You just know that almost every decision Burnham makes is annoying the Starmerites, by default. Because it would be impossible to be more anti-public opinion than the previous administration was.
We are in day 4 of the Burnham regime. Listening to bits and pieces from talking heads the following seems clear to them:
Burnham is 'Macbeth' and having stolen the crown it has turned to ashes. His cabinet and other appointments is a purge and factionalism is rife. His giveaways are (a) trivial and (b) unfunded and (c) give most to the wealthiest who use most electricity His regime is already doomed.
It seems to me what he has happened so far is this:
He has appointed a cabinet in circumstances where whatever he did, those who lost out would make great claims. That's politics. Having no wiggle room at all before a budget he has made a couple of minor retail offers at almost no cost (VAT, buses, smalltime business rates). The offers he has made are addressed not at those who understand debt, deficit and money, but at those for whom a pound = a lottery ticket and is noticed, while £1billion is incomprehensible. There are lots of these but not among talking heads. Starmer and Starmerites never talked their language.
Conclusion: OK so far but all the hard stuff is to come.
I will just offer one thought.
With Sunak a massive red flag that things would go horribly wrong was his decision to bring back Braverman as Home Secretary. Now bearing in mind, even allowing for the fact she's a nasty piece of work, she made a serious mistake around data security - one a fairly bright 18 year old working in a solicitor's office would have avoided - that meant Liz Truss had to fire her.
Sunak reappointing her and not only that, reappointing her to the Home Office, signalled both that his position was shockingly weak and his judgement was highly suspect. The first was fairly obvious, but the second grew to become horribly apparent over the train wreck of the next 18 months.
Andrew Burnham has made Wes Streeting Defence Secretary.
I'm getting the same vibes.
See also Lou Haigh.
But more importantly- I want to see Burnham defend something unpopular on the grounds that it's the necessary thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. He doesn't have to enjoy it, or do it to make a point... but he needs to do it.
As things stand, I'm not sure he can. And that's a problem.
Though slightly different, by keeping Shabana Mahmood in place Burnham has shown that he is willing to court unpopularity within the PLP and the wider party. He sees her tough approach to immigration and asylum seekers as necessary if he is to win the next GE, even if it displeases many on the left.
Indeed. There are plenty in the left denouncing Burnham for doing so already.
I'd have thought India playing test cricket against Australia in England would be a more commercially-attractive proposition. AIUI, it's quite hard to motivate Indian crowds to turn out to watch their own country play in test matches.
The crowd would be the most hardcore of Test cricket fans
The Barmy Army, the Oz equivalent, and the old school Indian Test lovers
I'd have thought India playing test cricket against Australia in England would be a more commercially-attractive proposition. AIUI, it's quite hard to motivate Indian crowds to turn out to watch their own country play in test matches.
The crowd would be the most hardcore of Test cricket fans
The Barmy Army, the Oz equivalent, and the old school Indian Test lovers
The only way you would get the Indians to turn up is if Kohli, Tendulkar and Sehwag were the umpires.
I'd have thought India playing test cricket against Australia in England would be a more commercially-attractive proposition. AIUI, it's quite hard to motivate Indian crowds to turn out to watch their own country play in test matches.
The crowd would be the most hardcore of Test cricket fans
The Barmy Army, the Oz equivalent, and the old school Indian Test lovers
The only way you would get the Indians to turn up is if Kohli, Tendulkar and Sehwag were the umpires.
And even then, only maybe.
I think that there are enough Indian cricket lovers to get a good crowd with cheap tickets to watch top Test cricket
Having top Indian players at the ground would probably pull them in
I'd have thought India playing test cricket against Australia in England would be a more commercially-attractive proposition. AIUI, it's quite hard to motivate Indian crowds to turn out to watch their own country play in test matches.
The crowd would be the most hardcore of Test cricket fans
The Barmy Army, the Oz equivalent, and the old school Indian Test lovers
The only way you would get the Indians to turn up is if Kohli, Tendulkar and Sehwag were the umpires.
And even then, only maybe.
Have an “India Allstars” team do some sort of an exhibition at lunch, and then have them walk around the ground in the afternoon signing autographs. Free tickets to the local schoolkids.
Otherwise it’s a silly idea, you’re getting a couple of thousand hardcore Eng and Aus fans, and no-one else, in a 50-60,000 capacity stadium.
Some ideas here for the NHS to consider. The approach to bed numbers vs medics seems almost the diametric opposite of ours. Has anyone modelled the two systems to see which is more cost effective ?
Health care paradox: Korea achieves world-class longevity with fewest doctors among developed nations
Yet this longevity is supported by a strikingly lean clinical workforce.
Korea recorded just 2.6 practicing physicians per 1,000 people (including practitioners of traditional Korean medicine), the second-lowest ratio in the OECD after Costa Rica and well below the average of 4.0. Medical school graduation rates tell a similar story, yielding just 7.3 graduates per 100,000 residents compared to the international norm of 15.3.
To bridge this human gap, the Korean medical system relies heavily on capital-intensive infrastructure and high-volume patient turnover. The country boasts 12.5 hospital beds per 1,000 residents — nearly three times the OECD average — and leads the global bloc in diagnostic equipment, housing 46.7 CT scanners per million people.
This hyper-accessible infrastructure has fostered a culture of frequent clinical consultation. Koreans visited outpatient clinics an average of 17.9 times per year, nearly triple the OECD average of 6.6 visits and the highest rate recorded worldwide..
Inventing in equipment to improve productivity & quality at the same time. We have centuries of evidence, in a range of fields, that this works.
So you would imagine, but it would require a very large change in the way we currently run the NHS. How quickly/easily could you move in that direction, and what would be the cost ?
An implementing government would have to do it very quietly least they run into issues with NHS-staff-worship tendency that exists amongst chunks of the public.
The sooner we start seeing the NHS as a deeply flawed organisation that will never have enough money, and not a national religion, the better
Half our beds are taken up by people recovered but stuck waiting on social care
Good point Malc. If Burnham can solve it all credit to him.
Hope you’re good Sir, and enjoying the summer
Taz, thanks , hope same for you. Not long back from Florida, was far too hot there at this time, 99 every day and baking. Still great time was had by all. Back grafting now and weather has been lovely here.
Same here Malc. We’re off to Madeira in six weeks
Always fancied going there but never got round to it, you can tell me if worth it
You just know that almost every decision Burnham makes is annoying the Starmerites, by default. Because it would be impossible to be more anti-public opinion than the previous administration was.
We are in day 4 of the Burnham regime. Listening to bits and pieces from talking heads the following seems clear to them:
Burnham is 'Macbeth' and having stolen the crown it has turned to ashes. His cabinet and other appointments is a purge and factionalism is rife. His giveaways are (a) trivial and (b) unfunded and (c) give most to the wealthiest who use most electricity His regime is already doomed.
It seems to me what he has happened so far is this:
He has appointed a cabinet in circumstances where whatever he did, those who lost out would make great claims. That's politics. Having no wiggle room at all before a budget he has made a couple of minor retail offers at almost no cost (VAT, buses, smalltime business rates). The offers he has made are addressed not at those who understand debt, deficit and money, but at those for whom a pound = a lottery ticket and is noticed, while £1billion is incomprehensible. There are lots of these but not among talking heads. Starmer and Starmerites never talked their language.
Conclusion: OK so far but all the hard stuff is to come.
I will just offer one thought.
With Sunak a massive red flag that things would go horribly wrong was his decision to bring back Braverman as Home Secretary. Now bearing in mind, even allowing for the fact she's a nasty piece of work, she made a serious mistake around data security - one a fairly bright 18 year old working in a solicitor's office would have avoided - that meant Liz Truss had to fire her.
Sunak reappointing her and not only that, reappointing her to the Home Office, signalled both that his position was shockingly weak and his judgement was highly suspect. The first was fairly obvious, but the second grew to become horribly apparent over the train wreck of the next 18 months.
Andrew Burnham has made Wes Streeting Defence Secretary.
I'm getting the same vibes.
See also Lou Haigh.
But more importantly- I want to see Burnham defend something unpopular on the grounds that it's the necessary thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. He doesn't have to enjoy it, or do it to make a point... but he needs to do it.
As things stand, I'm not sure he can. And that's a problem.
He could scrap the triple-lock, on the basis that the future of the country depends on it.
You just know that almost every decision Burnham makes is annoying the Starmerites, by default. Because it would be impossible to be more anti-public opinion than the previous administration was.
We are in day 4 of the Burnham regime. Listening to bits and pieces from talking heads the following seems clear to them:
Burnham is 'Macbeth' and having stolen the crown it has turned to ashes. His cabinet and other appointments is a purge and factionalism is rife. His giveaways are (a) trivial and (b) unfunded and (c) give most to the wealthiest who use most electricity His regime is already doomed.
It seems to me what he has happened so far is this:
He has appointed a cabinet in circumstances where whatever he did, those who lost out would make great claims. That's politics. Having no wiggle room at all before a budget he has made a couple of minor retail offers at almost no cost (VAT, buses, smalltime business rates). The offers he has made are addressed not at those who understand debt, deficit and money, but at those for whom a pound = a lottery ticket and is noticed, while £1billion is incomprehensible. There are lots of these but not among talking heads. Starmer and Starmerites never talked their language.
Conclusion: OK so far but all the hard stuff is to come.
I will just offer one thought.
With Sunak a massive red flag that things would go horribly wrong was his decision to bring back Braverman as Home Secretary. Now bearing in mind, even allowing for the fact she's a nasty piece of work, she made a serious mistake around data security - one a fairly bright 18 year old working in a solicitor's office would have avoided - that meant Liz Truss had to fire her.
Sunak reappointing her and not only that, reappointing her to the Home Office, signalled both that his position was shockingly weak and his judgement was highly suspect. The first was fairly obvious, but the second grew to become horribly apparent over the train wreck of the next 18 months.
Andrew Burnham has made Wes Streeting Defence Secretary.
I'm getting the same vibes.
See also Lou Haigh.
But more importantly- I want to see Burnham defend something unpopular on the grounds that it's the necessary thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. He doesn't have to enjoy it, or do it to make a point... but he needs to do it.
As things stand, I'm not sure he can. And that's a problem.
He could scrap the triple-lock, on the basis that the future of the country depends on it.
I wouldn't be surprised if he and Healey do that, actually. They will say they are 'amending' the triple lock, rather than scrapping it, and will come up with an alternative formula to protect the value of the state pension.
If so, however, they need to do it in this year's budget so that the furore has died down before the next GE.
Yes. Unlike the NatCon or PopCon conferences, which occasionally produce something interesting (which is not the same as "something I like"), the GB-CPAC is just Brits pretending they understand Americans and failing. Truss syndrome, if you will.
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs
That's Ted looking at who replaces Chuck Schumer in the Senate and I don't see Zohran running for it while he's in his first term as Mayor..
If Zohran was running for senate than AOC has no choice but to go for President but I don't think we've seen anthing that says AOC is running for President yet.
👀 According to Downing Street read out of meeting between FM and new PM, Andy Burnham told John Swinney a second Indy ref was “off limits” because it would take focus from cost of living.
You just know that almost every decision Burnham makes is annoying the Starmerites, by default. Because it would be impossible to be more anti-public opinion than the previous administration was.
We are in day 4 of the Burnham regime. Listening to bits and pieces from talking heads the following seems clear to them:
Burnham is 'Macbeth' and having stolen the crown it has turned to ashes. His cabinet and other appointments is a purge and factionalism is rife. His giveaways are (a) trivial and (b) unfunded and (c) give most to the wealthiest who use most electricity His regime is already doomed.
It seems to me what he has happened so far is this:
He has appointed a cabinet in circumstances where whatever he did, those who lost out would make great claims. That's politics. Having no wiggle room at all before a budget he has made a couple of minor retail offers at almost no cost (VAT, buses, smalltime business rates). The offers he has made are addressed not at those who understand debt, deficit and money, but at those for whom a pound = a lottery ticket and is noticed, while £1billion is incomprehensible. There are lots of these but not among talking heads. Starmer and Starmerites never talked their language.
Conclusion: OK so far but all the hard stuff is to come.
I will just offer one thought.
With Sunak a massive red flag that things would go horribly wrong was his decision to bring back Braverman as Home Secretary. Now bearing in mind, even allowing for the fact she's a nasty piece of work, she made a serious mistake around data security - one a fairly bright 18 year old working in a solicitor's office would have avoided - that meant Liz Truss had to fire her.
Sunak reappointing her and not only that, reappointing her to the Home Office, signalled both that his position was shockingly weak and his judgement was highly suspect. The first was fairly obvious, but the second grew to become horribly apparent over the train wreck of the next 18 months.
Andrew Burnham has made Wes Streeting Defence Secretary.
I'm getting the same vibes.
See also Lou Haigh.
But more importantly- I want to see Burnham defend something unpopular on the grounds that it's the necessary thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. He doesn't have to enjoy it, or do it to make a point... but he needs to do it.
As things stand, I'm not sure he can. And that's a problem.
He could scrap the triple-lock, on the basis that the future of the country depends on it.
I wouldn't be surprised if he and Healey do that, actually. They will say they are 'amending' the triple lock, rather than scrapping it, and will come up with an alternative formula to protect the value of the state pension.
If so, however, they need to do it in this year's budget so that the furore has died down before the next GE.
And, I would applaud them for doing it.
No, my values are not Labour values. But that doesn't mean they can't be a government that achieves meaningful reforms and does good things.
👀 According to Downing Street read out of meeting between FM and new PM, Andy Burnham told John Swinney a second Indy ref was “off limits” because it would take focus from cost of living.
👀 According to Downing Street read out of meeting between FM and new PM, Andy Burnham told John Swinney a second Indy ref was “off limits” because it would take focus from cost of living.
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs
That's Ted looking at who replaces Chuck Schumer in the Senate and I don't see Zohran running for it while he's in his first term as Mayor..
If Zohran was running for senate than AOC has no choice but to go for President but I don't think we've seen anthing that says AOC is running for President yet.
You also missed a bit:
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs two parties that actually love America.
I actually agree with him. And his point about Cortez and Mamdani is at least arguable. Cortez is far too similar in many important respects to Donald Trump.
What I don't see if the Dems take his advice is any sort of prescription for creating a second party that loves America to go with them.
Good article by @MoonRabbit but as ever 3 years away from a GE events tend to come along and upset predictions
Andy Burnham has certainly demonstrated how to do retail politics and Labour supporters should be very pleased
I expect a poll bounce in his and Labour's poll ratings and a demonstration to Starmer and his government just how badly they performed
The announcements so far have not been unaffordable but the hard miles lie ahead not least with Healey and Streeting ( and the public) wanting more defence spending
Interesting Lineker and 100 plus millionaires want higher taxes on them so I assume they will voluntary pay more to HMRC now to show goodwill
I do expect reform/restore/greens to fall back and more traditional politics re emerge over the months and years ahead
Never understood the shamed voluntary tax thing. Should everyone who wants more defence spending have to pay extra too? Those who want more hospital spending have to volunteer for shifts at the local A&E?
There is no reason people can't argue for the world they would like to live in, but live in the world we actually have.
I find articles like the one Lineker has signed immensely frustrating, as well as self-indulgent.
They won't be touched, but it will be used as an excuse to whack tax up to 50% for headteachers and hospital consultants earning £125k, who work very long hours and have very few assets, and then that policy will be applauded by them.
The government should pass a bill that says those who signed the letter are subject to 60% tax on all income, including that paid through a company for personal services. Create a mechanism by which rich socialists can voluntarily add themselves to the 60% pool, simply by sending an appropriately-worded letter to the government or a national newspaper.
It may have escaped you that tax doesn't really work like that.
I am sure it upsets that quite a few wealth creators do actually want good public services and a fair society, and are not likely to piss off to some tax haven to guard their piles of cash like Smaug.
But if a bunch of smug wankers want to tell the government to tax them more because that’s their fetish, then the government should absolutely start with charging them more tax.
Or is their letter actually nothing but an utterly meaningless virtue signal to their friends in the media?
The reaction to this has been immensely funny. Class traitors!
IMO it’s perfectly fine to fully exploit the system as an individual even while campaigning against it. The chat about writing cheques to HMRC is daft - I don’t expect any people on the right to refuse NHS care or PIP if they are badly hurt; nor do I expect people on the left to forgo ISA tax breaks.
Lineker’s a past master at that, he spent a lot of money challenging an IR35 judgement over his BBC earnings only a few years ago. They ended up with an undisclosed settlement which I suspect wasn’t particularly in the football pundit’s favour.
Now he’s telling the world he’s a good man because he wants to pay more tax, while haveing precisely no intention of ever paying more tax.
And if people who wouldn't be paying it argue for a wealth tax the line is "lol what a surprise, in favour of taxes on other people".
So I wonder - who can in good faith advocate for a wealth tax?
Not those who'd pay it. Not those who wouldn't.
Who does that leave? I don't know. But whoever it is needs to get involved asap. Their voice will resonate across the nation.
👀 According to Downing Street read out of meeting between FM and new PM, Andy Burnham told John Swinney a second Indy ref was “off limits” because it would take focus from cost of living.
You just know that almost every decision Burnham makes is annoying the Starmerites, by default. Because it would be impossible to be more anti-public opinion than the previous administration was.
We are in day 4 of the Burnham regime. Listening to bits and pieces from talking heads the following seems clear to them:
Burnham is 'Macbeth' and having stolen the crown it has turned to ashes. His cabinet and other appointments is a purge and factionalism is rife. His giveaways are (a) trivial and (b) unfunded and (c) give most to the wealthiest who use most electricity His regime is already doomed.
It seems to me what he has happened so far is this:
He has appointed a cabinet in circumstances where whatever he did, those who lost out would make great claims. That's politics. Having no wiggle room at all before a budget he has made a couple of minor retail offers at almost no cost (VAT, buses, smalltime business rates). The offers he has made are addressed not at those who understand debt, deficit and money, but at those for whom a pound = a lottery ticket and is noticed, while £1billion is incomprehensible. There are lots of these but not among talking heads. Starmer and Starmerites never talked their language.
Conclusion: OK so far but all the hard stuff is to come.
I will just offer one thought.
With Sunak a massive red flag that things would go horribly wrong was his decision to bring back Braverman as Home Secretary. Now bearing in mind, even allowing for the fact she's a nasty piece of work, she made a serious mistake around data security - one a fairly bright 18 year old working in a solicitor's office would have avoided - that meant Liz Truss had to fire her.
Sunak reappointing her and not only that, reappointing her to the Home Office, signalled both that his position was shockingly weak and his judgement was highly suspect. The first was fairly obvious, but the second grew to become horribly apparent over the train wreck of the next 18 months.
Andrew Burnham has made Wes Streeting Defence Secretary.
I'm getting the same vibes.
See also Lou Haigh.
But more importantly- I want to see Burnham defend something unpopular on the grounds that it's the necessary thing to do. Or even the right thing to do. He doesn't have to enjoy it, or do it to make a point... but he needs to do it.
As things stand, I'm not sure he can. And that's a problem.
He could scrap the triple-lock, on the basis that the future of the country depends on it.
I wouldn't be surprised if he and Healey do that, actually. They will say they are 'amending' the triple lock, rather than scrapping it, and will come up with an alternative formula to protect the value of the state pension.
If so, however, they need to do it in this year's budget so that the furore has died down before the next GE.
There are a number of things that should be done, Triple lock, Stamp Duty, Social care "insurance"/"bond" but that would only be politically possible as a gradual transition.
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs
That's Ted looking at who replaces Chuck Schumer in the Senate and I don't see Zohran running for it while he's in his first term as Mayor..
If Zohran was running for senate than AOC has no choice but to go for President but I don't think we've seen anthing that says AOC is running for President yet.
You also missed a bit:
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs two parties that actually love America.
I actually agree with him. And his point about Cortez and Mamdani is at least arguable. Cortez is far too similar in many important respects to Donald Trump.
What I don't see if the Dems take his advice is any sort of prescription for creating a second party that loves America to go with them.
Chuck Schumer is awful though. He's playing a game that his opponents have ceased to play.
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs
That's Ted looking at who replaces Chuck Schumer in the Senate and I don't see Zohran running for it while he's in his first term as Mayor..
If Zohran was running for senate than AOC has no choice but to go for President but I don't think we've seen anthing that says AOC is running for President yet.
You also missed a bit:
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs two parties that actually love America.
I actually agree with him. And his point about Cortez and Mamdani is at least arguable. Cortez is far too similar in many important respects to Donald Trump.
What I don't see if the Dems take his advice is any sort of prescription for creating a second party that loves America to go with them.
Chuck Schumer is awful though. He's playing a game that his opponents have ceased to play.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
It has staff in its job centres?
Mind you, the AI is probably more intelligent than most of the ones I dealt with.
And we all know this is because they're in deep financial shit anyway as anyone with a positive account balance is getting the hell out leaving them with bad debts.
The most elegant distillation of the rot at the heart of British society is the comments section of an article about the £2 bus fare cap being full of pensioners (who already get free bus travel) asking ‘anything for pensioners?’ https://x.com/jordanbhx/status/2080265196786884842
That was the reaction to Sunak’s NICs cut too. Some pensioners took deep personal offence.
Or the 75p pension rise in... (checks date)... 2000.
Blimey.
Highlights how deeply embedded the national sense of entitlement is, though.
Free childcare for families on £200,000.
A bargain considering how much tax they are paying. A stay-at-home parent would cost the country.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
Lol. Nonsense.
It will lead to even more customers departing British Gas.
I don't see anything that has suddenly made the Tories more competent, or looking more competent, since they were turfed out in 2024?
The only real change has been that Reform has been foolish enough to relieve the Tories of some of their most incompetent ministers, such that both of them risk being seen as not up to the job of government.
History suggests that when parties are decisively thrown out of government for negative reasons, it takes more than one GE before people forget and their reputation recovers. I see nothing different, this time.
I think Mr Meeks yesterday had a better analysis on the Tories - basically they have very few seats they can win and a lot of the seats they currently have are likely to be lost in the next election to the Lib Dems thanks to their shift to the right towards Reform.
Basically if Reform sits at 20% and Burnham consolidates the left wing vote (as he will) the Tories are doomed whenever the next election is..
My take on Meeks is that he is likely influenced to some extent by dislike of the Tories. The other take is that Badenoch is polling way ahead of the party and that gets more important at election time. Once again, those of us on PB, obsessed by test cricket, pizza, radiohead, F1, politics and betting tend to forget that the vast, vast majority of the country cares little for politics, and many cannot even tell you who is the leader of the Liberal Democrats. We should also remember that at the next election every seat starts from scratch. Yes there is an incumbency effect, yes local performance of councils and councillors matters and yes the activist base is important, but I think its simply wrong to say that there are very few seats where the Tories can win. Why? In 2019 they won many of them, and those voters can return.
I remember people saying the same thing in 2022-2024 when he was predicting an epochal defeat for the Tories.
Which is a totally fair point, but I think my point about leaders vs party ratings, and the general public is true too.
I wouldn't be surprised by (a) further Tory decline to sub 100 seats or (b) a modest recovery to near or just over 200.
Hard to see more than that.
If you look at Mr Meek's analysis he doesn't and I don't see any seats that the Tories don't already have where they have a chance of winning.
I think keeping 100 seats will take a miracle for the Tory party - and that's ignoring the current insane plan of removing anyone without the "right viewpoint" on a single issue - which when mentioned at an election will cost the Tory party some votes to the Lib Dems...
You need seats that are narrowly held by Labour, but
a) aren't nice enough to be Lib Dem b) are too nice and have too many people with actual jobs to go Reform.
There are a few, I suspect. Central London, some of the NW London fringes like Hendon and Finchley. There must be similar demographics elsewhere.
But not many.
Which I think is the effect @MoonRabbit identifies in her analysis: Milton Keynes, Trafford, plus the London fringes. Swindon maybe too much Reform. I think the effect also requires Labour to lose votes to the Greens.
The Barratt Home seats?
If Ref crashes then some of the ex-mining and steel seats (Balsover, Peniston) might be worth watching as well.
The other part of the Tories' wait for Reform to collapse calculation then kicks in. Will the dispossessed Reform voter switch to the Conservatives at that point? Andy Burnham seems keen to win them over and these are seats that voted Labour for a century. There's still plenty of muscle memory.
Kemi's unyielding right-wing posture and straight-talking schtik is designed to make her, and the party, palatable to trad Tories who have drifted to Reform. And who, at the end of the day, don't really see Reform as fit to run the country. You won't ever get the Lee Andersons back tho.
The Meeks prognosis is bleak, and has some truth to it, but Conservatives will be encouraged by Kemi's ratings - miles better than Farage's - and that the LibDems really don't seem to be doing much nationally. If the Home Counties middle classes want rid of Labour badly enough they will revert back to the Tories.
Trad Tories who have drifted to Reform. And who, at the end of the day, don't really see Reform as fit to run the country
Suspect this intersection in the Venn diagram is small. ie Trad Tories who don't see Reform as fit to run the country are within the 19% that are sticking with the Tories in current polls and didn't drift to Reform in the first place.
We'll see.
+1 - if you don't trust Reform to run the country you are never going to be voting for Reform, so you are going to be reporting as one of those 18% who are voting Tory.
I think Badenoch's strategy is that when Reform collapses, voters who entirely thought Reform was fit to run the country have no choice but to vote Conservative instead.
That this might actually be her best strategy shows the dire straits the party is in. She's making two big assumptions: (a) Reform will collapse; (b) Reform voters will switch to the Conservatives when it does.
Is she not also coping (or trying to) with the loss of the centrist Tories, the one Nation Tories etc that Johnson gave the heave-ho to?
While many on the left hate the Tories, there is a strand of conservatism (small c) in the country. Sound money (stop laughing at the back), fiscal responsibility, self-reliance, state support for those in genuine need, defence of the realm, pro-business, small government.
That case can be made again, but the 14 years from 2010-2024 make it harder to say why.
I fervently believe that Farage is finally reaping what he has sown and that Reform is his latest vessel. May the ship go down with him. When it does (assuming it does) there will be plenty able to return to the Tories if they can be shown a valid reason.
This is why Badenoch's ECHR stuff is politically inept... she is keeping the Lib Dems alive to eat the previously Tory shires...
I’d have thought ECHR is a minuscule issue compared with Badenoch’s views on the switch to electricity and renewables.
Almost everyone sensible knows the current refugee system is insane for the 21st century. But a very large majority of people are pro-Green energy, Lib Dems even more so.
The Tory ECHR policy is using a nuclear bomb to fix a single issue.
It would add us to a list that contains just Russia and Belarus which isn’t really somewhere you want to be.
It’s also just a tick box exercise when comparing against Reform that will please reform favouring Tory voters but disgust Lib Dem tending ones.
Again what is Kemi doing beyond creating a Reform lite party that is still in no man’s land with no clear reason for existence
“Reform the ECHR/Refugee Convention or leave in 12 months”
“O&G revenues to fund renewables”
I think a large majority of people could support those variances on her policies.
Hmm. The first is just saying leave ECHR in 12 months without a debate about its merits. There is zero possibility of the UK unilaterally demanding and getting significant revisions to the treaty, even if it knew what specific revisions it wanted.
O&G revenues to fund renewables doesn't make much sense either. It's hypothecation where energy sources are subsidised anyway. ie we're paying for them somehow or or other. Making electricity cheaper is a good goal. Ed Miliband has been doing some work correcting the previous government allowing costs to get out of control but not enough. Basically I think it's stop nuclear, which is the really big money sink - probably have to see Hinckley Point and Sizewell through to their (very) bitter ends, and finish up current wind projects. Investments from now on are batteries, grid upgrade and solar.
You've missed off the critical bit if this is your strategy - lots and lots of gas turbines. What you've described will work in summer, but living on solar at out latitude isn't going to work for the winter.
There's plenty of wind power under development as well as 6GW from the two new nuclear plants. These may, or may not, have been good investment decisions in hindsight but they contribute to a decent energy mix filled out with additional batteries, particularly, but also solar. But don't go for more wind in AR8 or any further nuclear including SMR if you want the cheapest electricity you can get from this point on
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
The most elegant distillation of the rot at the heart of British society is the comments section of an article about the £2 bus fare cap being full of pensioners (who already get free bus travel) asking ‘anything for pensioners?’ https://x.com/jordanbhx/status/2080265196786884842
That was the reaction to Sunak’s NICs cut too. Some pensioners took deep personal offence.
Or the 75p pension rise in... (checks date)... 2000.
Blimey.
Highlights how deeply embedded the national sense of entitlement is, though.
Free childcare for families on £200,000.
A bargain considering how much tax they are paying. A stay-at-home parent would cost the country.
Of course, it doesn't really work like that as it's extremely rare for two parents to earn £99,999 each.
There are many families where one earns, say, £110k and the other £50k, who get nothing.
No way turnout would be that low and the ones currently most enthused to vote are Reform voters which means the poll is over inflating their top line .
The anti Reform vote will be mobilised to stop any chance of the lying grifter and his cohort of vile scum sucking odious individuals from getting anywhere close to power .
Lord's nowhere near full for Mens Hundred game starting now.
Top tiers of Compton and Edrich stands barely half full. Mound Stand also a long way from full.
London grounds have generally done very well in previous years in getting the crowds in, first game had 20k. Southampton was more than half empty yesterday.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
To be honest you wouldn't notice the difference. I'm sorry to say that because you absolutely should notice the difference.
Previous seasons of the Hundred, ECB took a big bath by subsidising tickets and very cheap to go. As i have no interest in going not looked, but now the Indians own the teams, have tickets prices gone up?
People still smoke ciggies? How the bloody hell anybody can afford to do so? Every smoker i know is now permentally attached to their 3000 puff vape instead.
If she became the nominee, she would condemn the USA to at least 4 more years of Republican rule
She's a smart political operator and Trump has dragged the Republicans down so much that (presuming free elections) a donkey wearing a rosette could win.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
Lol. Nonsense.
It will lead to even more customers departing British Gas.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
To be honest you wouldn't notice the difference. I'm sorry to say that because you absolutely should notice the difference.
All of this begs the question “Would the public prefer to deal with AI politicians rather than the real thing?”
UK 'ready to defend' itself after Iran warns of 'consequences' for US access
The UK says it is ready to defend itself, after Iran warned of "consequences" for opening its bases to the US military.
A little earlier, Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it "strongly condemns the decision" to allow the US's "illegal military attacks"
"Any party that participates in any way in committing military aggression against Iran will be responsible for the consequences... of its decision," a spokesperson said.
The UK's Ministry of Defence gave a stark response to Iran's threat:
"Our Armed Forces are ready to keep the United Kingdom safe from any kind of attacks, whether it's on our soil or from abroad. The UK stands ready 24/7 to defend itself.
"This includes through operating a layered approach to air and missile defence, provided by Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force assets equipped with a range of advanced capabilities, working closely with our NATO allies.
"The UK's approach to the conflict remains the same - we are committed to defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict."
Lord's nowhere near full for Mens Hundred game starting now.
Top tiers of Compton and Edrich stands barely half full. Mound Stand also a long way from full.
I've been at Lords for matches which were officially "full" but in fact the top tier of a couple of the stands were completely empty.
Maybe this is for health and safety reasons? I'd be interested if anyone knows the explanation.
It will be a cost benefit analysis. They will have said realistically what can we sell and cap it at that as it costs money in staffing for extra areas of the stadium to be utilised e.g. stewards, cleaning, etc. You dont want to sell a few extra tickets to open a whole new stand.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
Restore Britain probably deny that smoking causes cancer.
If it wasn't for my daughter who insisted I gave up smoking when our granddaughter was born 23 years ago I would not be here today as many of my nurse practioners have said whilst treating my copd
Terrible habit and the idea a political party would reintroduce it inside pubs is idiotic
Take it from me, I have learnt the hard way what long term damage smoking can do and not just cancer
Alphabet beat on every headline number tonight. Revenue up 24%. Cloud up 82%. EPS of $9.11. But $6.26 of that EPS came from paper gains on Alphabet's Anthropic stake*, not from operations. Strip that out and operating EPS is about $2.85. Free cash flow went negative for the first time in Alphabet's history. Long-term debt more than doubled in six months. Stock buybacks dropped to zero. https://x.com/HedgieMarkets/status/2080035162906390756
*Actually Anthropic and SpaceX. But SpaceX is also likely way overvalued if they don't get Starship to work.
AI is here to stay, obviously. What's not obvious is the value being given to all of the companies spending tens of billions to try and dominate the market.
What's certain is that some of them will fail to do so.
The other problem is that when customers are charged more realistic prices, they might walk away.
They're already doing so, which is a problem as both OpenAI and Anthropic have enormous financial commitments that require constant, rapid growth to sustain. Despite AI's numerous problems the biggest issue was never technical, but financial. It just costs too much for the benefits it provides.
Read an interesting article about the Chinese approach.
Basically they interrogate your AI to train theirs for a fraction of the price.
It's never as good as the latest model, but usually at least as good as the last one if not better and what's more oftena lot cheaper or even free.
Whether intentionall or not they may be bleeding the US dry.
The US spends 100's of millions on a new model and to pay for it need lots of customers to use it, either upgrade or pay more. The chineses make a copy for 10's of millions and sell it or charge a far lower fee or again even make it free.
Customers have choice;
1) Pay more for the new model and hope it gives them the edge and pays for itself. 2) Stick with the current model,paying the same but risk fall behind or missing out on savings or. 3) Switch to the far cheaper just as good chinese model, which might give a marginal improvement at lower cost?
At what point and how many existing users have to take option 3 and go Chinese for the US model to be finacially unsustainable?
Answers?
Peter.
The Chinese ethos of cheaply training 'trailing-edge' models is a sensible one I believe, because the performance of LLMs is starting the plateau. So the gap between a US frontier model and a less costly Chinese one is narrowing all the time. Also, OpenAI and Anthropic are basically producing gold plated models, where they spend crazy money to enhance the model's capabilities by small amounts.
But, the Chinese method does nothing for inference costs, and that's the big killer. These days the amount of money required to run the datacentres for AI is gigantic and growing constantly. That's why the American companies can't just offer big discounts for access to their older models.
I think we're at the beginning of a race to the bottom, because the single biggest attribute of an LLM model is no longer capability but cost. They're becoming a commodity. Which is death for the US developers because of their financial position.
I've maintained for some time that the future of corporate AI is not vast, billion dollar datacentres but a server that sits in the corner and runs a couple of useful models. No monthly token charges and your data never leaves the building. Home users will still mostly use the cloud (although hardware prices coming down will make local hosting more attractive for heavy users) but that's nowhere near enough of a market to keep the big AI vendors in business.
I run Qwen 3.6 35bn MOE at home, and it's incredibly capable and decently quick. It's basically Sonnet from 12 months ago.
Fable in Claude Code is awesome. I used to be a pretty good developer and it's as good as me at the things I was good at, and MUCH better than me at all the bits I hated. Every time I think I'll save some Fable tokens and drop back to Opus or Sonnet I start shouting at it "You're so STUPID".
Lord's nowhere near full for Mens Hundred game starting now.
Top tiers of Compton and Edrich stands barely half full. Mound Stand also a long way from full.
I've been at Lords for matches which were officially "full" but in fact the top tier of a couple of the stands were completely empty.
Maybe this is for health and safety reasons? I'd be interested if anyone knows the explanation.
It will be a cost benefit analysis. They will have said realistically what can we sell and cap it at that as it costs money in staffing for extra areas of the stadium to be utilised e.g. stewards, cleaning, etc. You dont want to sell a few extra tickets to open a whole new stand.
Yep. Maybe that's always been true, but in previous decades they wouldn't have described the ground as full when it obviously wasn't. It's the sort of fake description that gets up people's noses and leads some people towards becoming conspiracists when it gets repeated again and again in different settings.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I'm just looking at health and safety rules and remembering
1) Secondary smoke lingers for a long time 2) Secondary smoke kills as was demonstrated by Roy Castle 30+ years ago.
Heck any sign of working there and if the person got cancer even 50 years later you would have a massive insurance claim to settle.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I'm just looking at health and safety rules and remembering
1) Secondary smoke lingers for a long time 2) Secondary smoke kills as was demonstrated by Roy Castle 30+ years ago.
Heck any sign of working there and if the person got cancer even 50 years later you would have a massive insurance claim to settle.
Roy Castle was playing a trumpet night after night in smoke filled bars, he was not hoovering an empty smoking room and emptying the ash trays. This is epic garbage.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I would ensure my pub remained no smoking and not expose my staff to the toxic nature of it
Alphabet beat on every headline number tonight. Revenue up 24%. Cloud up 82%. EPS of $9.11. But $6.26 of that EPS came from paper gains on Alphabet's Anthropic stake*, not from operations. Strip that out and operating EPS is about $2.85. Free cash flow went negative for the first time in Alphabet's history. Long-term debt more than doubled in six months. Stock buybacks dropped to zero. https://x.com/HedgieMarkets/status/2080035162906390756
*Actually Anthropic and SpaceX. But SpaceX is also likely way overvalued if they don't get Starship to work.
AI is here to stay, obviously. What's not obvious is the value being given to all of the companies spending tens of billions to try and dominate the market.
What's certain is that some of them will fail to do so.
The other problem is that when customers are charged more realistic prices, they might walk away.
They're already doing so, which is a problem as both OpenAI and Anthropic have enormous financial commitments that require constant, rapid growth to sustain. Despite AI's numerous problems the biggest issue was never technical, but financial. It just costs too much for the benefits it provides.
Read an interesting article about the Chinese approach.
Basically they interrogate your AI to train theirs for a fraction of the price.
It's never as good as the latest model, but usually at least as good as the last one if not better and what's more oftena lot cheaper or even free.
Whether intentionall or not they may be bleeding the US dry.
The US spends 100's of millions on a new model and to pay for it need lots of customers to use it, either upgrade or pay more. The chineses make a copy for 10's of millions and sell it or charge a far lower fee or again even make it free.
Customers have choice;
1) Pay more for the new model and hope it gives them the edge and pays for itself. 2) Stick with the current model,paying the same but risk fall behind or missing out on savings or. 3) Switch to the far cheaper just as good chinese model, which might give a marginal improvement at lower cost?
At what point and how many existing users have to take option 3 and go Chinese for the US model to be finacially unsustainable?
Answers?
Peter.
The Chinese ethos of cheaply training 'trailing-edge' models is a sensible one I believe, because the performance of LLMs is starting the plateau. So the gap between a US frontier model and a less costly Chinese one is narrowing all the time. Also, OpenAI and Anthropic are basically producing gold plated models, where they spend crazy money to enhance the model's capabilities by small amounts.
But, the Chinese method does nothing for inference costs, and that's the big killer. These days the amount of money required to run the datacentres for AI is gigantic and growing constantly. That's why the American companies can't just offer big discounts for access to their older models.
I think we're at the beginning of a race to the bottom, because the single biggest attribute of an LLM model is no longer capability but cost. They're becoming a commodity. Which is death for the US developers because of their financial position.
I've maintained for some time that the future of corporate AI is not vast, billion dollar datacentres but a server that sits in the corner and runs a couple of useful models. No monthly token charges and your data never leaves the building. Home users will still mostly use the cloud (although hardware prices coming down will make local hosting more attractive for heavy users) but that's nowhere near enough of a market to keep the big AI vendors in business.
I run Qwen 3.6 35bn MOE at home, and it's incredibly capable and decently quick. It's basically Sonnet from 12 months ago.
Fable in Claude Code is awesome. I used to be a pretty good developer and it's as good as me at the things I was good at, and MUCH better than me at all the bits I hated. Every time I think I'll save some Fable tokens and drop back to Opus or Sonnet I start shouting at it "You're so STUPID".
People dont like to admit it but LLMs now better coders than the vast majority of humans for well defined tasks. I havent manually coded anything for 6+ months.
The owner of British Gas has claimed that most households would rather speak with an AI chatbot than deal with the company’s staff as it prepares to cut 1,300 jobs from its call centres.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
I don't believe this for one minute.
And you'd spent ten minutes going through pointless menus and "I'm sorry. I didn't quite catch that." AI statements before you got to any of the poor residual workers, who'd then be dealing with some very frustrated customers.
Anyone know anything about this company planning to put mirrors in space to provide daylight at night?
They say that a 60 foot mirror will illuminated a disc three miles wide, but that's only going to get you enough sunlight for twilight (with the light from a small mirror sort over a large area), and it's not going to help you with solar farms or growing more food.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I would ensure my pub remained no smoking and not expose my staff to the toxic nature of it
That would be your choice. If a landlord wants to make some money by offering a well-ventilated room as a smoking space, providing it was not 'manned', I find it profoundly illiberal to stop them.
Lord's nowhere near full for Mens Hundred game starting now.
Top tiers of Compton and Edrich stands barely half full. Mound Stand also a long way from full.
I've been at Lords for matches which were officially "full" but in fact the top tier of a couple of the stands were completely empty.
Maybe this is for health and safety reasons? I'd be interested if anyone knows the explanation.
It will be a cost benefit analysis. They will have said realistically what can we sell and cap it at that as it costs money in staffing for extra areas of the stadium to be utilised e.g. stewards, cleaning, etc. You dont want to sell a few extra tickets to open a whole new stand.
Yep. Maybe that's always been true, but in previous decades they wouldn't have described the ground as full when it obviously wasn't. It's the sort of fake description that gets up people's noses and leads some people towards becoming conspiracists when it gets repeated again and again in different settings.
Throughout the hundred the ECB have been desparate to talk up its success and so its just part of the spin (along with plenty of free tickets to bolster the numbers). It was all about selling to PE.
That is why i was asking about cost, because previoisly ECB subsidised them.
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I'm just looking at health and safety rules and remembering
1) Secondary smoke lingers for a long time 2) Secondary smoke kills as was demonstrated by Roy Castle 30+ years ago.
Heck any sign of working there and if the person got cancer even 50 years later you would have a massive insurance claim to settle.
Roy Castle was playing a trumpet night after night in smoke filled bars, he was not hoovering an empty smoking room and emptying the ash trays. This is epic garbage.
Where there is a vague claim there is a no win, no fee legal firm looking at a rather easy massive payout for a negligence claim...
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I would ensure my pub remained no smoking and not expose my staff to the toxic nature of it
That would be your choice. If a landlord wants to make some money by offering a well-ventilated room as a smoking space, providing it was not 'manned', I find it profoundly illiberal to stop them.
Take it from me, it is not illiberal to prevent cancer or copd being caught by anyone and especially working staff in hospitality
Not that they are backwards looking reactionaries or anything.
I would bring it back in smoking rooms. Should be peoples' choice, but not inflict that choice on others.
You would still be inflicting it on staff..
No, you'd take your drink in and bring it out.
Who empties the ashtrays?
What people can't be paid to empty an ashtray now? Is the ash going to jump out and infest them with cancer? Piss off.
So they wear a personal respirator to enter the smoking chamber to collect the smokers' detritus?
You are being utterly absurd. They would clean the ashtrays after the room had been vacated, and frankly many cleaners have to do far worse, as do vast amounts of other workers that you depend on to live what is clearly a very sheltered life.
I'm just looking at health and safety rules and remembering
1) Secondary smoke lingers for a long time 2) Secondary smoke kills as was demonstrated by Roy Castle 30+ years ago.
Heck any sign of working there and if the person got cancer even 50 years later you would have a massive insurance claim to settle.
Roy Castle was playing a trumpet night after night in smoke filled bars, he was not hoovering an empty smoking room and emptying the ash trays. This is epic garbage.
Where there is a vague claim there is a no win, no fee legal firm looking at a rather easy massive payout for a negligence claim...
I'm getting secondary stupidity just by having this conversation.
The public are probably thinking: if we could do so much so quickly at the start of the Covid 19 pandemic, why can't we build some new prisons over the next 3 months?
Anyone know anything about this company planning to put mirrors in space to provide daylight at night?
They say that a 60 foot mirror will illuminated a disc three miles wide, but that's only going to get you enough sunlight for twilight (with the light from a small mirror sort over a large area), and it's not going to help you with solar farms or growing more food.
What am I missing?
The ISS is 100m long by 70m wide and it reflects a lot of sunlight, it is barely a speck as it rises above the horizon.
Comments
The Barmy Army, the Oz equivalent, and the old school Indian Test lovers
And even then, only maybe.
Having top Indian players at the ground would probably pull them in
Otherwise it’s a silly idea, you’re getting a couple of thousand hardcore Eng and Aus fans, and no-one else, in a 50-60,000 capacity stadium.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jul/23/europe-kemi-badenoch-uk-echr-treaties
(good article btw, although can I put in a plea for section headings?)
If so, however, they need to do it in this year's budget so that the furore has died down before the next GE.
It seems so far that the No 10 comms have been much better than under Starmer .
@KobeissiLetter
BREAKING: President Trump says he is "close" to a decision on a "massive attack" on Iran, per Axios.
Details include:
1. President Trump says "we are all set for it" regarding the attack which he has been hinting at for weeks
...
"They haven't received enough pain yet," Trump says.
https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/2080315122665304543
====
Only three and a bit days until the Monday pre-market TACO folks.
The other policies were 'funded' by a balancing cut in expenditure, which is surely a good thing.
@tedcruz
My prediction: AOC will run for president
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs
That's Ted looking at who replaces Chuck Schumer in the Senate and I don't see Zohran running for it while he's in his first term as Mayor..
If Zohran was running for senate than AOC has no choice but to go for President but I don't think we've seen anthing that says AOC is running for President yet.
It'll be just my luck it rains that one day.
Unlikely to go down very well with Scot Gov.
https://x.com/BBCDavidWL/status/2080328657797583138
No, my values are not Labour values. But that doesn't mean they can't be a government that achieves meaningful reforms and does good things.
Citing Farage...
My prediction: AOC will run for president, and Zohran Mamdani will replace Chuck Schumer in the Senate.
Some Republicans are cheering that our opponents are crazy. I’m not.
This is bad for America. I may disagree with Democrats on taxes and regulations, but this country needs two parties that actually love America.
I actually agree with him. And his point about Cortez and Mamdani is at least arguable. Cortez is far too similar in many important respects to Donald Trump.
What I don't see if the Dems take his advice is any sort of prescription for creating a second party that loves America to go with them.
So I wonder - who can in good faith advocate for a wealth tax?
Not those who'd pay it. Not those who wouldn't.
Who does that leave? I don't know. But whoever it is needs to get involved asap. Their voice will resonate across the nation.
I'd put my money on Durham
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EykovFObc8g
The Rest is Politics. This is a premier so URL might change later. It's like they can read PB's mind.
Centrica, the supplier’s FTSE 100 owner, plans to cut 800 jobs as the company carries out a “targeted deployment of AI tools”, on top of the 500 cutsit confirmed last month.
A very poor result for them
Mind you, the AI is probably more intelligent than most of the ones I dealt with.
And we all know this is because they're in deep financial shit anyway as anyone with a positive account balance is getting the hell out leaving them with bad debts.
Are reform voters happy with their 24%? Top of the heap but sliding slowly but surely down from the low 30s.
At the moment I would say Labour have the most to be happy about. May, of course, be temporary, we shall see
It will lead to even more customers departing British Gas.
There are many families where one earns, say, £110k and the other £50k, who get nothing.
No way turnout would be that low and the ones currently most enthused to vote are Reform voters which means the poll is over inflating their top line .
The anti Reform vote will be mobilised to stop any chance of the lying grifter and his cohort of vile scum sucking odious individuals from getting anywhere close to power .
Top tiers of Compton and Edrich stands barely half full. Mound Stand also a long way from full.
Things were better back then.
The jokes write themselves…
UK 'ready to defend' itself after Iran warns of 'consequences' for US access
The UK says it is ready to defend itself, after Iran warned of "consequences" for opening its bases to the US military.
A little earlier, Iran's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it "strongly condemns the decision" to allow the US's "illegal military attacks"
"Any party that participates in any way in committing military aggression against Iran will be responsible for the consequences... of its decision," a spokesperson said.
The UK's Ministry of Defence gave a stark response to Iran's threat:
"Our Armed Forces are ready to keep the United Kingdom safe from any kind of attacks, whether it's on our soil or from abroad. The UK stands ready 24/7 to defend itself.
"This includes through operating a layered approach to air and missile defence, provided by Royal Navy, British Army and Royal Air Force assets equipped with a range of advanced capabilities, working closely with our NATO allies.
"The UK's approach to the conflict remains the same - we are committed to defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict."
Maybe this is for health and safety reasons? I'd be interested if anyone knows the explanation.
Terrible habit and the idea a political party would reintroduce it inside pubs is idiotic
Take it from me, I have learnt the hard way what long term damage smoking can do and not just cancer
Every time I think I'll save some Fable tokens and drop back to Opus or Sonnet I start shouting at it "You're so STUPID".
1) Secondary smoke lingers for a long time
2) Secondary smoke kills as was demonstrated by Roy Castle 30+ years ago.
Heck any sign of working there and if the person got cancer even 50 years later you would have a massive insurance claim to settle.
They say that a 60 foot mirror will illuminated a disc three miles wide, but that's only going to get you enough sunlight for twilight (with the light from a small mirror sort over a large area), and it's not going to help you with solar farms or growing more food.
What am I missing?
That is why i was asking about cost, because previoisly ECB subsidised them.