawyers...
"Oooooooh"
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/articles/2026/obesity-rates-levelling-off-and-even-declining-in-many-nations-says-global-progress-report/
The UK is pretty poor amongst developed countries, but better than the US.
Childhood obesity levels are our most urgent problem, and the benefit from tackling that would be the greatest, both in health and economic terms.
At £150 - £200 per month, they are not an option* for many of the poorest but the pay back for the NHS and the DWP must surley be there if they were allowed freely on the NHS.
I'm sure that will come within the next 5 years.
(*Not an easy option at any rate.)
I don’t know why people get so annoyed at pharma companies making a profit on product they’ve developed and brought to market. It’s not exactly risk free and these products, by and large, are good and improve lives.
They also need to generate revenue to invest in future development.
Oh, and just look at the share prices of the likes of Novo, AZ and other pharma companies. They’re hardly achievers
Yesterday was "the wrong amount of alcohol" though so I may skip my usual pub visit tonight and see if that helps. The pub will be full of football fans in any case, and I'd have to cut any visit short to avoid the match
We have not announced any change of policy - and certainly not this specific one. There is currently a review of the State Pension age underway - that is simply because legislation (the 2014 Act) requires the Secretary of State to conduct such reviews on a fairly regular basis
https://x.com/TorstenBell/status/2077158252677071350
This is something
https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/2077295933016965143
The asymmetric warfare is getting crazy in this conflict, something that costs tens of millions of dollars taken out by something that costs a couple of thousand.
There is a cheaper pill called Orlestat too.
I used to be obese, peaking during Covid.
Nearly 3 years ago changed my diet and now no longer overweight, let alone obese. Blood tests etc all coming back great too.
No drugs taken, just a change in food.
And yet on traffic light labels much of the food I eat is labelled red for fats, and some red for salts.
High fat is perfectly healthy so long as it is not combined with high carbs. It is the two combined that is problematic.
Hence we do crap around the edges because it’s all we can do
The Morrissey review into state pension age called for evidence last fall and is due to report imminently
The govt timescale conveniently,kicks its response to it out to spring 29