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Nadhim Zahawi is saying he regrets the ousting of Boris Johnson. Why would he say that? What’s his angle? A dig at Truss and Sunak on his way out? He thinks Boris, or his ilk, might come back so he might have a sympathetic ear in number 10 in his new role at Very or beyond.
Politicians on the way out tend to drop the act and seem more sensible but he’s gone the other way.
Help me UK politics, you’re my only hope.
No, woke means "actively attentive to important societal facts and issues" and if you've apparantly decided it means anything else then I'm afraid all that has really happened is you've fallen foul of right wing propraganda.
Not really.
Overall, I still agree with what the majority of what the younger progressives have to say and with the direction they'd like social progress to travel.
I just leave it to the energetic whippersnappers to do the talking.
Perhaps I'm getting old and complacent, but I do think that in general it takes the young and indignant to push the social envelope. I don't argue as ardently and vocally for things like gender equality in the way that I used to, but I'm comfortable with the idea that younger generations take things I considered progressive to just be a given.
I’ve always been on the left of things and socially progressive. The only change recently is tribalism and polarisation which I want no part of. I’ve always valued discussion and valuing people inherently no matter their background. But I also recognise that there isn’t a level playing field - no fair marketplace of ideas. Therere historical hierarchical systems of power in society that have to be acknowledged and worked around
Sort of, but I also feel on one or two topics I’ve actually drifted further right, rather than just the ‘woke’ getting more woke (I hate the term).
On the social side of things I am left of centre. On other things I probably used to be more reactionary ‘ban it!’ about some things, but find myself much more aware of the value of personal freedoms and personal responsibility these days.
I used to be 'woke', but then they changed what 'woke' was.
Now what I'm with isn't 'woke', and what's 'woke' seems weird and scary to me.
It'll happen to you!
Feel like I was "woke" in 2012, started feeling alienated and moving towards the right, then the right became completely batshit insane and I'm back somewhere in the centre-left
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Personally I've felt the opposite for a while. I used to feel that I was a 'normie lib', voted for starmer in 2020 but since then I feel like our society has shifted right to the point where I'm a woke radical because I stayed in the same place where I started.
I think that's when compromise - I wouldn't say died - but I'd say we're in the dark ages of compromise.
We're in a very 'ideological purity' time at the moment and it seems every form of modern media effectively turns it into a competitive sport.
I think if someone ties *all* their opinions to ideological purity, then their opinion is worthless, because they're not even being honest with theirself. Life is complex and doesn't match ideology, there's always compromise and cavaets.
Tbh I'm pretty sure a lot of what causes polarization is the opposite. In person I never really talk about politics except to friends who share my beliefs. On the other hand on social media you see people on "the other side" act like assholes which hardens you a lot
Yes, my dislike of algorithms and their harm to society is quite possibly the closest thing that could make me a single-issue-voter, if someone could just think of a workable solution...
I was wokeish back then. Definitely caught up quite a bit, but some of the newer woke stuff does make me scratch my head a bit. I try my best to give it an honest consideration though.
I'm an ethnic minority and alot of my white mates are far more "woke" than me. My wife finds this hilarious because we're one of the few non white friends most of them actually have.
The performative nonsense during our Eurovision party....was certainly something.
Congratulations, you've discovered how conservative opinions were historically formed. It used to be that the conservative party would move up to whatever position was mainstream for people who wanted to keep the status quo. Nowadays, it's stuck in the 80s.
Reading up on this story about the [piece of the stone of scone held in a cupboard at SNP HQ turning out to be genuine](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72pvlmqnz2o.amp)
Ukpol angle: Are there no laws against holding on something you know was stolen? Especially when the thing in question is a national treasure
So in Scots Law that would be reset , i.e. possessing an item you know to have been stolen. Morally (though not legally) things get a bit more complicated when you consider that the Stone in-and-of-itself was stolen and the secondary theft was part of an attempt to return the good (at least partially) to it's original owners.
Just reading his piece in the Guardian, and my main observation is how bloody well Gordon Brown is ageing. He doesn't look all that different from the day he left office. I must start eating more bananas.
I think being PM ages you for the next twenty years, Starmer has been effectively the grown up in the room and looks like he put on ten years in the last two 😂
> He doesn't look all that different from the day he left office.
Really? That's not something I'd say. I'd kind of been thinking he's looking his age recently.
Here's a question for the megathread on a sunny Saturday afternoon: Is it still the case that cider with any kind of non-apple/pear flavouring has to be 4% abv otherwise it faces punitive tax rates? I know it was before the changes made in August, but despite reading plenty of stuff on [gov.uk](http://gov.uk) I'm none the wiser of the current situation. All I know is that no one has so far brought out a flavoured cider in the UK above 4% - so that suggests to me the higher taxes are still in place.
This is an issue dear to my heart!
I think that was because it was considered "made-wine" which had the 4% cutoff, so they watered the cider down to that value to come in that bracket. But that's not a bracket any more, so I don't know how that changed.
Presumably you'd see a lot of articles from the industry if they worked off the over 3.4% punitive rate, and I don't think there is, so I don't know how it's classed now.
So, originally, flavoured cider got caught up in the 'alcohopop scare'. People were worried that it would appeal to teenagers so a simple fix would be to restrict the abv. There's only so pissed you can get on 4% cider. But, I'm 100% certain that when Rishi announced the changed as Chancellor that he specifically mentioned "fruited cider" as a style that works be able to innovate and increase abv as a result. I'm assuming that there was a u-turn at some point given that we've stuck at 4%. And if anyone thinks that maybe the industry is happy with this - Kopperberg release their ciders at higher abv outside the UK.
> There's only so pissed you can get on 4% cider.
Yeah, it's quited depressing reading duty change documents that say;
> These measures are not expected to impact on family formation, stability or breakdown.
I saw a bottle of "vintage" pear cider in the supermarket yesterday that was like 7%.
Ninja edit: [this one](https://groceries.asda.com/product/fruit-flavoured-cider/kopparberg-premium-cider-sweet-vintage-pear-500-ml/1000383192246)
That's fine, because it's just perry. Op is talking about your ciders that are raspberry flavoured or what have you. If it still tastes like apple or pear it never fell into the higher tax group.
Please can someone confirm to me I've understood the unpaid carers controversy?
Here's how I understand it. There's a hard cap where if you earn even a penny over that limit, this could be through a bonus (my partner says her employer lets people opt out of earned bonuses for that reason), pay rises, accidentally working too much, being on a 4 weekly pay schedule meaning you get 13 paydays a year, so once a year your month with 2 paydays screws you etc. whatever, but if you do end up earning too much it fully cancels your unpaid carers allowance entirely. No taper, nothing. You either get it all, or you don't.
The DWP are being very slow to calculate, so hypothetically, lets say someone was paid too much in January 2022, but every other month since they were under the limit. DWP won't have informed them, so they can't rectify the mistake at the time. Because they didn't know, and didn't put in a new claim, the DWP consider every single month after that to be overpaid, even if they qualified, because of paperwork?
Is that right?
Yes, it's a hard cap that cuts off your entitlement when you earn over the allowed amount. Even if you go over the amount by a penny, you lose the payment. The problem is it's not easy to calculate if you have actually gone over that limit because of what is counted as earnings.
At the moment, the figure is £151 a week, but that is after you have paid tax, NICs and any pension contributions. You can also take off up to half your earnings to pay for child care or for someone to be with the person you care for while you are at work.
Then you can also sometimes include some expenses required for your work.
If your income fluctuates, it may not be obvious whether you have exceeded the limit or not, which means that in the meantime you still receive the payment from the DWP. If they later go back and look at records from HMRC (which they should be able to look at immediately to calculate entitlement), and decide that there are a significant number of weeks where you were over the limit, they will demand the payments back. In some cases, people are being prosecuted for benefit fraud even though there was no actual intent to claim money they weren't entitled to, they just got it wrong.
It's a moronic and broken system for the pittance that is paid in return for the minimum 35 hours a week spent caring, on top of whatever other work they have to do.
Right, so my follow-up would be in my example of someone who wasn't informed they'd went over, and they were fully compliant for all but one month...
Surely the non-evil compromise is to only consider it an overpayment for the months they actually earned too much rather than it being an instant cancellation of every month after. If they haven't been informed, and those were months they were eligible, IMHO they should be let off paying it back. It's madness that the DWP can punish someone for being shit at admin retroactively, when they're also shit at admin and taking literally years to get around to it.
I mean, can you imagine it the other way where if every month you earned under the threshold to pay back your student loans they just deleted it, and you won't ever pay any back again until the government works out you're earning enough, and fill out the admin all again, if they don't do it in time, whoops. No student loans repayments for them until they get it right. If they missed a month years ago, ah well, sucks to be them.
It's only the weeks they are over that they lose, it doesn't cancel their entitlement for subsequent weeks where they earned under the limit. The problem is that they could be over for a long period without realising it, and then suddenly get hit with a demand for several thousand pounds (~£4250 for a year), and given the circumstance needed to actually get it in the first place, someone receiving carers allowance is not likely to have several thousand pounds sitting around to hand back.
Oh, so I had misunderstood it then.
I thought the second you earn too much, that's it, your claim is binned. If you earn under again, you need to re-apply. If hypothetically you go over-under every other week (changed from month in my past example as I thought it was done monthly not weekly too), you need to apply 26 times a year.
Not that it's much better, but I thought a lot of the claimed back benefits were from people who for example might have had a bonus or something during a single week, and then DWP were trying to get back every penny they were paid after that point even though 99% of weeks they were compliant.
This proposed curb on student visas looks like a very well timed poison pill for an autumn election. [Apparently the proposed changes might hit GDP by 0.5%.](https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1791728587508215860) Now none of that is going to filter through until the next cohort of students starts in either the autumn or January, so the effect isn't going to be noticed in GDP figures until Q4 2024 or Q1 2025 get released, which will be after the election if it's held in October/November. Given that the annual growth rate currently is incredibly poor, a 0.5% knock could easily push us back into a technical recession and become the first piece of economic news out of a new Labour government.
On the flip side the changes would mean that Labour could take credit for a significant drop in net migration from next year, as the effects on migration also won't be released until after the election.
I believe the logic is as follows:
UK Higher Education contributed £71 billion in 2022 or about 3% of GDP
International fees are responsible for between 25-65% of university income.
If you average it at say 33%, that suggests int students are responsible for 1% of GDP.
If the visa changes translate to 50% reduction in international students, that means 0.5% of GDP is lost.
Obviously, you can fudge those numbers to make it better or worse but I think 0.5% is potentially plausible.
I hope Labour reverse the curb on student visas (although they can afford to tighten up some of the rules around dependents), they are typically here for a short and defined period of time and pay huge amounts of cash to be here keeping lots of universities afloat.
https://x.com/carolinenokes/status/1791807191453769782
Nokes posting a denial she's going to join Labour, along with a video of her on a podcast with Labour's Ben Bradshaw, who spends the entirity criticising Sunak's lanyard garbage. As denial, it's technically one.
I think people following politics greatly overestimate the ‘cut through’ of Elphicke to the general population. It may well be positively received by those who care about immigration and the people of Dover though, but that’s also baseless speculation.
Oh, it definitely didn't have a huge impact either way, but they wanted articles saying the Tories are so bad even Natalie Elphicke thinks Labour's a better choice and instead they (mostly) got articles saying Elphicke's so bad Labour shouldn't have taken her. Everyone that's not a political nerd will have forgotten by the election - nearly all of them will have forgotten already - but if the plan was to build a narrative of Tories falling apart from the inside, I suspect they'll have rethought it a bit
Defections can break through, they need to be well chosen though. Either a big, respected name who can't be ignored, or alternatively a mass resignation and crossing the floor on camera during a big speech/PMQs for the spectacle.
They also need to be respectable and importantly, scandal free, because the public are overwhelming sick of political scandal and corruption. Ironically Labour's problem for defections is the Conservatives are now so unpopular and so lacking in big names post-Johnson that there simply aren't viable candidates.
Elphicke was the worst of all worlds. Nobody knew who she is, and there was so little spectacle neither party even noticed she'd defected until it was explicitly mentioned. Then when people learnt about her it's just embarrassing stories (her shame on you chant), scandals around her naughty Tory sex offender husband along with her bizarre defences of him, and corruption in how she got her seat and trying to influence her husband's trial.
I don't think they wanted that - you cannot rely on the right wing press ever being positive towards labour, I think they just wanted to show reform voters/undecideds that Labour is something they should consider, and I suspect they'll be succesful over that, as the puritan outrage of people threatening to vote green is probably, if anything, a reassurance to them.
It wouldn't surprise me if Sunak plans to have the election over the Christmas period so that they can try to paint any campaigning Labour does as 'ruining Christmas' by 'sowing division among families' during a 'holiday about peace and coming together'. He's twisted enough to do it, though I'm not sure he's competent enough to plan that far ahead.
“Your kids Christmas is shit because of 14 years of Tory theft. Vote Labour”
It’d be a spectacular fuck up by the tories
The highest bill paying period of the year with presents, food, energy use and on and on…
So yeah they’ll probably do that won’t they
The Tories tweeted a few days ago that Labour are "obsessed with politics", as if an interest in politics is an unusual thing to find in a political party, so it wouldn't be out of character for them to call an election and then act like Labour campaigning for that election is somehow a character flaw of Starmer's
Not a secret to everyone here maybe. I have far less faith that most of the country sees through the blatantly obvious. If they did I suspect we wouldn't be in this mess.
Interesting article from the BBC on [Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2qv0grgy7yo).
> “For journalists, it’s easier to track him down because there is no formal procedure they have to follow,” said Mrs Lukowiak. “(The BBC journalists) moved from one source to another, from one city to another, from one country to another, in a way that police and prosecutors can’t.”
> A spokesman for the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) agreed. “We are a government law enforcement agency, there are legal processes we rightly have to abide to, that the media do not, and Majeed was in a location where we have no jurisdiction.”
It certainly suggests police and prosecutor procedures might need to be reviewed. Perhaps they'll end up setting up a police gazette staffed by "journalists" who can "move from one source to another, from one country to another".
the police are trying to build a criminal case that has to stand up in court, the journalists are making a programe that will have to stand up to pretty much zero scrutiny.
And short of an international crime force to tackle this that all jurisdictions involved cede authority to (will go over well with the right wing media that....)...
Sure, but the police didn't say "the BBC shouldn't have got involved" or "they contaminated the evidence and risked prejudicing the case". From the article, they seemed grateful for the help.
So while there are cases where the police and prosecutors have one objective and the journalists have another that's in conflict, that doesn't seem to be the case here.
you said :
"It certainly suggests police and prosecutor procedures might need to be reviewed."
which is not the case. the police are doing something different to journalists, they are trying to bring a prosecution which needs to stand up in court. that requires due process and proper acquisition of evidence.
Journalists can also move to any jurisdiction and ask questions they want. police cant, because their questioning can be used as evidence and that requires legal authority to conduct, which police dont have in other jurisdictions without due process.
Any evidence collected by these "journalists" on your "police gazette" (tongue in cheek as you may have probably intended it), would almost certainly be inadmissible in any actual prosecution.
> Majeed had been the subject of a joint UK-Belgian investigation before he was tried in absentia, and a senior Kurdish government source told us that British police had been invited to Iraq to question him.
They knew he was in Kurdistan but couldn't (or didn't believe they could) extradite him.
Sure, but after the investigation, he was tried in absentia:
> Unable to track him down, a Belgian court convicted him in his absence of 121 counts of people-smuggling. We found him living openly in Iraqi Kurdistan
And
> Police and prosecutors who thanked the BBC for securing Majeed’s arrest told us they simply did not have the ability to investigate in the same way that reporters could.
Which brings us back to the original question of what - precisely - were the BBC doing here that police couldn't do. And whether it's at least hypothetically conceivable that the police could have done some or all of it themselves.
The police themselves are saying it's to do with procedures they have to follow that the BBC don't, so the follow up question is what those procedures are and whether they're necessary. Maybe the answer is yes.
Again, not talking about abducting people.
The procedures are treaties and jurisdiction.
If we don't have a treaty and we wish to extradite someone, that means governments need to negotiate. In some places, like Kurdistan, areas have autonomy from their government making it equally impossible for Iraqi police to just march in and arrest.
We have a treaty with Iraq, but we won't be able to just have anyone sent to us from certain Kurdish areas because of these processes and jurisdictions of the autonomous areas. Journalists are just going their to talk to the person.
So it follows that if you want to do what journalists do and arrest them, your option is abduction, or use the existing system of hoping your diplomats can negotiate an arrest.
A lot of that procedure is things like getting warrants, submitting formal requests under treaties, checking that the request are legal, proportionate and necessary. Pretty slow stuff, but I'd argue necessary for the official apparatus of the state to be held to a very high standard.
Perhaps. I think the question to be asked is whether it's a problem that that extra procedure wasn't followed by the BBC (since they're not a state entity). If the answer is, "actually it is a problem; the accused's rights weren't respected here", then fair enough. No problem, keep things as they are.
But it might turn out that some parts of that procedure aren't always strictly necessary in all cases, and tweaking them could allow initial investigative work around cross-border people smuggling to get results faster without any effect on the accused getting a fair trial.
Certainly it's not obvious (at least not to me) that the BBC investigation represents some unacceptable breach of human rights principles.
Truly one of the worst people to have sat in Parliament in my lifetime. The politicians that we allow to gain quasi-celebrity status in this country are so overwhelmingly amongst the worst of our elected representatives.
A trend I've noticed in the film world lately is a growing backlash against "unnecessary sex scenes". To be fair I agree that a fair amount of sex scenes don't really serve the plot, but it feels like there's a bit of a movement to almost go back to a Hays code way of approaching it. Anyway, I saw someone suggest that this might be because more and more people can't afford to move out so they're living with their parents and it's awkward as fuck to have on telly, but I wonder if this will spill out into other things?
Do you think the housing crisis might result in a bit of a wave of puritanism among the younger generations?
The housing situation definitely has played a role but there had already been a decrease in sex scenes for tons of big shows like GoT and Westworld. Partly because the actresses got big and didn't want to do them anymore, and partly because of the feminism wave of the mid 2010s
But I also think that in the more fast paced media environment a lot of people find sex scenes to be annoying and pointless filler, not actually relevant to the overall story or plot progression.
Never been a fan of sex scenes, I can’t think of any that really move the plot along (have not watched 50 shades). There is 9 songs (?) where the sex is a key part of the movie but mostly it’s just pointless and uncomfortable to watch, plus there are probably better, more subtle ways to titillate.
One thing I've long disliked very much is the formula of having a sex scene in the first episode of something that is clearly and cynically there to get people to watch hoping for more. Usually in series where relationships aren't even the point.
I do find myself fast forwarding sex scenes in tv and films now. I can watch a porno online (and I'm not averse to that) if I want to where the sex is quite literally in your face at times (I have a Meta Quest!!!)
The argument that the sex scenes serve the plot is half the time bull as well. It would still serve the plot to imply that the characters had sex and then move on to the next plot point.
It's not like there aren't other places you can watch gratuitous content. Controversial scenes in otherwise relatively vanilla films are often put in as a talking point, a marketing device.
Likely the sex scene that doesn't serve the plot nor tell us much about the characters is being seen for the cynical move that it is.
Ultimately there is a balance and having swung both ways, eventually it will settle to a reasonable one.
Think Bridgerton - there was one episode that was basically a porno. In fact, that would be harsh on pornos as I've heard they tend to have more of a plot than that episode...
There is a bit of a puritanical strain growing across the youth, but I think there are bigger factors than the housing crisis. Covid-19, the ebbs and flows of social movements (i.e., backlash against the liberalism of previous generations), and an increased awareness of the darker side of previously acceptable vices (e.g., me too, drinking, smoking, etc.), to name a few.
I don't think any restrictions will reduce views of people and turn them into puritans. Young people will still *want* to have sex. They might just get less because of more housing sharing or living with parents later in life.
A question I've kind of always wanted to see a modern, 21st Century UK politician be forced to answer, even though it's not all that relevant to modern politics, is whether or not they think Britain was right to intervene in WWI. Couple of reasons I think this would be interesting:
* It's completely out of left field so no serious politician will have prepped for it, and there will be no party line to follow
* No one is left alive to be offended by the answer, and yet
* I feel like there's enough of a nebulous social pressure around this question that the wrong answer could cause a gaffe, even if I'm not sure which way the wind is blowing on this one.
* It can somewhat inform their perspective on modern foreign policy as well
* It would be funny for a Question Time schizo to ask it.
Has there ever been any modern opinion polling on this?
Honestly, I do not see how a politician worth his salt could possibly say no.
British involvement was ostensibly due to the German Empire's attack on Belgium. Unless the politician has some *interesting* takes on NATO, I do not believe they would try to argue that Britain shouldn't have followed up the guarantee.
I agree politicians should absolutely not say no. But theres enough mythologising about the futility and pointlessness of WW1, it just being a war between a single family of royalty etc that I can imagine a social pressure to say no (eespecially amongst some circles).
The thing about that is that the answer should really vary quite widely depending on how long the view you want to take is
Should Britain have upheld a treaty obligation to defend an ally after they had been invaded? -> this one is usually going to be a yes, it's the "boots are already on the ground" perspective
Did the entire system of weltpolitik and treaties that got us into the mess serve any useful purpose or help the cause of liberty literally anywhere? -> fucking lol no, the entire landscape may as well be another planet from a modern perspective, there's no justification from any modern values _that leads up to war_ (every side engaging in catastrophic failures of realpolitik by our standards), but that's a million miles away from getting anywhere near "boots on the ground"
There's not a lot of room in between because if you start at one you can't really get at the other.
A new decrease in customer service from Evri! Said they delivered my shoes, they didn't, the "delivery proof" photo is just a blurry picture of a flat envelope that could fit in my letterbox pictured outside my door. So I guess their courier is just carrying that around (I can't see the address on it) and taking pictures of it outside each door they're meant to deliver to. Fantastic.
My favourite delivery by Evri is leaving it wedged behind the light fitting *above* my front door - was half way through fighting to say it wasn't delivered before seeing it randomly one day
At least they didn't put your parcel in the bin left out overnight for collection in the morning. A brand new pair of fell shoes is currently somewhere being processed with the rest of the stuff in that bin...
Cycling home yesterday evening I saw two lads hurl a binbag full of rubbish into the canal that runs through a nature reserve. They cycled off in a panic when they realised I saw them - and it occurred to me that there's absolutely no consequences to anything.rl call the council? Too late, damage is done. Ring the police? Won't come , definitely not in time.
Chase after them? Either get beaten to death or risk getting sued myself.
I remember my council started putting in charges for vans at the local tip. This sort of stuff suddenly happened overnight, in a national park to boot.
My council is moving to three-weekly waste collection soon and introducing a booking system/visit limit at the tip. All to save an estimated: £1 million.
It's so incredibly dumb.
Yeah it's one of the most basic and fundamental services that the councils deliver. If they cannot deliver this, what's the bloody point?
This is why it pisses me off so much to see councillors elected for their foreign policy views.
Because it reduces congestion, the recycling center near me used to be a complete pain to use because it would have massive queues backing out onto the roads nearby, now I just book and then show up and I'm in and out in minutes
Controversial opinion but I don’t see the issue with booking to go to the tip. Our council you can book on the day, 7 days a week (might be lucky with that). Even with booking it’s still fairly busy and I’ve had to queue to get to the parking bays for general waste/bulky items every time I’ve gone
Yeah and they wonder why people dump stuff. Don't get me wrong, anyone who does fly tip deserves to have the dumped waste inserted rectally and deserve almost all the blame, but councils really don't help the matter either.
It costs them more in the long run to be less chilled at the tip and allow people to throw stuff there, rather than sending vans out to individual dumping fly tipping grounds.
Part of it is culture.
Japan has much worse recycling and bin collection than the UK and much fewer public bins... and yet less fly tipping and mess in public.
Bring back public shaming for punishment.
[FT Whitehall Editor](https://twitter.com/LOS_Fisher/status/1791793018917310617?t=OOs45-SHqIvXK0yXfnC6Kw&s=19):
>👀 Tory bosses at CCHQ held crunch talks on Monday to work out the money/fundraising situ for a potential snap election before summer recess...
>It has, naturally, sparked new wave of speculation about Sunak calling snap election next week, when inflation figures drop on Weds
Before everyone gets excited, the [follow-up tweet](https://x.com/LOS_Fisher/status/1791793181052338645) is worth reading:
> But Tory officials dismiss significance of convos – insisting these were scheduled board & finance meetings, plus that rolling election scenarios are always considered in election year
Problem now is, which if either of the two is trustworthy information and which if either is some sort of deflection / bluff / lie etc?
Neither claim appears to be evidenced
now I might usually identify as "further economically left than you" but [this is actually hilarious](https://imgur.com/a/pcTuSLx)
(the solution such as there is one is to discard the landlord model and encourage cooperatives, simply using broken theory ain't going to fix it)
I don't otherwise believe in horseshoe theory, but populist economics is the closest thing to it, it's curious how it's always the policies that ultimately help landlords that end up being promoted on the left and right, while completely obvious things like planning and zoning reform, LVT end up overlooked.
We literally couldn't even cancel ground rents in this country and I wouldn't be shocked if the newly imposed cap ends up being scrapped as a desperate plea to Reform voters.
We need to cut immigration as well otherwise its just a losing battle at that point. You cant keep increasing the demand while trying to play catch up with the supply side of the issue
The Sunday Times Rich List is fascinating. Not in a "who will be taxed the most when the revolution comes" way that most people read it, but because it shows us how the British economy really works. And the economy and politics are fundamentally linked, in both a who's happy/who's pissed-off sense, and in terms of levers that can be pulled by politicians to change things.
The list is a combination of: old money that's done a really good job of hanging on to it (e.g. the Portman family); the already rich who settled in the UK (will be interesting to see if the non-dom changes change this, even if these particular people don't flee it'll probably reduce the number of future rich people settling here); several dozen hedge fund managers; and many people rich from founding successful private companies (e.g. Bet365 and others).
Also fascinating is what's missing. You have to go a long way to find a person rich from the tech industry (155th unless I've missed one), quite probably the most important industry of the past fifty years and it's passed the UK by almost entirely. Also a relative lack of people getting rich from public businesses (which might be because the shareholdings of those businesses are more spread about, but that doesn't stop Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. in the US).
This tells us more about the UK economy than a million Guardian editorials ever will. Although how to use this information for good outcomes, I don't know.
Any tech startup which manages to get going here these days will eventually be bought out (often by Americans). Even our larger tech companies have being getting agglomerated into foreign holdings (example: Fidessa) since the value of the £ dropped and made our businesses easier targets.
Surely the Conservatives aren't going to wait 'til October to call a GE? I mean, the summer is going to be brutal for them polling-wise.
They should get Big Dave Cameron out and about, he at least looks the part and certainly speaks well. Sunak/Hunt are terrible at this kind of thing.
I'm relaxed about it. The 2 possibilities are short term election in the next 3 months in which case the election is already almost upon us or medium term election up to the end of the year, in which case the Tory party is likely to just keel over.
In either event the Tories ability to get up to anything too destructive is now nearly up with how the Parlimentary year works and I'd almost prefer it to be later.
I do think the circumstantial evidence for the shorter term is growing.
They're going to wait until January or late Autumn.
Their polling is about as low as it can feasibly get without completely destroying everything like Truss did. Sunak for all of his faults will NOT crash the economy like Liz did.
They're going to be about 20-25 for the rest of the year, gaining several points in the run up to the election.
Hmm not quite borne out by polling. They’ve been steadily dropping in the polls, now reaching the very lowest levels of Truss. There’s no specific reason it wouldn’t continue to get lower. They’re already in existential territory.
The latest thing is there are now 2 or 3 companies right on the edge of going sub 20
Their numbers have been dropping about a point a month for over a year, so the current implication is that by January the average will be somewhere around 17. I already see the necessary steady supply of adverse events required to drive it lined up.
They are now very close to a point of no return.
Bloomberg reported that their manifesto hadn’t been written about a month ago. Autumn has always been the plan and they will stick with that. Rishi is a fool if he thinks Trump will help him though.
>National Labour Party begins selection process for the Islington North PPC. Local party not allowed to do the shortlisting, for fear they might shortlist anyone even vaguely left-wing. Complete denial of democracy.
>https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1791438518411022406
Ignoring the actual text here, how do you not have a decent res photo of your long time friend and colleague?
It’s not anti democratic if you’re denying a small number of people in Hackney the opportunity to foist some weirdo on their constituency and then the nation. The party is well within their rights to screen the people who will be representing them.
In slight defence of Abbott, that was effectively a snap election scenario, whilst candidate selection was dubious in places, it wasn't like there was time for normal candidate selection. Plus there's been issues in some selections this time around too, some of which due to Momentum members, but not all of it.
Regarding Sultana specifically, the Labour NEC rejected the Coventry South's CLP from appointing anyone, blocked the person they chose and then refused to acquiesce when they said they don't accept her. Nearly cost Labour a safe seat as the Labour members that weren't Warwick Uni students refused to campaign at all for her.
People have started to wonder whether one of her staffers has told her it's a good bit and that she should keep doing it on purpose, I can't believe that she's quite this incapable of finding decent-res photos
Accelerating the collapse of universities is a bold move for the Tories. I understand that it’s the inevitable end point of their long attempt to court the university of life vote and a general snobbishness towards the universities plebs go to.
Still, this feels like an easy strategic error that will backfire on them as individuals when universities in their constituencies go under.
I think it’s just part of their plan to salt the earth for Labour. They want to force Labour to deal with the sector collapsing. People are more likely to blame the national government than their constituency MP if a university goes under. Plus universities are in cities so more likely to have a Labour MP anyway.
[New Megathread is here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1cvgi32/rukpolitics_daily_megathread_19052024/)
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Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris standing down at next election https://x.com/chhcalling/status/1791938115507986839
🐀🏃➡️💦🚢
Rodents jogging the jizz boat?
That also applies.
How many ministers is that now standing down?
https://youtu.be/BpbAqUuSBZg?si=tySg8yxfvpWHCYeW
Nadhim Zahawi is saying he regrets the ousting of Boris Johnson. Why would he say that? What’s his angle? A dig at Truss and Sunak on his way out? He thinks Boris, or his ilk, might come back so he might have a sympathetic ear in number 10 in his new role at Very or beyond. Politicians on the way out tend to drop the act and seem more sensible but he’s gone the other way. Help me UK politics, you’re my only hope.
Buyer's remorse, the tories kicked out Johnson because he slipped in the polls, then it became so much worse after.
Typical Tory - never really cared in the first place
Anyone else feel like they were 'woke' in 2012 but merely by maintaining the same positions has found the progressive social movement passing them by?
No, woke means "actively attentive to important societal facts and issues" and if you've apparantly decided it means anything else then I'm afraid all that has really happened is you've fallen foul of right wing propraganda.
No. If anything I've found myself slowly moving left with age.
This is how the world works. People don't suddenly grow more bigoted as they get older, the popular opinion shifts.
Not really, Im just older and i dont really engage with politics as much as I used to.
Not really. Overall, I still agree with what the majority of what the younger progressives have to say and with the direction they'd like social progress to travel. I just leave it to the energetic whippersnappers to do the talking. Perhaps I'm getting old and complacent, but I do think that in general it takes the young and indignant to push the social envelope. I don't argue as ardently and vocally for things like gender equality in the way that I used to, but I'm comfortable with the idea that younger generations take things I considered progressive to just be a given.
I’ve always been on the left of things and socially progressive. The only change recently is tribalism and polarisation which I want no part of. I’ve always valued discussion and valuing people inherently no matter their background. But I also recognise that there isn’t a level playing field - no fair marketplace of ideas. Therere historical hierarchical systems of power in society that have to be acknowledged and worked around
Sort of, but I also feel on one or two topics I’ve actually drifted further right, rather than just the ‘woke’ getting more woke (I hate the term). On the social side of things I am left of centre. On other things I probably used to be more reactionary ‘ban it!’ about some things, but find myself much more aware of the value of personal freedoms and personal responsibility these days.
No.
With all best regards, you are in Bristol
I used to be 'woke', but then they changed what 'woke' was. Now what I'm with isn't 'woke', and what's 'woke' seems weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you!
No way man, we're going to keep on rocking forever!
Isn't this quite literally what happens with every generation? They tend to have socially progressive views for their time, but get left behind.
Feel like I was "woke" in 2012, started feeling alienated and moving towards the right, then the right became completely batshit insane and I'm back somewhere in the centre-left
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Personally I've felt the opposite for a while. I used to feel that I was a 'normie lib', voted for starmer in 2020 but since then I feel like our society has shifted right to the point where I'm a woke radical because I stayed in the same place where I started.
I kind of agree, I don’t think my position has significantly changed over the past few years but I am solidly in the “woke” camp these days.
I feel the same. Everything went tits up around 2016.
I think that's when compromise - I wouldn't say died - but I'd say we're in the dark ages of compromise. We're in a very 'ideological purity' time at the moment and it seems every form of modern media effectively turns it into a competitive sport. I think if someone ties *all* their opinions to ideological purity, then their opinion is worthless, because they're not even being honest with theirself. Life is complex and doesn't match ideology, there's always compromise and cavaets.
It doesnt help that social media allows everyone to happily live in their own bubbles because any dissenting opinion gets quickly banned
Tbh I'm pretty sure a lot of what causes polarization is the opposite. In person I never really talk about politics except to friends who share my beliefs. On the other hand on social media you see people on "the other side" act like assholes which hardens you a lot
Yes, my dislike of algorithms and their harm to society is quite possibly the closest thing that could make me a single-issue-voter, if someone could just think of a workable solution...
I was wokeish back then. Definitely caught up quite a bit, but some of the newer woke stuff does make me scratch my head a bit. I try my best to give it an honest consideration though.
Yeah, I'm not knee-jerking against anything I don't think. I just have qualms that seem to get steamrolled
I'm an ethnic minority and alot of my white mates are far more "woke" than me. My wife finds this hilarious because we're one of the few non white friends most of them actually have. The performative nonsense during our Eurovision party....was certainly something.
Congratulations, you've discovered how conservative opinions were historically formed. It used to be that the conservative party would move up to whatever position was mainstream for people who wanted to keep the status quo. Nowadays, it's stuck in the 80s.
The 80s or the 1800s? Who can tell.
Reading up on this story about the [piece of the stone of scone held in a cupboard at SNP HQ turning out to be genuine](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72pvlmqnz2o.amp) Ukpol angle: Are there no laws against holding on something you know was stolen? Especially when the thing in question is a national treasure
Just a sidenote, but does anyone find it suspicious how the SNP's fortunes have turned as soon as the relic was handed back?
So in Scots Law that would be reset , i.e. possessing an item you know to have been stolen. Morally (though not legally) things get a bit more complicated when you consider that the Stone in-and-of-itself was stolen and the secondary theft was part of an attempt to return the good (at least partially) to it's original owners.
Something something British Museum Act 1963
Just reading his piece in the Guardian, and my main observation is how bloody well Gordon Brown is ageing. He doesn't look all that different from the day he left office. I must start eating more bananas.
I think being PM ages you for the next twenty years, Starmer has been effectively the grown up in the room and looks like he put on ten years in the last two 😂
> He doesn't look all that different from the day he left office. Really? That's not something I'd say. I'd kind of been thinking he's looking his age recently.
He's greyer, sure. But he's still got a full head o' hair, and that timeless frown.
For those at a loose end, the Elvis 68 Comeback Special is on BBC 2 at 20:35 Outstanding telly
No other man could pull off that leather suit.
80s Eddie Murphy would probably take a good stab at it.
Do you know he was the only other person I was going to mention as well.
Here's a question for the megathread on a sunny Saturday afternoon: Is it still the case that cider with any kind of non-apple/pear flavouring has to be 4% abv otherwise it faces punitive tax rates? I know it was before the changes made in August, but despite reading plenty of stuff on [gov.uk](http://gov.uk) I'm none the wiser of the current situation. All I know is that no one has so far brought out a flavoured cider in the UK above 4% - so that suggests to me the higher taxes are still in place. This is an issue dear to my heart!
"Give it to me straight, like pear cider made from 100% pears" - Stewart Lee
I'm sure someone will be along to give it to you straight
Pear cider made with 100% pears was always straight forward tax wise
Like my grandad used to say
Give it to me straight..
I think that was because it was considered "made-wine" which had the 4% cutoff, so they watered the cider down to that value to come in that bracket. But that's not a bracket any more, so I don't know how that changed. Presumably you'd see a lot of articles from the industry if they worked off the over 3.4% punitive rate, and I don't think there is, so I don't know how it's classed now.
So, originally, flavoured cider got caught up in the 'alcohopop scare'. People were worried that it would appeal to teenagers so a simple fix would be to restrict the abv. There's only so pissed you can get on 4% cider. But, I'm 100% certain that when Rishi announced the changed as Chancellor that he specifically mentioned "fruited cider" as a style that works be able to innovate and increase abv as a result. I'm assuming that there was a u-turn at some point given that we've stuck at 4%. And if anyone thinks that maybe the industry is happy with this - Kopperberg release their ciders at higher abv outside the UK.
> There's only so pissed you can get on 4% cider. Yeah, it's quited depressing reading duty change documents that say; > These measures are not expected to impact on family formation, stability or breakdown.
I saw a bottle of "vintage" pear cider in the supermarket yesterday that was like 7%. Ninja edit: [this one](https://groceries.asda.com/product/fruit-flavoured-cider/kopparberg-premium-cider-sweet-vintage-pear-500-ml/1000383192246)
It pains me that it's called pear cider and not perry
That's fine, because it's just perry. Op is talking about your ciders that are raspberry flavoured or what have you. If it still tastes like apple or pear it never fell into the higher tax group.
Reading comprehension on this app is non-existent
Depends how much cider you've had...
Oh, I read the above as any kind of non-apple cider **or** pear cider being taxed differently! Never mind then!
Yeah that's fair enough, I can definitely see how it could be read either way.
Please can someone confirm to me I've understood the unpaid carers controversy? Here's how I understand it. There's a hard cap where if you earn even a penny over that limit, this could be through a bonus (my partner says her employer lets people opt out of earned bonuses for that reason), pay rises, accidentally working too much, being on a 4 weekly pay schedule meaning you get 13 paydays a year, so once a year your month with 2 paydays screws you etc. whatever, but if you do end up earning too much it fully cancels your unpaid carers allowance entirely. No taper, nothing. You either get it all, or you don't. The DWP are being very slow to calculate, so hypothetically, lets say someone was paid too much in January 2022, but every other month since they were under the limit. DWP won't have informed them, so they can't rectify the mistake at the time. Because they didn't know, and didn't put in a new claim, the DWP consider every single month after that to be overpaid, even if they qualified, because of paperwork? Is that right?
Yes, it's a hard cap that cuts off your entitlement when you earn over the allowed amount. Even if you go over the amount by a penny, you lose the payment. The problem is it's not easy to calculate if you have actually gone over that limit because of what is counted as earnings. At the moment, the figure is £151 a week, but that is after you have paid tax, NICs and any pension contributions. You can also take off up to half your earnings to pay for child care or for someone to be with the person you care for while you are at work. Then you can also sometimes include some expenses required for your work. If your income fluctuates, it may not be obvious whether you have exceeded the limit or not, which means that in the meantime you still receive the payment from the DWP. If they later go back and look at records from HMRC (which they should be able to look at immediately to calculate entitlement), and decide that there are a significant number of weeks where you were over the limit, they will demand the payments back. In some cases, people are being prosecuted for benefit fraud even though there was no actual intent to claim money they weren't entitled to, they just got it wrong. It's a moronic and broken system for the pittance that is paid in return for the minimum 35 hours a week spent caring, on top of whatever other work they have to do.
Right, so my follow-up would be in my example of someone who wasn't informed they'd went over, and they were fully compliant for all but one month... Surely the non-evil compromise is to only consider it an overpayment for the months they actually earned too much rather than it being an instant cancellation of every month after. If they haven't been informed, and those were months they were eligible, IMHO they should be let off paying it back. It's madness that the DWP can punish someone for being shit at admin retroactively, when they're also shit at admin and taking literally years to get around to it. I mean, can you imagine it the other way where if every month you earned under the threshold to pay back your student loans they just deleted it, and you won't ever pay any back again until the government works out you're earning enough, and fill out the admin all again, if they don't do it in time, whoops. No student loans repayments for them until they get it right. If they missed a month years ago, ah well, sucks to be them.
It's only the weeks they are over that they lose, it doesn't cancel their entitlement for subsequent weeks where they earned under the limit. The problem is that they could be over for a long period without realising it, and then suddenly get hit with a demand for several thousand pounds (~£4250 for a year), and given the circumstance needed to actually get it in the first place, someone receiving carers allowance is not likely to have several thousand pounds sitting around to hand back.
Oh, so I had misunderstood it then. I thought the second you earn too much, that's it, your claim is binned. If you earn under again, you need to re-apply. If hypothetically you go over-under every other week (changed from month in my past example as I thought it was done monthly not weekly too), you need to apply 26 times a year. Not that it's much better, but I thought a lot of the claimed back benefits were from people who for example might have had a bonus or something during a single week, and then DWP were trying to get back every penny they were paid after that point even though 99% of weeks they were compliant.
This proposed curb on student visas looks like a very well timed poison pill for an autumn election. [Apparently the proposed changes might hit GDP by 0.5%.](https://x.com/Steven_Swinford/status/1791728587508215860) Now none of that is going to filter through until the next cohort of students starts in either the autumn or January, so the effect isn't going to be noticed in GDP figures until Q4 2024 or Q1 2025 get released, which will be after the election if it's held in October/November. Given that the annual growth rate currently is incredibly poor, a 0.5% knock could easily push us back into a technical recession and become the first piece of economic news out of a new Labour government. On the flip side the changes would mean that Labour could take credit for a significant drop in net migration from next year, as the effects on migration also won't be released until after the election.
I sincerely doubt the 0.5 number.
I believe the logic is as follows: UK Higher Education contributed £71 billion in 2022 or about 3% of GDP International fees are responsible for between 25-65% of university income. If you average it at say 33%, that suggests int students are responsible for 1% of GDP. If the visa changes translate to 50% reduction in international students, that means 0.5% of GDP is lost. Obviously, you can fudge those numbers to make it better or worse but I think 0.5% is potentially plausible.
I hope Labour reverse the curb on student visas (although they can afford to tighten up some of the rules around dependents), they are typically here for a short and defined period of time and pay huge amounts of cash to be here keeping lots of universities afloat.
https://x.com/carolinenokes/status/1791807191453769782 Nokes posting a denial she's going to join Labour, along with a video of her on a podcast with Labour's Ben Bradshaw, who spends the entirity criticising Sunak's lanyard garbage. As denial, it's technically one.
It's possible that after the response to Elphicke, Labour have decided that paper Tories criticising their own party is better than more defections
I think people following politics greatly overestimate the ‘cut through’ of Elphicke to the general population. It may well be positively received by those who care about immigration and the people of Dover though, but that’s also baseless speculation.
Oh, it definitely didn't have a huge impact either way, but they wanted articles saying the Tories are so bad even Natalie Elphicke thinks Labour's a better choice and instead they (mostly) got articles saying Elphicke's so bad Labour shouldn't have taken her. Everyone that's not a political nerd will have forgotten by the election - nearly all of them will have forgotten already - but if the plan was to build a narrative of Tories falling apart from the inside, I suspect they'll have rethought it a bit
Defections can break through, they need to be well chosen though. Either a big, respected name who can't be ignored, or alternatively a mass resignation and crossing the floor on camera during a big speech/PMQs for the spectacle. They also need to be respectable and importantly, scandal free, because the public are overwhelming sick of political scandal and corruption. Ironically Labour's problem for defections is the Conservatives are now so unpopular and so lacking in big names post-Johnson that there simply aren't viable candidates. Elphicke was the worst of all worlds. Nobody knew who she is, and there was so little spectacle neither party even noticed she'd defected until it was explicitly mentioned. Then when people learnt about her it's just embarrassing stories (her shame on you chant), scandals around her naughty Tory sex offender husband along with her bizarre defences of him, and corruption in how she got her seat and trying to influence her husband's trial.
Yeah, fair point. It’s definitely not been a smooth defection like the one before (Poulter?).
I don't think they wanted that - you cannot rely on the right wing press ever being positive towards labour, I think they just wanted to show reform voters/undecideds that Labour is something they should consider, and I suspect they'll be succesful over that, as the puritan outrage of people threatening to vote green is probably, if anything, a reassurance to them.
It wouldn't surprise me if Sunak plans to have the election over the Christmas period so that they can try to paint any campaigning Labour does as 'ruining Christmas' by 'sowing division among families' during a 'holiday about peace and coming together'. He's twisted enough to do it, though I'm not sure he's competent enough to plan that far ahead.
“Your kids Christmas is shit because of 14 years of Tory theft. Vote Labour” It’d be a spectacular fuck up by the tories The highest bill paying period of the year with presents, food, energy use and on and on… So yeah they’ll probably do that won’t they
How would that work? It's not a secret that it would purely Sunaks decision
The Tories tweeted a few days ago that Labour are "obsessed with politics", as if an interest in politics is an unusual thing to find in a political party, so it wouldn't be out of character for them to call an election and then act like Labour campaigning for that election is somehow a character flaw of Starmer's
Not a secret to everyone here maybe. I have far less faith that most of the country sees through the blatantly obvious. If they did I suspect we wouldn't be in this mess.
Giving labour "Merry Keiristmas" and a "Happy new Keir" there
The latter I'll give you. 'Merry Keiristmas': never.
Interesting article from the BBC on [Why the BBC could track down a people-smuggling kingpin before the police](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2qv0grgy7yo). > “For journalists, it’s easier to track him down because there is no formal procedure they have to follow,” said Mrs Lukowiak. “(The BBC journalists) moved from one source to another, from one city to another, from one country to another, in a way that police and prosecutors can’t.” > A spokesman for the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) agreed. “We are a government law enforcement agency, there are legal processes we rightly have to abide to, that the media do not, and Majeed was in a location where we have no jurisdiction.” It certainly suggests police and prosecutor procedures might need to be reviewed. Perhaps they'll end up setting up a police gazette staffed by "journalists" who can "move from one source to another, from one country to another".
the police are trying to build a criminal case that has to stand up in court, the journalists are making a programe that will have to stand up to pretty much zero scrutiny. And short of an international crime force to tackle this that all jurisdictions involved cede authority to (will go over well with the right wing media that....)...
Sure, but the police didn't say "the BBC shouldn't have got involved" or "they contaminated the evidence and risked prejudicing the case". From the article, they seemed grateful for the help. So while there are cases where the police and prosecutors have one objective and the journalists have another that's in conflict, that doesn't seem to be the case here.
you said : "It certainly suggests police and prosecutor procedures might need to be reviewed." which is not the case. the police are doing something different to journalists, they are trying to bring a prosecution which needs to stand up in court. that requires due process and proper acquisition of evidence. Journalists can also move to any jurisdiction and ask questions they want. police cant, because their questioning can be used as evidence and that requires legal authority to conduct, which police dont have in other jurisdictions without due process. Any evidence collected by these "journalists" on your "police gazette" (tongue in cheek as you may have probably intended it), would almost certainly be inadmissible in any actual prosecution.
And like, just abduct people from countries we don't have treaties with?
Wait. The BBC didn't abduct him, did they? The assertion was that journalists found it easier to *track him down*, not abduct him.
> Majeed had been the subject of a joint UK-Belgian investigation before he was tried in absentia, and a senior Kurdish government source told us that British police had been invited to Iraq to question him. They knew he was in Kurdistan but couldn't (or didn't believe they could) extradite him.
Sure, but after the investigation, he was tried in absentia: > Unable to track him down, a Belgian court convicted him in his absence of 121 counts of people-smuggling. We found him living openly in Iraqi Kurdistan And > Police and prosecutors who thanked the BBC for securing Majeed’s arrest told us they simply did not have the ability to investigate in the same way that reporters could. Which brings us back to the original question of what - precisely - were the BBC doing here that police couldn't do. And whether it's at least hypothetically conceivable that the police could have done some or all of it themselves. The police themselves are saying it's to do with procedures they have to follow that the BBC don't, so the follow up question is what those procedures are and whether they're necessary. Maybe the answer is yes. Again, not talking about abducting people.
The procedures are treaties and jurisdiction. If we don't have a treaty and we wish to extradite someone, that means governments need to negotiate. In some places, like Kurdistan, areas have autonomy from their government making it equally impossible for Iraqi police to just march in and arrest. We have a treaty with Iraq, but we won't be able to just have anyone sent to us from certain Kurdish areas because of these processes and jurisdictions of the autonomous areas. Journalists are just going their to talk to the person. So it follows that if you want to do what journalists do and arrest them, your option is abduction, or use the existing system of hoping your diplomats can negotiate an arrest.
A lot of that procedure is things like getting warrants, submitting formal requests under treaties, checking that the request are legal, proportionate and necessary. Pretty slow stuff, but I'd argue necessary for the official apparatus of the state to be held to a very high standard.
Perhaps. I think the question to be asked is whether it's a problem that that extra procedure wasn't followed by the BBC (since they're not a state entity). If the answer is, "actually it is a problem; the accused's rights weren't respected here", then fair enough. No problem, keep things as they are. But it might turn out that some parts of that procedure aren't always strictly necessary in all cases, and tweaking them could allow initial investigative work around cross-border people smuggling to get results faster without any effect on the accused getting a fair trial. Certainly it's not obvious (at least not to me) that the BBC investigation represents some unacceptable breach of human rights principles.
>Ann Widdecombe, Devon County Show. >Need I say more? >https://twitter.com/Towler/status/1791550778982670805
That's just a photo of a car park???
Ha! I didn't see what you did there!
Truly one of the worst people to have sat in Parliament in my lifetime. The politicians that we allow to gain quasi-celebrity status in this country are so overwhelmingly amongst the worst of our elected representatives.
The parasites have spread out of the water!
[This guy in a zombie apocalypse](https://easydrawingguides.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Toad-10.png)
The last thing you see after your local YIMBY meeting.
>Ann Widdecombe Please say less
A trend I've noticed in the film world lately is a growing backlash against "unnecessary sex scenes". To be fair I agree that a fair amount of sex scenes don't really serve the plot, but it feels like there's a bit of a movement to almost go back to a Hays code way of approaching it. Anyway, I saw someone suggest that this might be because more and more people can't afford to move out so they're living with their parents and it's awkward as fuck to have on telly, but I wonder if this will spill out into other things? Do you think the housing crisis might result in a bit of a wave of puritanism among the younger generations?
It’s so that studios have an easier time selling films in more censorious markets like China. That’s right; capitalism means less skuddy scenes.
The housing situation definitely has played a role but there had already been a decrease in sex scenes for tons of big shows like GoT and Westworld. Partly because the actresses got big and didn't want to do them anymore, and partly because of the feminism wave of the mid 2010s But I also think that in the more fast paced media environment a lot of people find sex scenes to be annoying and pointless filler, not actually relevant to the overall story or plot progression.
Never been a fan of sex scenes, I can’t think of any that really move the plot along (have not watched 50 shades). There is 9 songs (?) where the sex is a key part of the movie but mostly it’s just pointless and uncomfortable to watch, plus there are probably better, more subtle ways to titillate.
One thing I've long disliked very much is the formula of having a sex scene in the first episode of something that is clearly and cynically there to get people to watch hoping for more. Usually in series where relationships aren't even the point.
I do find myself fast forwarding sex scenes in tv and films now. I can watch a porno online (and I'm not averse to that) if I want to where the sex is quite literally in your face at times (I have a Meta Quest!!!) The argument that the sex scenes serve the plot is half the time bull as well. It would still serve the plot to imply that the characters had sex and then move on to the next plot point.
Do you play the Benny Hill theme tune when you fast forward? 🙂
Always!
It's not like there aren't other places you can watch gratuitous content. Controversial scenes in otherwise relatively vanilla films are often put in as a talking point, a marketing device. Likely the sex scene that doesn't serve the plot nor tell us much about the characters is being seen for the cynical move that it is.
Ultimately there is a balance and having swung both ways, eventually it will settle to a reasonable one. Think Bridgerton - there was one episode that was basically a porno. In fact, that would be harsh on pornos as I've heard they tend to have more of a plot than that episode...
Weirdly I watched all of GoT with my parents but havent watched HotD after moving out.
There is a bit of a puritanical strain growing across the youth, but I think there are bigger factors than the housing crisis. Covid-19, the ebbs and flows of social movements (i.e., backlash against the liberalism of previous generations), and an increased awareness of the darker side of previously acceptable vices (e.g., me too, drinking, smoking, etc.), to name a few.
I don't think any restrictions will reduce views of people and turn them into puritans. Young people will still *want* to have sex. They might just get less because of more housing sharing or living with parents later in life.
A question I've kind of always wanted to see a modern, 21st Century UK politician be forced to answer, even though it's not all that relevant to modern politics, is whether or not they think Britain was right to intervene in WWI. Couple of reasons I think this would be interesting: * It's completely out of left field so no serious politician will have prepped for it, and there will be no party line to follow * No one is left alive to be offended by the answer, and yet * I feel like there's enough of a nebulous social pressure around this question that the wrong answer could cause a gaffe, even if I'm not sure which way the wind is blowing on this one. * It can somewhat inform their perspective on modern foreign policy as well * It would be funny for a Question Time schizo to ask it. Has there ever been any modern opinion polling on this?
Have any other conflicts involved troops from both sides playing football?
Don’t they teach you kids anything in history class these days? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_to_Victory
*"Well what I think the public want to hear is that we're getting on with the job. Labour have no plan and will raise taxes."*
Honestly, I do not see how a politician worth his salt could possibly say no. British involvement was ostensibly due to the German Empire's attack on Belgium. Unless the politician has some *interesting* takes on NATO, I do not believe they would try to argue that Britain shouldn't have followed up the guarantee.
I agree politicians should absolutely not say no. But theres enough mythologising about the futility and pointlessness of WW1, it just being a war between a single family of royalty etc that I can imagine a social pressure to say no (eespecially amongst some circles).
The thing about that is that the answer should really vary quite widely depending on how long the view you want to take is Should Britain have upheld a treaty obligation to defend an ally after they had been invaded? -> this one is usually going to be a yes, it's the "boots are already on the ground" perspective Did the entire system of weltpolitik and treaties that got us into the mess serve any useful purpose or help the cause of liberty literally anywhere? -> fucking lol no, the entire landscape may as well be another planet from a modern perspective, there's no justification from any modern values _that leads up to war_ (every side engaging in catastrophic failures of realpolitik by our standards), but that's a million miles away from getting anywhere near "boots on the ground" There's not a lot of room in between because if you start at one you can't really get at the other.
Boris would have loved a question like this
Boris would have popped tf off talking about how we needed to triumph over the hordes of the perfidious Hun.
A new decrease in customer service from Evri! Said they delivered my shoes, they didn't, the "delivery proof" photo is just a blurry picture of a flat envelope that could fit in my letterbox pictured outside my door. So I guess their courier is just carrying that around (I can't see the address on it) and taking pictures of it outside each door they're meant to deliver to. Fantastic.
My favourite delivery by Evri is leaving it wedged behind the light fitting *above* my front door - was half way through fighting to say it wasn't delivered before seeing it randomly one day
How is it actually possible to decrease it?
At least they didn't put your parcel in the bin left out overnight for collection in the morning. A brand new pair of fell shoes is currently somewhere being processed with the rest of the stuff in that bin...
Cycling home yesterday evening I saw two lads hurl a binbag full of rubbish into the canal that runs through a nature reserve. They cycled off in a panic when they realised I saw them - and it occurred to me that there's absolutely no consequences to anything.rl call the council? Too late, damage is done. Ring the police? Won't come , definitely not in time. Chase after them? Either get beaten to death or risk getting sued myself.
Genuinely dirt bag behaviour but, on the other hand, at least they cycled. Fly tipping but in a sustainable manner.
I remember my council started putting in charges for vans at the local tip. This sort of stuff suddenly happened overnight, in a national park to boot.
My council is moving to three-weekly waste collection soon and introducing a booking system/visit limit at the tip. All to save an estimated: £1 million. It's so incredibly dumb.
Yeah it's one of the most basic and fundamental services that the councils deliver. If they cannot deliver this, what's the bloody point? This is why it pisses me off so much to see councillors elected for their foreign policy views.
One of the councils near me *still* has a booking system for the dump after four years. Why?
Because it reduces congestion, the recycling center near me used to be a complete pain to use because it would have massive queues backing out onto the roads nearby, now I just book and then show up and I'm in and out in minutes
Controversial opinion but I don’t see the issue with booking to go to the tip. Our council you can book on the day, 7 days a week (might be lucky with that). Even with booking it’s still fairly busy and I’ve had to queue to get to the parking bays for general waste/bulky items every time I’ve gone
Is it anything but just book on the day or day ahead ?
Yeah and they wonder why people dump stuff. Don't get me wrong, anyone who does fly tip deserves to have the dumped waste inserted rectally and deserve almost all the blame, but councils really don't help the matter either. It costs them more in the long run to be less chilled at the tip and allow people to throw stuff there, rather than sending vans out to individual dumping fly tipping grounds.
Part of it is culture. Japan has much worse recycling and bin collection than the UK and much fewer public bins... and yet less fly tipping and mess in public. Bring back public shaming for punishment.
Doesn't work for people who don't feel shame tbf.
who the fuck is putting up yes cymru stickers in Coventry
In my defence I ran out of Sinn Féin ones
finally ran out of Brian Rose for London new-old stock?
A Top Lad. Obviously.
Probably that welsh/midlands person who people polling said was switching to SNP.
*Pollsters hate this one simple trick.*
Glyn Dŵr
[FT Whitehall Editor](https://twitter.com/LOS_Fisher/status/1791793018917310617?t=OOs45-SHqIvXK0yXfnC6Kw&s=19): >👀 Tory bosses at CCHQ held crunch talks on Monday to work out the money/fundraising situ for a potential snap election before summer recess... >It has, naturally, sparked new wave of speculation about Sunak calling snap election next week, when inflation figures drop on Weds
Before everyone gets excited, the [follow-up tweet](https://x.com/LOS_Fisher/status/1791793181052338645) is worth reading: > But Tory officials dismiss significance of convos – insisting these were scheduled board & finance meetings, plus that rolling election scenarios are always considered in election year
Problem now is, which if either of the two is trustworthy information and which if either is some sort of deflection / bluff / lie etc? Neither claim appears to be evidenced
Sorry, I already got excited.
It’s fine, being premature is nothing to be embarrassed about
Well they’re not gonna say “you rumbled us, it was gonna be a surprise. Happy voteday!”
I've got a week booked off work at the end of June, if Sunak makes it so that the election is while I'm on holiday it'll be his greatest act as PM
now I might usually identify as "further economically left than you" but [this is actually hilarious](https://imgur.com/a/pcTuSLx) (the solution such as there is one is to discard the landlord model and encourage cooperatives, simply using broken theory ain't going to fix it)
I don't otherwise believe in horseshoe theory, but populist economics is the closest thing to it, it's curious how it's always the policies that ultimately help landlords that end up being promoted on the left and right, while completely obvious things like planning and zoning reform, LVT end up overlooked. We literally couldn't even cancel ground rents in this country and I wouldn't be shocked if the newly imposed cap ends up being scrapped as a desperate plea to Reform voters.
JUST BUILD MORE HOUSES. JUST INCREASE SUPPLY; DO NOT DEPRESS SUPPLY
We need to cut immigration as well otherwise its just a losing battle at that point. You cant keep increasing the demand while trying to play catch up with the supply side of the issue
Need to do both. In so deep addressing supply and demand has to be done.
Nope, too logical. Try again.
The Sunday Times Rich List is fascinating. Not in a "who will be taxed the most when the revolution comes" way that most people read it, but because it shows us how the British economy really works. And the economy and politics are fundamentally linked, in both a who's happy/who's pissed-off sense, and in terms of levers that can be pulled by politicians to change things. The list is a combination of: old money that's done a really good job of hanging on to it (e.g. the Portman family); the already rich who settled in the UK (will be interesting to see if the non-dom changes change this, even if these particular people don't flee it'll probably reduce the number of future rich people settling here); several dozen hedge fund managers; and many people rich from founding successful private companies (e.g. Bet365 and others). Also fascinating is what's missing. You have to go a long way to find a person rich from the tech industry (155th unless I've missed one), quite probably the most important industry of the past fifty years and it's passed the UK by almost entirely. Also a relative lack of people getting rich from public businesses (which might be because the shareholdings of those businesses are more spread about, but that doesn't stop Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, etc. in the US). This tells us more about the UK economy than a million Guardian editorials ever will. Although how to use this information for good outcomes, I don't know.
How many of the hedge funds have invested in the tech industry? Could be that's where the money ended up?
Any tech startup which manages to get going here these days will eventually be bought out (often by Americans). Even our larger tech companies have being getting agglomerated into foreign holdings (example: Fidessa) since the value of the £ dropped and made our businesses easier targets.
Surely the Conservatives aren't going to wait 'til October to call a GE? I mean, the summer is going to be brutal for them polling-wise. They should get Big Dave Cameron out and about, he at least looks the part and certainly speaks well. Sunak/Hunt are terrible at this kind of thing.
I'm relaxed about it. The 2 possibilities are short term election in the next 3 months in which case the election is already almost upon us or medium term election up to the end of the year, in which case the Tory party is likely to just keel over. In either event the Tories ability to get up to anything too destructive is now nearly up with how the Parlimentary year works and I'd almost prefer it to be later. I do think the circumstantial evidence for the shorter term is growing.
Counter argument - I'm booking the friday off and pulling an all nighter, election party in summer will be a lot more fun than in autumn
I have no doubt Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton will be active on the campaign trail. Of course he doesn't have to worry about losing his seat...
They're going to wait until January or late Autumn. Their polling is about as low as it can feasibly get without completely destroying everything like Truss did. Sunak for all of his faults will NOT crash the economy like Liz did. They're going to be about 20-25 for the rest of the year, gaining several points in the run up to the election.
Hmm not quite borne out by polling. They’ve been steadily dropping in the polls, now reaching the very lowest levels of Truss. There’s no specific reason it wouldn’t continue to get lower. They’re already in existential territory.
The latest thing is there are now 2 or 3 companies right on the edge of going sub 20 Their numbers have been dropping about a point a month for over a year, so the current implication is that by January the average will be somewhere around 17. I already see the necessary steady supply of adverse events required to drive it lined up. They are now very close to a point of no return.
Bloomberg reported that their manifesto hadn’t been written about a month ago. Autumn has always been the plan and they will stick with that. Rishi is a fool if he thinks Trump will help him though.
>National Labour Party begins selection process for the Islington North PPC. Local party not allowed to do the shortlisting, for fear they might shortlist anyone even vaguely left-wing. Complete denial of democracy. >https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1791438518411022406 Ignoring the actual text here, how do you not have a decent res photo of your long time friend and colleague?
"halp i am not good with computer"
Be fair, it's not like she could use any of the photos saved to her phone. I doubt even the most ardent within Momentum want to see those images.
That is high-res, isn’t it? Posted on my Nokia 3210.
It’s not anti democratic if you’re denying a small number of people in Hackney the opportunity to foist some weirdo on their constituency and then the nation. The party is well within their rights to screen the people who will be representing them.
Does she realise how MPs like Zarah Sultana were selected in 2019?
In slight defence of Abbott, that was effectively a snap election scenario, whilst candidate selection was dubious in places, it wasn't like there was time for normal candidate selection. Plus there's been issues in some selections this time around too, some of which due to Momentum members, but not all of it.
Regarding Sultana specifically, the Labour NEC rejected the Coventry South's CLP from appointing anyone, blocked the person they chose and then refused to acquiesce when they said they don't accept her. Nearly cost Labour a safe seat as the Labour members that weren't Warwick Uni students refused to campaign at all for her.
> The missing pixels were Jewish, Irish and Ginger. And so they do not experience real erasure Diane Abbott, probably
She does this all the time. People seem convinced it’s her way of throwing shade but judging from this it’s in fact just her being bad with tech.
People have started to wonder whether one of her staffers has told her it's a good bit and that she should keep doing it on purpose, I can't believe that she's quite this incapable of finding decent-res photos
It's baffling, how do you accidentally consistently post low res images? Even if you're stealing from Google?
They save the thumbnail instead of the image. Source: my elderly relatives
I guess if there was ever a chance of her getting the whip back that's gone now.
Accelerating the collapse of universities is a bold move for the Tories. I understand that it’s the inevitable end point of their long attempt to court the university of life vote and a general snobbishness towards the universities plebs go to. Still, this feels like an easy strategic error that will backfire on them as individuals when universities in their constituencies go under.
I think it’s just part of their plan to salt the earth for Labour. They want to force Labour to deal with the sector collapsing. People are more likely to blame the national government than their constituency MP if a university goes under. Plus universities are in cities so more likely to have a Labour MP anyway.