No one from the assassinated leader faction have shown up to hear all the nice things the Felons Faction are saying about them. 🥹 The Labour Party could not be more divided and “factionated” right now.
WOTN using the stage and Oxygen of publicity to fully demonstrate just how boring he is to listen to.
But if you do listen to it, it’s pure fantasy and gibberish. Return us back to the 80’s and make the right decisions this time. 🤣 Sunlit Uplands for everyone 🤣
If you don’t like Deindustralisation, Globalisation, automation - then simple… don’t choose to do it 😂
I wonder if more and more people are going to just realise it’s not worth working for what gets taken from you and retire.
It’s one of the reasons I did.
And when you see rulings like the one yesterday to bring an extended family of 18 over from Gaza and they will be a burden on the taxpayer it just adds to thst.
No one from the assassinated leader faction have shown up to hear all the nice things the Felons Faction are saying about them. 🥹 The Labour Party could not be more divided and “factionated” right now.
WOTN using the stage and Oxygen of publicity to fully demonstrate just how boring he is to listen to.
But if you do listen to it, it’s pure fantasy and gibberish. Return us back to the 80’s and make the right decisions this time. 🤣 Sunlit Uplands for everyone 🤣
If you don’t like Deindustralisation, Globalisation, automation - then simple… don’t choose to do it 😂
Utter utter gibberish.
He's talking to his party, not the country. I hope that changes quite quickly, but it doesn't seem we're going to get it today.
'US President Donald Trump has delivered a primetime address in which he accused China of interfering in the 2020 election and alleged "shocking vulnerabilities" in American voting systems.
Trump, who spoke from the White House on Thursday, has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and foreign meddling in the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden.
In the half-hour speech, delivered three months before the midterm elections, he said he had declassified hundreds of intelligence files which supported his claims that Beijing had tried to sway the election in Biden's favour.
The US intelligence community has previously concluded China did not interfere in the 2020 election.'
Despite the endless lies, the Iran debacle, the insulting of former allies, the threats to Greenland and Canada, sucking up to Putin, the tariffs fiasco and the industrial scale corruption and grifting ........ 40% of Americans approve of the job he is doing!
That tells you everything you need to know about the state America is in and why we can never ever trust the USA again.
By all means cooperate with a sane successor but insulate ourselves from the US as best we can because as sure as night follows day the US will elect another lunatic within the next decade. Trump is just a symptom of what the USA has become.
tbf we have people on here asserting that taking a few items of clothing or concert tickets and declaring them is much worse than taking 5 million pounds from an overseas billionaire and unsuccessfully trying to conceal it.
The difference is that we all know Farage is a grifter, and he’s under investigation for such.
Starmer, Rayner et al spent the last five years attacking Conservatives constantly over such grift, only to enthusiastically embrace the gifts and trips the minute they got to power themselves. It’s the hypocracy that was the problem, they sold themselves as whiter-than-white, but turned out to be no better than the rest of them.
no, we don't all know that, and you pushing this false equivalence is blatently dishonest.
I’m not making equivalence between the two at all, they’re totally different circumstances.
Farage could be suspended or kicked out of Parliament for failing to declare a substantial gift just before he became an MP. Good, that’s how the system is supposed to work.
The problem with Labour isn’t the behaviour in itself, it’s the hypocracy and their presenting themselves as somehow better than other parties, which unraveled almost immediately once they were in power.
You’re quite right. The hypocrisy was quite breathtaking by Rayner, SKS et al.
In opposition they paraded their virtue. In power it was ‘meet the new boss. Same as the old boss’
oh here's the other hypocrisy specialist right on cue
I think Labour have been hostages to their own narrative against Tory corruption but suggesting a parity with the PPE scandal or Farage's millions is a hypocritical crock.
Starmer should have bought his own glasses and Rayner should have sought better tax advice, but where do we start with the PPE fast lane scandal?
People don't (want) to understand the Rayner tax issue. Based on the stamp duty ruling on Rayner - an example: your divorced sibling re-writing their will asks you to be a trustee for their dependent children in case they die before the children are 18. Unfortunately this happens, their estate is left to the kids and, to minimise disruption to their lives, the ex moves back into the family home to look after them.
You now have a second home for the purposes of stamp duty.
Does anyone think that this is an intended consequence of the tax law?
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
Yes but it's not tiny per se. It's still a good mile of inner urban driving and four miles of inner suburban driving. This isn't quick in any city worth its salt. Also, a quick check of Google maps has the distance as closer to 20 miles.
I wonder what our resident Korea expert, @Nigelb, thinks of this.
“ Goldman - "As of July 13, a total of over 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts across the Korean market triggered margin calls. Approximately 320,000–360,000 accounts were fully liquidated by brokers. South Korea has an adult population (aged 15–64) of 35.7 million people… i.e. 1 in 30 (3.4%) adults got margin called."
Why aren't they using an autocue? It is not good to be constantly looking down at a script.
Plus packing the audience with faces from the past is another poor optic.
Margaret Becket and others of that generation are not part of the future
I think politicians have basically three delivery styles these days:
Robotic auto cue readers like Starmer and May
Polished head of the debate team types like Cameron and Sunak
Chummy ramblers like Boris.
In this speech Burnham is a bit more in the Boris camp but filtered through a socialist lense. I can imagine Boris addressing the golf club and Burnham addressing the social club in much the same style.
No one from the assassinated leader faction have shown up to hear all the nice things the Felons Faction are saying about them. 🥹 The Labour Party could not be more divided and “factionated” right now.
WOTN using the stage and Oxygen of publicity to fully demonstrate just how boring he is to listen to.
But if you do listen to it, it’s pure fantasy and gibberish. Return us back to the 80’s and make the right decisions this time. 🤣 Sunlit Uplands for everyone 🤣
If you don’t like Deindustralisation, Globalisation, automation - then simple… don’t choose to do it 😂
Utter utter gibberish.
He's talking to his party, not the country. I hope that changes quite quickly, but it doesn't seem we're going to get it today.
He is absolutely talking to rhe country. He has hidden from scrutiny since returning to Parliament. Avoided proper questioning.
The country deserves to know what the new PM is going to do. This empty speech does not give us any real clue.
Harking back to Kinnock, Blunkett et al was a poor choice.
Unless he Truss’ the economy in the next few weeks, I’m not sure anything Burnham says over the summer will matter. September is when people will start to pay attention.
Feels very old Labour. Is he going to re-open the coal mines?
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
Feels very old Labour. Is he going to re-open the coal mines?
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
Feels very old Labour. Is he going to re-open the coal mines?
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
Could be within the next week or so if Iran and the USA continues to escalate.
Given the rhetoric about the biggest change for forty years, does that suggest we're getting an election? If he really does want to rip things up, would it make sense to get the public to vote for it and get the MPs nailed down that they have to deliver it (or not be Labour candidates at the election).
I wonder what our resident Korea expert, @Nigelb, thinks of this.
“ Goldman - "As of July 13, a total of over 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts across the Korean market triggered margin calls. Approximately 320,000–360,000 accounts were fully liquidated by brokers. South Korea has an adult population (aged 15–64) of 35.7 million people… i.e. 1 in 30 (3.4%) adults got margin called."
I think a lot more people than that are going to find out that risk can work against them as well as for them. But S Korean investors don't seem to have come to grips with that just yet.
The benchmark closed at 6,820.60, down 6.37 percent from the previous session. It opened 4.45 percent lower and extended its losses, falling as much as 7.6 percent to 6,730.87 intraday. A sell-side sidecar was activated at 9:10 a.m., marking the 19th such activation on the KOSPI this year.
Foreign investors sold a net 1.44 trillion won ($973.9 million) of shares, while institutional investors offloaded 1.39 trillion won. Retail investors, however, bought a net 2.78 trillion won...
Sadiq Khan looking a bit wistful, thinking about what might have been?
The UK is too islamophobic to elect Sadiq Khan as PM, which sadly he knows only too well, I think he'd be a good PM but realistically London Mayor or a top ministerial position is his ceiling.
I wonder what our resident Korea expert, @Nigelb, thinks of this.
“ Goldman - "As of July 13, a total of over 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts across the Korean market triggered margin calls. Approximately 320,000–360,000 accounts were fully liquidated by brokers. South Korea has an adult population (aged 15–64) of 35.7 million people… i.e. 1 in 30 (3.4%) adults got margin called."
I think a lot more people than that are going to find out that risk can work against them as well as for them. But S Korean investors don't seem to have come to grips with that just yet.
The benchmark closed at 6,820.60, down 6.37 percent from the previous session. It opened 4.45 percent lower and extended its losses, falling as much as 7.6 percent to 6,730.87 intraday. A sell-side sidecar was activated at 9:10 a.m., marking the 19th such activation on the KOSPI this year.
Foreign investors sold a net 1.44 trillion won ($973.9 million) of shares, while institutional investors offloaded 1.39 trillion won. Retail investors, however, bought a net 2.78 trillion won...
Interesting
Like SpaceX, retail once again the bag holder ?
I know little of the KOSPI but I did read it was heavily skewed to a couple of large companies and their volatility often drove the sharp swings.
No one from the assassinated leader faction have shown up to hear all the nice things the Felons Faction are saying about them. 🥹 The Labour Party could not be more divided and “factionated” right now.
WOTN using the stage and Oxygen of publicity to fully demonstrate just how boring he is to listen to.
But if you do listen to it, it’s pure fantasy and gibberish. Return us back to the 80’s and make the right decisions this time. 🤣 Sunlit Uplands for everyone 🤣
If you don’t like Deindustralisation, Globalisation, automation - then simple… don’t choose to do it 😂
Utter utter gibberish.
He's talking to his party, not the country. I hope that changes quite quickly, but it doesn't seem we're going to get it today.
He is absolutely talking to the country. He has hidden from scrutiny since returning to Parliament. Avoided proper questioning.
The country deserves to know what the new PM is going to do. This empty speech does not give us any real clue.
Harking back to Kinnock, Blunkett et al was a poor choice.
He should be, but he really isn't with this. No one outside of the party cares one way or another if he thanks Blunkett etc for inspiring him, for example.
'US President Donald Trump has delivered a primetime address in which he accused China of interfering in the 2020 election and alleged "shocking vulnerabilities" in American voting systems.
Trump, who spoke from the White House on Thursday, has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and foreign meddling in the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden.
In the half-hour speech, delivered three months before the midterm elections, he said he had declassified hundreds of intelligence files which supported his claims that Beijing had tried to sway the election in Biden's favour.
The US intelligence community has previously concluded China did not interfere in the 2020 election.'
So, back in 2016, he's certain foreigners didn't interfere... but they're doing it now.
Thomas Massie, who unlike most of his colleagues shows occasional signs of clear thinking. Of course they're pre-emptively complaing cos they're facing an ass-whipping in the mid terms.
Aaron Rupar @atrupar · 20h Massie: "I don't think the problem is that our elections aren't secure because we control the House, Senate, White House, and to some degree we control the Supreme Court. So I ask my Republican colleagues, why are you complaining about election fraud? We won all the damn elections!"
OT According to Phil, there are rumours that Farage won't stand!!
Come on, Binface!!!
We mentioned that possibility here a few days ago. Maybe Nigel Farage is a lurker. He has led parties and campaigns from outside parliament before now.
I know it's early days, but Burnham must be the worst leader that the Labour Party has ever had. He will undoubtedly be a very poor Prime Minister by next Tuesday. Am I doing this right?
OT According to Phil, there are rumours that Farage won't stand!!
Come on, Binface!!!
We mentioned that possibility here a few days ago. Maybe Nigel Farage is a lurker. He has led parties and campaigns from outside parliament before now.
OT According to Phil, there are rumours that Farage won't stand!!
Come on, Binface!!!
We mentioned that possibility here a few days ago. Maybe Nigel Farage is a lurker. He has led parties and campaigns from outside parliament before now.
Apologies, I never saw that.
No, it is important if outsiders are now reporting it.
Aligate = hypocrite Southport = tone deaf WFA = policy
No different to the 'others', but worse as moralising hypocrite. Handles safety concerns badly. Introduces deeply unpopular policy not in the manifesto.
First impressions count and this is what he offered. Was never recovering from that. He then carried on in that vein.
Southport - tone deaf?
Your boy Farage and other racists quoting Andrew Tate's X accounts got that all wrong.
The Southport reaction was a disgusting lesson in racism and how Reform and some Conservatives were comfortable with using and abusing a tragedy
By all means call Starmer out when he has been caught out but please don't make shit up.
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
Freebies from Lord Alli made Sir Keir look bad. If a pair of glasses and some other minor freebies can destroy Starmer’s reputation then no wonder why Nigel Farage is in a panic over his £5 million donation from Christopher Harbone which looks bad to the 64th power. We can see Farage’s ratings tumbling, this isn’t a surprise.
Starmer's problem was 2-tier Keir over Southport not free gear Keir over some glasses.
Farage we might have got wrong too. It is not taking the £5 million that is the problem, but taking the £5 million and yet continuing all his other grifts that Harborne's money should have let him stop: the Cameos, hawking gold and so on. As for consequences, it is not Harborne but Posh George that will land him in it.
I'm not sure I agree here. The Harbourne donation was a single event that Farage could not find a successful justification for. Now that it has been joined by all the posh George stuff and the banks weighing in, and the security services weighing in, it feels more like a pile on.
I know it's early days, but Burnham must be the worst leader that the Labour Party has ever had. He will undoubtedly be a very poor Prime Minister by next Tuesday. Am I doing this right?
a bit understated but youre going in the right direction
That is bad news for the Forest and Stroud, possibly Gloucester itself, as the county council will be dominated by rich Fukkers from Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds who will be totally unscrupulous about redirecting all the money to where it will benefit their voters rather than where it's actually needed.
The whole plan for the country is a f##king shambles. Pointless and costly reorganisations which will do nothing to improve local democracy or performance. Indeed I expect services to be far worse and cost far more as a result.
I’d be fascinated by the thought processes behind these re-organisations.
Sadly I do suspect a lot of gerrymandering.
And of course the changes will ensure that rural areas are dominated by the adjacent urban areas so making things like new building developments easier.
They will do almost nothing to save costs. There will be a few very senior managerial jobs that will go but because of the TUPE rules they cannot use the reorganisation as an excuse for layoffs, nor can they change pay and conditions. And given that they will still need to use existing district and county council offices because they still need to do all the jobs that are currently being done and need the office spce for that, there will be little or no real-estate savings.
This is all being driven entirely by political considerations and is a centralising rather than decentralising move. A real retrograde step.
Given we desperately need developments and that you (rightly) welcome migration which means we need even more developments, then why are you saying it will make new developments easier as if it is a bad thing?
Because what it actually means is people living in one area deciding that all those developments should be in another area - preferably some distance away from them. The urban areas have large swathes of brownfield sites which should be redeveloped. But that is more expensive both for the developers and the local authorities. So now they will have nice large areas of green field they can build on instead. It is simply supercharged NIMBYism.
Where are these mythical large swathes of brownfield sites that have not been redeveloped in the past quarter of a century where our population has grown by about 20%?
Any brownfield sites that can be developed should be and largely are, but we need green too. And will do as long as our population rises and until we clear the backlog of missing developments we need.
1.5 million homes. Half of it with some form of planning permission in place. But developers don't like building on brownfield sites because of the additional costs.
Allegedly, claimed by a group the CPRE with a very vested-interest and based on a series of flawed assumptions.
Yes if every single brownfield site were capable of being transformed to housing, at high density, and nothing else then those houses could be built.
However that is never going to happen and can't happen. Some land is unsuitable due to contamination or other reasons. And some will inevitably get used for other purposes, such as industry or retail or anything else. Indeed, build homes and other services are needed so its never all going to go to housing.
So yes, brownfield can be a part of the mix - and is, but green is needed too.
Find some counter evidence and you might be worth listening to on this. But vague claims which are not backed up by any actual evidence, whilst occasionally a PB standard, does not win arguments.
Our analysis clearly highlights the planning systems as very significant drivers of negative overall outcomes in the housing market. Across GB as a whole, and England in particular, the planning systems are not delivering sufficient planning permissions to deliver new housing up to government targets and other assessments of need.
... We have also seen evidence that problems in planning systems may be having a disproportionate impact on SME housebuilders ...
.. We have found that barriers to entry and expansion are likely to be restricting the role of SMEs in the market. Of these barriers, the most significant is negotiating the planning system, the burdens of which fall most heavily on smaller builders, followed by access to land ...
The CMA does not argue that the solution is simply 'build on brownfield'; it identifies a systemic shortage of permissions and land supply. The fact that planning constraints exist applies regardless of whether the land is brownfield or greenfield.
Around 54% of new homes are already being built on brownfield land. So brownfield is not being ignored, it is already the majority of new housing.
The disagreement is not whether brownfield should be used. It should. The question is whether theoretical brownfield capacity means greenfield development is unnecessary. The evidence does not support that conclusion. Brownfield sites have competing uses, viability constraints and are not always located where housing demand is highest. Therefore brownfield is part of the solution, but not the entire solution.
So no actual evidence to counter the argument that there are brownfield sites capable of supporting 1.5 million additional homes then? Just some completely different argument about your old idiocy about the the planning system.
Did you miss the CMA saying there is a shortage of land there?
Yes the CMA acknowledged planning as the biggest problem, which it is, but it also said access to land was one too which I quoted.
And yes, brownfield is capable of supporting those homes if every hectare of that brownfield is used for homes and nothing else, as I acknowledged all along. However we need industry and retail and a plethora of other uses for brownfield too. Potentially housing does not equate to will be housing as there are competing demands for land.
Do you think we can do without industry? Or anything else?
It never ceases to amaze me how people living in sparsely populated rural areas consider that people in cities have absolutely no need for green space and that as more and more people are crammed into existing urban settlements all the existing brownfield land should be used for housing as opposed to creating green space for recreational use and to boost urban wildlife. What a selfish bunch.
Green space in urban areas is the most valuable in the country and we should be looking to add to it. Existing "brownfield sites" are often quite ecologically rich simply by virtue of nature having reclaimed them.
New housing should be developed primarily as planned settlement on the misnamed "green belt", which apart from the brownfield parts which can rightly be recategorised as "grey belt" also includes vaste swathes of ecologically denuded land put over to high intensity agri business with monolithic crops and high use of insecticides etc. Such as huge fields of hedgerow-less oil seed rape for example, very common around here. Green deserts if you prefer.
Almost no brownfield is converted to green space. It would be great if it were. Much of it is left for decades without being either developed or converted.
And it never ceases to amaze me that poeple living in urban areas think that there is nothing more to the countryside than famers fields. We can afford to lose farmers fields which is why I have long advocated on here for building new towns in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. What we have lost has been the high nature value marginal land. This is why since WW2 we have lost 97% of our water meadows and hay meadows, 50% of our ancient woodland, 80% of our lowland heath and 85% of our freshwater wetlands. This is why England is considered to be critically nature depleted and ranks 189th out of 240 countries for biodiversity and last amongst the G7 countries. We have seen an 80% decline in priority species since the 1970s.
Its been lost to agriculture, not to housing.
The planning system and green belt were in place the entire time that it was lost. Neither worked to save what should have been protected.
The small amounts we have left are only there because of the planning system. You would see the whole lot destroyed.
The planning system (in the wider sense) destroyed them.
Well into the 80s and 90s farmers were being paid to remove hedgerows.
Ever since WWII, the agricultural support policy in Western Europe has been about converting as much countryside as possible into high yield farming.
I wonder what our resident Korea expert, @Nigelb, thinks of this.
“ Goldman - "As of July 13, a total of over 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts across the Korean market triggered margin calls. Approximately 320,000–360,000 accounts were fully liquidated by brokers. South Korea has an adult population (aged 15–64) of 35.7 million people… i.e. 1 in 30 (3.4%) adults got margin called."
I think a lot more people than that are going to find out that risk can work against them as well as for them. But S Korean investors don't seem to have come to grips with that just yet.
The benchmark closed at 6,820.60, down 6.37 percent from the previous session. It opened 4.45 percent lower and extended its losses, falling as much as 7.6 percent to 6,730.87 intraday. A sell-side sidecar was activated at 9:10 a.m., marking the 19th such activation on the KOSPI this year.
Foreign investors sold a net 1.44 trillion won ($973.9 million) of shares, while institutional investors offloaded 1.39 trillion won. Retail investors, however, bought a net 2.78 trillion won...
Interesting
Like SpaceX, retail once again the bag holder ?
I know little of the KOSPI but I did read it was heavily skewed to a couple of large companies and their volatility often drove the sharp swings.
Much of their current value (and profits) come from the massive demand for high end memory from the AI companies. Whether the 80% gross margins on that are sustainable is another matter.
More generally S Korea has done extremely well as a manufacturing exporter, but part of that has been the suppression of the value of the Korean won - and workers' wages. As the Guardian article notes, the new culture at the two massive tech companies sits rather uneasily with that. At the same time as that, their more traditional manufacturing industry which its the foundation of their economy is facing brutal competition from China.
'US President Donald Trump has delivered a primetime address in which he accused China of interfering in the 2020 election and alleged "shocking vulnerabilities" in American voting systems.
Trump, who spoke from the White House on Thursday, has repeatedly made unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud and foreign meddling in the 2020 election which he lost to Joe Biden.
In the half-hour speech, delivered three months before the midterm elections, he said he had declassified hundreds of intelligence files which supported his claims that Beijing had tried to sway the election in Biden's favour.
The US intelligence community has previously concluded China did not interfere in the 2020 election.'
Despite the endless lies, the Iran debacle, the insulting of former allies, the threats to Greenland and Canada, sucking up to Putin, the tariffs fiasco and the industrial scale corruption and grifting ........ 40% of Americans approve of the job he is doing!
That tells you everything you need to know about the state America is in and why we can never ever trust the USA again.
By all means cooperate with a sane successor but insulate ourselves from the US as best we can because as sure as night follows day the US will elect another lunatic within the next decade. Trump is just a symptom of what the USA has become.
tbf we have people on here asserting that taking a few items of clothing or concert tickets and declaring them is much worse than taking 5 million pounds from an overseas billionaire and unsuccessfully trying to conceal it.
The difference is that we all know Farage is a grifter, and he’s under investigation for such.
Starmer, Rayner et al spent the last five years attacking Conservatives constantly over such grift, only to enthusiastically embrace the gifts and trips the minute they got to power themselves. It’s the hypocracy that was the problem, they sold themselves as whiter-than-white, but turned out to be no better than the rest of them.
no, we don't all know that, and you pushing this false equivalence is blatently dishonest.
I’m not making equivalence between the two at all, they’re totally different circumstances.
Farage could be suspended or kicked out of Parliament for failing to declare a substantial gift just before he became an MP. Good, that’s how the system is supposed to work.
The problem with Labour isn’t the behaviour in itself, it’s the hypocracy and their presenting themselves as somehow better than other parties, which unraveled almost immediately once they were in power.
You’re quite right. The hypocrisy was quite breathtaking by Rayner, SKS et al.
In opposition they paraded their virtue. In power it was ‘meet the new boss. Same as the old boss’
oh here's the other hypocrisy specialist right on cue
I think Labour have been hostages to their own narrative against Tory corruption but suggesting a parity with the PPE scandal or Farage's millions is a hypocritical crock.
Starmer should have bought his own glasses and Rayner should have sought better tax advice, but where do we start with the PPE fast lane scandal?
We can start with ten billion pounds of public money siphoned off by crooks and shysters?
Yes the NHS computer scandal just doshed up management consultants and delivered nothing
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
And there's a whole different set of strategic minerals more important to the military these days.
That is bad news for the Forest and Stroud, possibly Gloucester itself, as the county council will be dominated by rich Fukkers from Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds who will be totally unscrupulous about redirecting all the money to where it will benefit their voters rather than where it's actually needed.
The whole plan for the country is a f##king shambles. Pointless and costly reorganisations which will do nothing to improve local democracy or performance. Indeed I expect services to be far worse and cost far more as a result.
I’d be fascinated by the thought processes behind these re-organisations.
Sadly I do suspect a lot of gerrymandering.
And of course the changes will ensure that rural areas are dominated by the adjacent urban areas so making things like new building developments easier.
They will do almost nothing to save costs. There will be a few very senior managerial jobs that will go but because of the TUPE rules they cannot use the reorganisation as an excuse for layoffs, nor can they change pay and conditions. And given that they will still need to use existing district and county council offices because they still need to do all the jobs that are currently being done and need the office spce for that, there will be little or no real-estate savings.
This is all being driven entirely by political considerations and is a centralising rather than decentralising move. A real retrograde step.
Given we desperately need developments and that you (rightly) welcome migration which means we need even more developments, then why are you saying it will make new developments easier as if it is a bad thing?
Because what it actually means is people living in one area deciding that all those developments should be in another area - preferably some distance away from them. The urban areas have large swathes of brownfield sites which should be redeveloped. But that is more expensive both for the developers and the local authorities. So now they will have nice large areas of green field they can build on instead. It is simply supercharged NIMBYism.
Where are these mythical large swathes of brownfield sites that have not been redeveloped in the past quarter of a century where our population has grown by about 20%?
Any brownfield sites that can be developed should be and largely are, but we need green too. And will do as long as our population rises and until we clear the backlog of missing developments we need.
1.5 million homes. Half of it with some form of planning permission in place. But developers don't like building on brownfield sites because of the additional costs.
Allegedly, claimed by a group the CPRE with a very vested-interest and based on a series of flawed assumptions.
Yes if every single brownfield site were capable of being transformed to housing, at high density, and nothing else then those houses could be built.
However that is never going to happen and can't happen. Some land is unsuitable due to contamination or other reasons. And some will inevitably get used for other purposes, such as industry or retail or anything else. Indeed, build homes and other services are needed so its never all going to go to housing.
So yes, brownfield can be a part of the mix - and is, but green is needed too.
Find some counter evidence and you might be worth listening to on this. But vague claims which are not backed up by any actual evidence, whilst occasionally a PB standard, does not win arguments.
Our analysis clearly highlights the planning systems as very significant drivers of negative overall outcomes in the housing market. Across GB as a whole, and England in particular, the planning systems are not delivering sufficient planning permissions to deliver new housing up to government targets and other assessments of need.
... We have also seen evidence that problems in planning systems may be having a disproportionate impact on SME housebuilders ...
.. We have found that barriers to entry and expansion are likely to be restricting the role of SMEs in the market. Of these barriers, the most significant is negotiating the planning system, the burdens of which fall most heavily on smaller builders, followed by access to land ...
The CMA does not argue that the solution is simply 'build on brownfield'; it identifies a systemic shortage of permissions and land supply. The fact that planning constraints exist applies regardless of whether the land is brownfield or greenfield.
Around 54% of new homes are already being built on brownfield land. So brownfield is not being ignored, it is already the majority of new housing.
The disagreement is not whether brownfield should be used. It should. The question is whether theoretical brownfield capacity means greenfield development is unnecessary. The evidence does not support that conclusion. Brownfield sites have competing uses, viability constraints and are not always located where housing demand is highest. Therefore brownfield is part of the solution, but not the entire solution.
So no actual evidence to counter the argument that there are brownfield sites capable of supporting 1.5 million additional homes then? Just some completely different argument about your old idiocy about the the planning system.
Did you miss the CMA saying there is a shortage of land there?
Yes the CMA acknowledged planning as the biggest problem, which it is, but it also said access to land was one too which I quoted.
And yes, brownfield is capable of supporting those homes if every hectare of that brownfield is used for homes and nothing else, as I acknowledged all along. However we need industry and retail and a plethora of other uses for brownfield too. Potentially housing does not equate to will be housing as there are competing demands for land.
Do you think we can do without industry? Or anything else?
It never ceases to amaze me how people living in sparsely populated rural areas consider that people in cities have absolutely no need for green space and that as more and more people are crammed into existing urban settlements all the existing brownfield land should be used for housing as opposed to creating green space for recreational use and to boost urban wildlife. What a selfish bunch.
Green space in urban areas is the most valuable in the country and we should be looking to add to it. Existing "brownfield sites" are often quite ecologically rich simply by virtue of nature having reclaimed them.
New housing should be developed primarily as planned settlement on the misnamed "green belt", which apart from the brownfield parts which can rightly be recategorised as "grey belt" also includes vaste swathes of ecologically denuded land put over to high intensity agri business with monolithic crops and high use of insecticides etc. Such as huge fields of hedgerow-less oil seed rape for example, very common around here. Green deserts if you prefer.
Almost no brownfield is converted to green space. It would be great if it were. Much of it is left for decades without being either developed or converted.
And it never ceases to amaze me that poeple living in urban areas think that there is nothing more to the countryside than famers fields. We can afford to lose farmers fields which is why I have long advocated on here for building new towns in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. What we have lost has been the high nature value marginal land. This is why since WW2 we have lost 97% of our water meadows and hay meadows, 50% of our ancient woodland, 80% of our lowland heath and 85% of our freshwater wetlands. This is why England is considered to be critically nature depleted and ranks 189th out of 240 countries for biodiversity and last amongst the G7 countries. We have seen an 80% decline in priority species since the 1970s.
Its been lost to agriculture, not to housing.
The planning system and green belt were in place the entire time that it was lost. Neither worked to save what should have been protected.
The small amounts we have left are only there because of the planning system. You would see the whole lot destroyed.
The planning system (in the wider sense) destroyed them.
Well into the 80s and 90s farmers were being paid to remove hedgerows.
Ever since WWII, the agricultural support policy in Western Europe has been about converting as much countryside as possible into high yield farming.
We got what we paid for.
That was nothing to do with the planning system. It was primarily the CAP.
No one from the assassinated leader faction have shown up to hear all the nice things the Felons Faction are saying about them. 🥹 The Labour Party could not be more divided and “factionated” right now.
WOTN using the stage and Oxygen of publicity to fully demonstrate just how boring he is to listen to.
But if you do listen to it, it’s pure fantasy and gibberish. Return us back to the 80’s and make the right decisions this time. 🤣 Sunlit Uplands for everyone 🤣
If you don’t like Deindustralisation, Globalisation, automation - then simple… don’t choose to do it 😂
Utter utter gibberish.
He's talking to his party, not the country. I hope that changes quite quickly, but it doesn't seem we're going to get it today.
He is absolutely talking to rhe country. He has hidden from scrutiny since returning to Parliament. Avoided proper questioning.
The country deserves to know what the new PM is going to do. This empty speech does not give us any real clue.
Harking back to Kinnock, Blunkett et al was a poor choice.
I think the country can hang on until next week. The time to worry would be if he fails to present a vision/plan by the end of the summer.
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
In addition, when given a report stating the following -
1) Virgin steel making requires inputs. 2) so to have a strategic capability, you need stockpile of the inputs. 3) it would be cheaper to stockpile a decade of virgin steel demand in a not very large warehouse, than 1 or 2
The response from politicians (and all the other “stake holders”) was “wrong answer”
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
In addition, when given a report stating the following -
1) Virgin steel making requires inputs. 2) so to have a strategic capability, you need stockpile of the inputs. 3) it would be cheaper to stockpile a decade of virgin steel demand in a not very large warehouse, than 1 or 2
The response from politicians (and all the other “stake holders”) was “wrong answer”
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
The relative amount of steel needed is interesting but irrelevant. If it's used in any significant quantity (which it is) we need it. And if we can't make it in a situation where our suppliers need their own/can't get it to us/are on the other side, we're screwed, whether there's less of it than before or not.
I agree about the Cloud and Ai providers completely.
That is bad news for the Forest and Stroud, possibly Gloucester itself, as the county council will be dominated by rich Fukkers from Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds who will be totally unscrupulous about redirecting all the money to where it will benefit their voters rather than where it's actually needed.
The whole plan for the country is a f##king shambles. Pointless and costly reorganisations which will do nothing to improve local democracy or performance. Indeed I expect services to be far worse and cost far more as a result.
I’d be fascinated by the thought processes behind these re-organisations.
Sadly I do suspect a lot of gerrymandering.
And of course the changes will ensure that rural areas are dominated by the adjacent urban areas so making things like new building developments easier.
They will do almost nothing to save costs. There will be a few very senior managerial jobs that will go but because of the TUPE rules they cannot use the reorganisation as an excuse for layoffs, nor can they change pay and conditions. And given that they will still need to use existing district and county council offices because they still need to do all the jobs that are currently being done and need the office spce for that, there will be little or no real-estate savings.
This is all being driven entirely by political considerations and is a centralising rather than decentralising move. A real retrograde step.
Given we desperately need developments and that you (rightly) welcome migration which means we need even more developments, then why are you saying it will make new developments easier as if it is a bad thing?
Because what it actually means is people living in one area deciding that all those developments should be in another area - preferably some distance away from them. The urban areas have large swathes of brownfield sites which should be redeveloped. But that is more expensive both for the developers and the local authorities. So now they will have nice large areas of green field they can build on instead. It is simply supercharged NIMBYism.
Where are these mythical large swathes of brownfield sites that have not been redeveloped in the past quarter of a century where our population has grown by about 20%?
Any brownfield sites that can be developed should be and largely are, but we need green too. And will do as long as our population rises and until we clear the backlog of missing developments we need.
1.5 million homes. Half of it with some form of planning permission in place. But developers don't like building on brownfield sites because of the additional costs.
Allegedly, claimed by a group the CPRE with a very vested-interest and based on a series of flawed assumptions.
Yes if every single brownfield site were capable of being transformed to housing, at high density, and nothing else then those houses could be built.
However that is never going to happen and can't happen. Some land is unsuitable due to contamination or other reasons. And some will inevitably get used for other purposes, such as industry or retail or anything else. Indeed, build homes and other services are needed so its never all going to go to housing.
So yes, brownfield can be a part of the mix - and is, but green is needed too.
Find some counter evidence and you might be worth listening to on this. But vague claims which are not backed up by any actual evidence, whilst occasionally a PB standard, does not win arguments.
Our analysis clearly highlights the planning systems as very significant drivers of negative overall outcomes in the housing market. Across GB as a whole, and England in particular, the planning systems are not delivering sufficient planning permissions to deliver new housing up to government targets and other assessments of need.
... We have also seen evidence that problems in planning systems may be having a disproportionate impact on SME housebuilders ...
.. We have found that barriers to entry and expansion are likely to be restricting the role of SMEs in the market. Of these barriers, the most significant is negotiating the planning system, the burdens of which fall most heavily on smaller builders, followed by access to land ...
The CMA does not argue that the solution is simply 'build on brownfield'; it identifies a systemic shortage of permissions and land supply. The fact that planning constraints exist applies regardless of whether the land is brownfield or greenfield.
Around 54% of new homes are already being built on brownfield land. So brownfield is not being ignored, it is already the majority of new housing.
The disagreement is not whether brownfield should be used. It should. The question is whether theoretical brownfield capacity means greenfield development is unnecessary. The evidence does not support that conclusion. Brownfield sites have competing uses, viability constraints and are not always located where housing demand is highest. Therefore brownfield is part of the solution, but not the entire solution.
So no actual evidence to counter the argument that there are brownfield sites capable of supporting 1.5 million additional homes then? Just some completely different argument about your old idiocy about the the planning system.
Did you miss the CMA saying there is a shortage of land there?
Yes the CMA acknowledged planning as the biggest problem, which it is, but it also said access to land was one too which I quoted.
And yes, brownfield is capable of supporting those homes if every hectare of that brownfield is used for homes and nothing else, as I acknowledged all along. However we need industry and retail and a plethora of other uses for brownfield too. Potentially housing does not equate to will be housing as there are competing demands for land.
Do you think we can do without industry? Or anything else?
It never ceases to amaze me how people living in sparsely populated rural areas consider that people in cities have absolutely no need for green space and that as more and more people are crammed into existing urban settlements all the existing brownfield land should be used for housing as opposed to creating green space for recreational use and to boost urban wildlife. What a selfish bunch.
Green space in urban areas is the most valuable in the country and we should be looking to add to it. Existing "brownfield sites" are often quite ecologically rich simply by virtue of nature having reclaimed them.
New housing should be developed primarily as planned settlement on the misnamed "green belt", which apart from the brownfield parts which can rightly be recategorised as "grey belt" also includes vaste swathes of ecologically denuded land put over to high intensity agri business with monolithic crops and high use of insecticides etc. Such as huge fields of hedgerow-less oil seed rape for example, very common around here. Green deserts if you prefer.
Almost no brownfield is converted to green space. It would be great if it were. Much of it is left for decades without being either developed or converted.
And it never ceases to amaze me that poeple living in urban areas think that there is nothing more to the countryside than famers fields. We can afford to lose farmers fields which is why I have long advocated on here for building new towns in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. What we have lost has been the high nature value marginal land. This is why since WW2 we have lost 97% of our water meadows and hay meadows, 50% of our ancient woodland, 80% of our lowland heath and 85% of our freshwater wetlands. This is why England is considered to be critically nature depleted and ranks 189th out of 240 countries for biodiversity and last amongst the G7 countries. We have seen an 80% decline in priority species since the 1970s.
Its been lost to agriculture, not to housing.
The planning system and green belt were in place the entire time that it was lost. Neither worked to save what should have been protected.
The small amounts we have left are only there because of the planning system. You would see the whole lot destroyed.
The planning system (in the wider sense) destroyed them.
Well into the 80s and 90s farmers were being paid to remove hedgerows.
Ever since WWII, the agricultural support policy in Western Europe has been about converting as much countryside as possible into high yield farming.
We got what we paid for.
That was nothing to do with the planning system. It was primarily the CAP.
Which was part of “the planning system” in the wider sense.
That is bad news for the Forest and Stroud, possibly Gloucester itself, as the county council will be dominated by rich Fukkers from Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds who will be totally unscrupulous about redirecting all the money to where it will benefit their voters rather than where it's actually needed.
The whole plan for the country is a f##king shambles. Pointless and costly reorganisations which will do nothing to improve local democracy or performance. Indeed I expect services to be far worse and cost far more as a result.
I’d be fascinated by the thought processes behind these re-organisations.
Sadly I do suspect a lot of gerrymandering.
And of course the changes will ensure that rural areas are dominated by the adjacent urban areas so making things like new building developments easier.
They will do almost nothing to save costs. There will be a few very senior managerial jobs that will go but because of the TUPE rules they cannot use the reorganisation as an excuse for layoffs, nor can they change pay and conditions. And given that they will still need to use existing district and county council offices because they still need to do all the jobs that are currently being done and need the office spce for that, there will be little or no real-estate savings.
This is all being driven entirely by political considerations and is a centralising rather than decentralising move. A real retrograde step.
Given we desperately need developments and that you (rightly) welcome migration which means we need even more developments, then why are you saying it will make new developments easier as if it is a bad thing?
Because what it actually means is people living in one area deciding that all those developments should be in another area - preferably some distance away from them. The urban areas have large swathes of brownfield sites which should be redeveloped. But that is more expensive both for the developers and the local authorities. So now they will have nice large areas of green field they can build on instead. It is simply supercharged NIMBYism.
Where are these mythical large swathes of brownfield sites that have not been redeveloped in the past quarter of a century where our population has grown by about 20%?
Any brownfield sites that can be developed should be and largely are, but we need green too. And will do as long as our population rises and until we clear the backlog of missing developments we need.
1.5 million homes. Half of it with some form of planning permission in place. But developers don't like building on brownfield sites because of the additional costs.
Allegedly, claimed by a group the CPRE with a very vested-interest and based on a series of flawed assumptions.
Yes if every single brownfield site were capable of being transformed to housing, at high density, and nothing else then those houses could be built.
However that is never going to happen and can't happen. Some land is unsuitable due to contamination or other reasons. And some will inevitably get used for other purposes, such as industry or retail or anything else. Indeed, build homes and other services are needed so its never all going to go to housing.
So yes, brownfield can be a part of the mix - and is, but green is needed too.
Find some counter evidence and you might be worth listening to on this. But vague claims which are not backed up by any actual evidence, whilst occasionally a PB standard, does not win arguments.
Our analysis clearly highlights the planning systems as very significant drivers of negative overall outcomes in the housing market. Across GB as a whole, and England in particular, the planning systems are not delivering sufficient planning permissions to deliver new housing up to government targets and other assessments of need.
... We have also seen evidence that problems in planning systems may be having a disproportionate impact on SME housebuilders ...
.. We have found that barriers to entry and expansion are likely to be restricting the role of SMEs in the market. Of these barriers, the most significant is negotiating the planning system, the burdens of which fall most heavily on smaller builders, followed by access to land ...
The CMA does not argue that the solution is simply 'build on brownfield'; it identifies a systemic shortage of permissions and land supply. The fact that planning constraints exist applies regardless of whether the land is brownfield or greenfield.
Around 54% of new homes are already being built on brownfield land. So brownfield is not being ignored, it is already the majority of new housing.
The disagreement is not whether brownfield should be used. It should. The question is whether theoretical brownfield capacity means greenfield development is unnecessary. The evidence does not support that conclusion. Brownfield sites have competing uses, viability constraints and are not always located where housing demand is highest. Therefore brownfield is part of the solution, but not the entire solution.
So no actual evidence to counter the argument that there are brownfield sites capable of supporting 1.5 million additional homes then? Just some completely different argument about your old idiocy about the the planning system.
Did you miss the CMA saying there is a shortage of land there?
Yes the CMA acknowledged planning as the biggest problem, which it is, but it also said access to land was one too which I quoted.
And yes, brownfield is capable of supporting those homes if every hectare of that brownfield is used for homes and nothing else, as I acknowledged all along. However we need industry and retail and a plethora of other uses for brownfield too. Potentially housing does not equate to will be housing as there are competing demands for land.
Do you think we can do without industry? Or anything else?
It never ceases to amaze me how people living in sparsely populated rural areas consider that people in cities have absolutely no need for green space and that as more and more people are crammed into existing urban settlements all the existing brownfield land should be used for housing as opposed to creating green space for recreational use and to boost urban wildlife. What a selfish bunch.
Green space in urban areas is the most valuable in the country and we should be looking to add to it. Existing "brownfield sites" are often quite ecologically rich simply by virtue of nature having reclaimed them.
New housing should be developed primarily as planned settlement on the misnamed "green belt", which apart from the brownfield parts which can rightly be recategorised as "grey belt" also includes vaste swathes of ecologically denuded land put over to high intensity agri business with monolithic crops and high use of insecticides etc. Such as huge fields of hedgerow-less oil seed rape for example, very common around here. Green deserts if you prefer.
Almost no brownfield is converted to green space. It would be great if it were. Much of it is left for decades without being either developed or converted.
And it never ceases to amaze me that poeple living in urban areas think that there is nothing more to the countryside than famers fields. We can afford to lose farmers fields which is why I have long advocated on here for building new towns in East Anglia and Lincolnshire. What we have lost has been the high nature value marginal land. This is why since WW2 we have lost 97% of our water meadows and hay meadows, 50% of our ancient woodland, 80% of our lowland heath and 85% of our freshwater wetlands. This is why England is considered to be critically nature depleted and ranks 189th out of 240 countries for biodiversity and last amongst the G7 countries. We have seen an 80% decline in priority species since the 1970s.
Its been lost to agriculture, not to housing.
The planning system and green belt were in place the entire time that it was lost. Neither worked to save what should have been protected.
The small amounts we have left are only there because of the planning system. You would see the whole lot destroyed.
The planning system (in the wider sense) destroyed them.
Well into the 80s and 90s farmers were being paid to remove hedgerows.
Ever since WWII, the agricultural support policy in Western Europe has been about converting as much countryside as possible into high yield farming.
We got what we paid for.
That was nothing to do with the planning system. It was primarily the CAP.
The planning system was saying that land should be agricultural and the CAP applied.
Either way though, the devastation to the natural environment you spoke of has nothing to do with urban development and happened entirely under the planning and green belt regimes which both comprehensively failed.
We should revert back to the traditional British laws that existed before that devastation, before the war, where all that is not forbidden is permitted - but zone appropriately that such valued land should be protected. Enable SMEs to develop land that is suitable for development, without begging for rights to do so first.
Apparently loads of the steel we use (Which we manufacture then sell to our Chinese customers) comes from Ukraine which has an exemption from all the whopping tarrifs now on other steel.
We'd love to use UK steel but it doesn't really exist.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
I wonder if more and more people are going to just realise it’s not worth working for what gets taken from you and retire.
It’s one of the reasons I did.
And when you see rulings like the one yesterday to bring an extended family of 18 over from Gaza and they will be a burden on the taxpayer it just adds to thst.
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
In addition, when given a report stating the following -
1) Virgin steel making requires inputs. 2) so to have a strategic capability, you need stockpile of the inputs. 3) it would be cheaper to stockpile a decade of virgin steel demand in a not very large warehouse, than 1 or 2
The response from politicians (and all the other “stake holders”) was “wrong answer”
Add it to the list of things that shouldn't still be on our mental map of the UK, but still are.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Freebies from Lord Alli made Sir Keir look bad. If a pair of glasses and some other minor freebies can destroy Starmer’s reputation then no wonder why Nigel Farage is in a panic over his £5 million donation from Christopher Harbone which looks bad to the 64th power. We can see Farage’s ratings tumbling, this isn’t a surprise.
Starmer's problem was 2-tier Keir over Southport not free gear Keir over some glasses.
Farage we might have got wrong too. It is not taking the £5 million that is the problem, but taking the £5 million and yet continuing all his other grifts that Harborne's money should have let him stop: the Cameos, hawking gold and so on. As for consequences, it is not Harborne but Posh George that will land him in it.
I'm not sure I agree here. The Harbourne donation was a single event that Farage could not find a successful justification for. Now that it has been joined by all the posh George stuff and the banks weighing in, and the security services weighing in, it feels more like a pile on.
It is. All held back for the optimum moment. That being the days in the run up,to todays coronation.
But he’s given them plenty to go at him with here.
Thinking some more, the logical conclusion of Burnham’s speech is that he will need to bring in Trump-style tarriffs on countries like China if he wants to bring back manufacturing
Encourage Chinese companies to manufacture here, after switching to assembly initially.
Freebies from Lord Alli made Sir Keir look bad. If a pair of glasses and some other minor freebies can destroy Starmer’s reputation then no wonder why Nigel Farage is in a panic over his £5 million donation from Christopher Harbone which looks bad to the 64th power. We can see Farage’s ratings tumbling, this isn’t a surprise.
Starmer's problem was 2-tier Keir over Southport not free gear Keir over some glasses.
Farage we might have got wrong too. It is not taking the £5 million that is the problem, but taking the £5 million and yet continuing all his other grifts that Harborne's money should have let him stop: the Cameos, hawking gold and so on. As for consequences, it is not Harborne but Posh George that will land him in it.
I'm not sure I agree here. The Harbourne donation was a single event that Farage could not find a successful justification for. Now that it has been joined by all the posh George stuff and the banks weighing in, and the security services weighing in, it feels more like a pile on.
So, if someone does one wrong thing, we should investigate it. But if they do a second wrong thing, we shouldn’t, in case it looks like a pile on??? I’m not following the logic here.
Can anyone see any chance at all of this not happening, given the apparent margins ?
I suppose if Burnham does something spectacularly unpopular in his first few weeks in office it might have an effect.
Not long ago, talk here presumed this would fall to Reform. Were people then being too pessimistic about Labour’s chances? Or has Farage ballsed this up?
Scoop: Mainstream - the Burnham-backing soft-left group of MPs - has called on the new Labour leader to appoint a "progressive chancellor", in a statement showing tacit support for Ed Miliband.
One insider told the NS: “If Andy is serious about ending 40 years of neoliberalism, then he needs a chancellor who knows how to challenge Treasury orthodoxy, work with the civil service and get progressive things done. That is so obviously Ed".
Scoop: Mainstream - the Burnham-backing soft-left group of MPs - has called on the new Labour leader to appoint a "progressive chancellor", in a statement showing tacit support for Ed Miliband.
One insider told the NS: “If Andy is serious about ending 40 years of neoliberalism, then he needs a chancellor who knows how to challenge Treasury orthodoxy, work with the civil service and get progressive things done. That is so obviously Ed".
I wonder if more and more people are going to just realise it’s not worth working for what gets taken from you and retire.
It’s one of the reasons I did.
And when you see rulings like the one yesterday to bring an extended family of 18 over from Gaza and they will be a burden on the taxpayer it just adds to thst.
That family immigration ruling will surely be appealed by the government?
It would be easier to just change the law. In my view, governments should keep Parliamentary time free for "reactive" legislation. They managed it so that pubs could stay open fora football match
What is taking so long with the Norfolk PCC count? Could there be a chance of a big upset? Could Reform win their first ever PCC? Could Restore do well in their own backyard?
Feels very old Labour. Is he going to re-open the coal mines?
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
Didn't he pinch that phrase from Sainsburys - good food for all of us?
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
China should be thanking Ed Miliband for making every other heavy industry shut down, not complaining about the last remaining steel works in the country being nationalised for national security reasons because they couldn’t afford the powere bill.
To be honest, it's one nationalisation I approve of even though I expect it will be spectacularly inefficient and perhaps not even of great quality.
We must have one virgin steel making plant in British hands, for national security.
Yes absolutely. Normally you and I would be dead against nationalisation of anything, but there simply has to be a local steel plant able to supply military and nuclear needs even if it’s not economically viable.
There's only a tiny amount of steel, relatively speaking, in modern defence systems. If we were really arsed about national security, which we aren't, we should have government owned cloud and AI providers. That's what's really going to matter. Fixating on steel like it's fucking 1912 is a shit take.
In addition, when given a report stating the following -
1) Virgin steel making requires inputs. 2) so to have a strategic capability, you need stockpile of the inputs. 3) it would be cheaper to stockpile a decade of virgin steel demand in a not very large warehouse, than 1 or 2
The response from politicians (and all the other “stake holders”) was “wrong answer”
Add it to the list of things that shouldn't still be on our mental map of the UK, but still are.
Not so much that, but if you want something, you have to do it. Or you can be performative.
just watching the open coverage - amazed it apparently takes 50 minutes to drive from centre of Liverpool to the course about 15 miles north of the city . the north feels like another world sometimes
Why? How long would it take to drive from the centre of London to 15 miles north of the city?
Travelling from the centre of any city can take a while, however a new motorway connection between Liverpool and Southport (and via a new bridge Blackpool too) is one example of the many new motorways I would build if I were in charge of the country.
liverpool is tiny compared to london
8m people in the Liverpool-Hull corridor.
If Liverpool gets to have a corridor and include somewhere over 100 miles away, surely the comparison should be to some corridor including London. How about the London-Paris corridor? That must be over 30 million!
Liverpool to Manchester at least (not Hull to be fair) is one contiguous urban development, including towns like Widnes, Wigan and Warrington in-between.
What about the LMMA (pronounced Lemma) - the Liverpool-Manchester Metropolitan Axis?
'China has hit out at the nationalisation of British Steel, saying it "firmly opposes and is strongly dissatisfied with the British government's decision".
On Thursday, the UK government said that taking the loss-making firm into public hands would protect jobs and safeguard a "vital national capability".
Comments
The Labour Party could not be more divided and “factionated” right now.
WOTN using the stage and Oxygen of publicity to fully demonstrate just how boring he is to listen to.
But if you do listen to it, it’s pure fantasy and gibberish. Return us back to the 80’s and make the right decisions this time. 🤣
Sunlit Uplands for everyone 🤣
If you don’t like Deindustralisation, Globalisation, automation - then simple… don’t choose to do it 😂
Utter utter gibberish.
Plus packing the audience with faces from the past is another poor optic.
Margaret Becket and others of that generation are not part of the future
Burnham going hard on localism and technical education/apprenticeships etc in his first speech as Labour leader
It’s one of the reasons I did.
And when you see rulings like the one yesterday to bring an extended family of 18 over from Gaza and they will be a burden on the taxpayer it just adds to thst.
Interesting post on LinkedIn, for a change.
https://x.com/colefusionhq/status/2078052259523391875?s=61
I’m watching a Taggart from 2005.
They’re still smoking in pubs.
I hope that changes quite quickly, but it doesn't seem we're going to get it today.
Listening to Andy Burnham he declares a long wish list but has only a little over 2 years for him to make things happen
On this day I wish him well but he certainly faces a big change to go from Mayor to PM
Based on the stamp duty ruling on Rayner - an example: your divorced sibling re-writing their will asks you to be a trustee for their dependent children in case they die before the children are 18. Unfortunately this happens, their estate is left to the kids and, to minimise disruption to their lives, the ex moves back into the family home to look after them.
You now have a second home for the purposes of stamp duty.
Does anyone think that this is an intended consequence of the tax law?
Also, a quick check of Google maps has the distance as closer to 20 miles.
I wonder what our resident Korea expert, @Nigelb, thinks of this.
“ Goldman - "As of July 13, a total of over 1.2 million leveraged retail accounts across the Korean market triggered margin calls. Approximately 320,000–360,000 accounts were fully liquidated by brokers. South Korea has an adult population (aged 15–64) of 35.7 million people… i.e. 1 in 30 (3.4%) adults got margin called."
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/2077771238609461547?s=61
We can only wish him well at this point. There is a lot to sort out.
Robotic auto cue readers like Starmer and May
Polished head of the debate team types like Cameron and Sunak
Chummy ramblers like Boris.
In this speech Burnham is a bit more in the Boris camp but filtered through a socialist lense. I can imagine Boris addressing the golf club and Burnham addressing the social club in much the same style.
The country deserves to know what the new PM is going to do. This empty speech does not give us any real clue.
Harking back to Kinnock, Blunkett et al was a poor choice.
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
No acknowledgement that the world has moved on a lot since the 1980s and other western countries have deindustrialised too. How is he going to get jobs back from China (do people even want to do those jobs?)
The devolution thing is quite interesting, although if they are going to do this everywhere then that may mean giving a lot more powers to Reform councils.
We’ll see how long the “for all of us” line can last, when he starts facing tough choices.
According to Phil, there are rumours that Farage won't stand!!
Come on, Binface!!!
But S Korean investors don't seem to have come to grips with that just yet.
https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/economy/20260716/kospi-tumbles-back-below-7000-in-black-thursday-rout
..The KOSPI tumbled back below 7,000, Thursday, just one session after a sharp rebound, as concerns over slowing artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investment and intensifying competition in memory chips battered semiconductor shares.
The benchmark closed at 6,820.60, down 6.37 percent from the previous session. It opened 4.45 percent lower and extended its losses, falling as much as 7.6 percent to 6,730.87 intraday. A sell-side sidecar was activated at 9:10 a.m., marking the 19th such activation on the KOSPI this year.
Foreign investors sold a net 1.44 trillion won ($973.9 million) of shares, while institutional investors offloaded 1.39 trillion won. Retail investors, however, bought a net 2.78 trillion won...
Can’t beat a good devilled egg. In fact I’m making one for lunch.
Also got your hostess trolley ?
Like SpaceX, retail once again the bag holder ?
I know little of the KOSPI but I did read it was heavily skewed to a couple of large companies and their volatility often drove the sharp swings.
A joy I’ve not forgotten.
No one outside of the party cares one way or another if he thanks Blunkett etc for inspiring him, for example.
There have been rumours online he’s going to stand down. He just cannot stand scrutiny.
As Baldrick said, ‘when the going gets tough, the tough hide under the table’
Am I doing this right?
Your boy Farage and other racists quoting Andrew Tate's X accounts got that all wrong.
The Southport reaction was a disgusting lesson in racism and how Reform and some Conservatives were comfortable with using and abusing a tragedy
By all means call Starmer out when he has been caught out but please don't make shit up.
This sort of inter-regnum can throw up all sorts of issues
https://x.com/ft/status/2077750487084875891?s=61
Burnham
https://youtu.be/qj8tyjmV_Rw?is=4yYDJo7bCmCtDlLV
Well into the 80s and 90s farmers were being paid to remove hedgerows.
Ever since WWII, the agricultural support policy in Western Europe has been about converting as much countryside as possible into high yield farming.
We got what we paid for.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/jul/03/south-korea-wealth-divide-ai-chip-boom
Much of their current value (and profits) come from the massive demand for high end memory from the AI companies. Whether the 80% gross margins on that are sustainable is another matter.
More generally S Korea has done extremely well as a manufacturing exporter, but part of that has been the suppression of the value of the Korean won - and workers' wages. As the Guardian article notes, the new culture at the two massive tech companies sits rather uneasily with that. At the same time as that, their more traditional manufacturing industry which its the foundation of their economy is facing brutal competition from China.
New Betfair market - Will Burnham be PM at the next GE? (ie PM on day of GE, not will he win it)
Yes 1.69
No 2.36
So over 40% chance he's booted out before we get to the GE.
However I suspect reality is that Yes is stonking value and that will come in before long.
1) Virgin steel making requires inputs.
2) so to have a strategic capability, you need stockpile of the inputs.
3) it would be cheaper to stockpile a decade of virgin steel demand in a not very large warehouse, than 1 or 2
The response from politicians (and all the other “stake holders”) was “wrong answer”
1) Virgin steel making requires inputs.
2) so to have a strategic capability, you need stockpile of the inputs.
3) it would be cheaper to stockpile a decade of virgin steel demand in a not very large warehouse, than 1 or 2
The response from politicians (and all the other “stake holders”) was “wrong answer”
I agree about the Cloud and Ai providers completely.
Either way though, the devastation to the natural environment you spoke of has nothing to do with urban development and happened entirely under the planning and green belt regimes which both comprehensively failed.
We should revert back to the traditional British laws that existed before that devastation, before the war, where all that is not forbidden is permitted - but zone appropriately that such valued land should be protected. Enable SMEs to develop land that is suitable for development, without begging for rights to do so first.
First round
Bev Craig, Lab: 38%
Sian Astley, Ref: 24%
Geraldine Coggins, Grn: 17%
Phil Eckersley, Con: 11%
Marlon West, Res: 7%
Second round
Bev Craig, Lab: 62%
Sian Astley, Ref: 38%
https://x.com/YouGov/status/2078041926431883616
Can anyone see any chance at all of this not happening, given the apparent margins ?
We'd love to use UK steel but it doesn't really exist.
It should be 1.3 max.
And DC! So the electoral college vote would have been 538-0, rather than 535-3,
But there are Labour MPs from previous generations for whom I have always had respect.
Healey and Mowlam to name but two. Prescott, before he became Deputy Leader, was an authentic and, at times, persuasive speaker.
The speech today was lacking in detail, delivered more poorly that I had anticipated for all the much vaunted communication skills of the new Leader.
But he’s given them plenty to go at him with here.
As happened with (S)Hitachi trains
@meganekenyon
Scoop: Mainstream - the Burnham-backing soft-left group of MPs - has called on the new Labour leader to appoint a "progressive chancellor", in a statement showing tacit support for Ed Miliband.
One insider told the NS: “If Andy is serious about ending 40 years of neoliberalism, then he needs a chancellor who knows how to challenge Treasury orthodoxy, work with the civil service and get progressive things done. That is so obviously Ed".
https://x.com/meganekenyon/status/2078092683742970274
@meganekenyon
Scoop: Mainstream - the Burnham-backing soft-left group of MPs - has called on the new Labour leader to appoint a "progressive chancellor", in a statement showing tacit support for Ed Miliband.
One insider told the NS: “If Andy is serious about ending 40 years of neoliberalism, then he needs a chancellor who knows how to challenge Treasury orthodoxy, work with the civil service and get progressive things done. That is so obviously Ed".
https://x.com/meganekenyon/status/2078092683742970274
Me: do you mean Andy Burnham?
My wife: yes, him.
Me: he's going to be our Prime Minister on Monday.
My wife: oh.
If there hadn't been election Fraud, Trump would have won 64 states, and 435 seats in Congress.
Not sure what's wrong with Piastri's car, but he could be another one.