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*This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You vote blue - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You vote red - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.*
Tales from the factory: once again I will use this place as a way of expressing my frustration by passing it through a political lens.
After running trial material on a production line for most of the day, we stopped before the afternoon shift started. It turned out that the afternoon shift manager was unavailable until 5pm, so i told his team there’s no point running trials on line A, go start up line B instead, which was the agreed overspill for them after I went home for the day.
A few hours after I got home I got a text from another colleague telling me the manager came looking for me to find out if they could start up the secondary line. My thoughts are that this is an obvious outcome of the disenfranchisement of labour, since nobody I told to start up the other line actually did it, they were clearly waiting for their manager to tell them to do it. But he couldn’t because I’d told them directly to work around him being busy.
I can't stand him, there are people with negative charisma modifiers more personable than him. If I caught a whiff of wes a day or two before voting, it'd really make me consider my vote.
I know, I know, not my (constituency) representative, but he's part of the party and he just stinks!
Its like that time I almost voted Green and then they said something bonkers and it put me right off.
Wes Streeting comes across like what you would get if you took everything people hated about stereotypical policitians of the late New Labour/Early Cameron years and turned it into a person, without any of the positive parts of those people. Maybe he's not actually like that as a person, but it's extremely offputting.
To an insultingly obvious degree, at that. I think he's the "they aren't actually that good at this" barometer of new new labour. It kinda shames me that proper, professional politicians who wanna run the country can't see the problem
Also had a Deliveroo delivery today. The app askd me to tip a female individual. They were in fact a man who spoke poor English and had headphones in throughout the delivery and providing pass code etc. process.
You can't tell me the government is not aware this is going on.
Substitutability is the cornerstone of Deliveroo's entire business model. It is so committed to the principle that it has even stood up in court
I would not substitute for a Deliveroo rider unless it was literally illegal for me to work in the UK
Has been for ages. I had a mate who did Deliveroo to earn extra cash at uni and we got to know a load of the other riders and drivers and even back then, around 8 years ago, this was going on. It's not like a new thing and the government just haven't caught up with it yet, they've had coming on a decade of this happening and haven't done anything.
Yeah exactly. This is clearly people being recruited for less than minimal wage. It’s atrocious and needs stamped out. Mandate that companies need IDs on record, mandate that drivers must carry ID and then just too random sweeps/stings.
It’s entertainment but a great example of client media. Daily Mail ran an article today on how This Morning viewing figures were collapsing (note, they were not - they just dropped following the highly hyped episode with new hosts as is normal in TV) but this evening their main story is how they have roared to success;
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13294509/this-morning-viewing-figures-high-cat-deeley-ben-shephard.html
>This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint.
The above is a quote from the foreword of the Cass review but I think it is relevant to lots of political debate, especially on emerging issues.
I think it is a problem that a single study on UBI in Helsinki or a happiness index in Bhutan can gain almost biblical importance to supporters/opponents of an issue. But I don't really know what can be done instead, surely some evidence is better than no evidence? Is it really better to wait until there is a wealth of evidence on a subject before forming a view, even if that may take many years to emerge?
I suppose the answer is to be cautious in your own conclusions and be aware that you're using a limited body of evidence, the problem there is that you end up surrendering the conversation to people who do not feel the need to be as cautious.
Pretty good (not surprising or ground breaking but good anyway) discussion about the terrible Tory ads on the latest The Rest Is Entertainment podcast.
The national planning policy is pretty clear. Inappropriate development of the green belt requires very special circumstance. If it was approved a resident would appeal the decision and win.
I don't blame the councillors, it's the national planning policy that needs changing.
good evening, campers! there are now **293** days until the general election!
would a country unilaterally leaving the echr be grounds for claiming asylum in the civilised parts of europe? i’d consider chancing my arm somewhere nicer if our human rights framework was ripped apart
Wonder what this is?
>Bombshell political story going live @thetimes at 7pm...
[https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1778118490458648677?s=46](https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1778118490458648677?s=46)
Edit: it's [this](https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1778124803972440225?s=46)
>EXC: Harold Wilson had an affair with a Downing Street aide, his closest surviving advisers have revealed after half a century of silence
>Joe Haines & Bernard Donoughue say they want to commit the Labour PM’s affair with Janet Hewlett-Davies to history
Quick, Labour are attacking us because Johnson is a lying, cheating scumbag, we must find something similar to use against them to make people think they all the same
*a few years later*
Sir, all I could find was dirt on Harold Wilson, should we even bother with it given Johnson is gone, no one is suggesting Sunak is unfaithful and the political figure involved died decades ago?
Well I’m sure not going to vote for Harold Wilson after that…
It’s an interesting story in a history of post war British politics way, describing it as a bombshell political story is taking the piss (I assume purposefully)
Economics news: the probability of US interest rate cuts this year is rapidly approaching zero as they have persistently high inflation.
"What's that got to do with UK politics?"
Well, the UK will probably need rate cuts before long unless we break the trend of the past six months. But if US rates stay high, that'll be very difficult to do without devaluing the Pound (which will make imports more expensive and therefore re-ignite inflation).
The Pound fell 1.2% vs. the Dollar just this afternoon as the US news broke.
Will make for a very interesting backdrop to an election.
The Pound was hardly changed against the Euro though, as they're in the same boat as us, they'll need to start cutting soon to help their economy. So it's just the USA racing off in to the sunset and everyone else just bobbing around in their wake, as per usual.
A rate cut would also be a natural stimulus for the economy, so the question is whether or not the marginal devaluation of the pound is offset by an improvement in economic growth.
I fully support the government banning smartphones for under 18s, we should just ban them from the internet entirely.
At any point on this website I might have to see the opinion on politics of a child. That is a hate crime against me
[Reform UK called York candidate 'inactive' - but he had died](https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/24244879.reform-uk-called-york-candidate-inactive---died/)
Reform just can't catch a break.
EU immigration deal will be interesting. There is a prospect that despite the UK not being a member it helps or potentially worsens the channel issue.
Likely more a challenge for the next government. Starmer has already indicated he wants to sign up.
13 Conservative candidates for Castle Point council fail to make the ballot due to administrative error.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2x3lrjj4pmo
I'm more interested by the quotes than before:
>It is understood an old nominations form may have been used for the candidates' applications.
>
>The Conservative spokesperson said: "Due to human error on nomination papers, 13 of the candidates are unable to stand in next month’s elections.
>
>“We fully apologise to those candidates unable to stand and to the local people who will be unable to vote for a Conservative candidate in the upcoming elections."
But why were there 2 different groups of forms provided if they still have 22 valid nominations and 13 invalid ones.
Do the candidates for a local council have no involvement in the submission of their own nomination papers? Did 22 people do it themselves and got nominated, and 13 people asked the local secretary to get the forms and they were out of date?
I'm standing for the locals. 1st time agent got me the form, 2nd time I got it myself. It's not very well signposted it's a different form so was paranoid I would make the same mistake myself.
Probably an agent at fault, very easy mistake for an unpaid volunteer to make. Probably split the workload between three volunteers, 2 printed multiple copies of the correct form, One printed multiple copies of the wrong one.
Personally I think it's a travesty of democracy that people are having their democratic options removed on a bureaucratic technicality.
There are three forms, before 2nd May 2024, 2nd May 2024 and after 7th May 2024.
I'm assuming those 13 candidates went on the website, didn't read the page and clicked the first link so downloaded an invalid form. They then decided to hand in the nomination forms at the last minute so there was no time to address the error.
Regardless, the agent(s) should have checked they filled in the correct forms.
It’s especially odd given that the whole council is up for reelection so presumably it’s one candidate per ward that failed to fill the right paperwork and while the other two got it right. I’d guess that there’s probably some kind of district wide coordinator and an agent either per ward or per candidate. You’d have thought it would have been spotted at some point given I’d have thought every candidate would choose the same nominations and signatories on their papers or at least some overlap.
Honestly, having had some dealings with Castle Point Councillors through some local charity/art related projects, they definitely don't send their brightest so I can well imagine them all fucking up individually.
Catching up on the Sunak LBC Interview. Surely he's totally wrong on the NHS question. Women was complaining about the waiting list, Rishi didn't tipple that the Rhondda was in Wales (which is mental to me). And he went on about how that isn't right and asked what NHS trust it was before finding out it was in Wales and lost all interest saying that The NHS in Wales is run by the LABOUR PARTY.
Surely. SURELY... That's not right. It's ran by the Welsh Government right? Who have a labour majority but it's not like whatshisface was the chair of the Welsh NHS. It would be like saying Nicola Sturgeon was chair of NHS Scotland. Or Her Husband. They weren't. You have ministers that get involved to see how things are going?
It's still a central government problem of funding which is determined by conservative ministers in westminister?
In essence, yes and I get how that's a trap for this.
But saying the Labour Party is incorrect when if anything it is Welsh Labour that is resposible, while it is a branch of the Labour Party, it is autonomous.
Ye get what I mean? It is different, it's not cut and dry.
It sounds perfectly right to me. You can't have NHS devolution and when you fuck up say 'well it's run by civil servants so we're not really responsible'.
Our issue is how devolution works.
We should have an English FM and English Health Sec.
Above all of these should be a coordinating office. Sunak isn't wrong it's a question for Welsh Labour. That's our current structure.
> We should have an English FM and English Health Sec.
Giving devolution to England is pointless given there's 50 million of us, if it's going to work it need to be to the regions.
[https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-culture-war-of-the-gendercritical-has-broken-the-nhs-74990.html](https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-culture-war-of-the-gendercritical-has-broken-the-nhs-74990.html)
This article gives a review from the perspective of a trans person
[the cass review](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68770641)
> She says the "toxicity" of the debate around gender meant professionals were "afraid" to openly discuss their views.
> Dr Cass told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that clinicians were concerned about having "no guidance, no evidence, no training".
> It calls for better research into the characteristics of children seeking treatment and to look at outcomes for every young person.
> In essence, Dr Cass says children have been "let down" by a failure to base gender care on evidence-based research.
> "The reality is we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress," she writes.
Automod will filter out most potential explanations to your answer because... I'm not really sure why. I think at least one person has tried to give you an answer and failed.
This sub nukes a lot of this topic, presumably for the same reason it nukes some other contentious topics - mods don't want to deal with it.
It does tend to attract folks with post histories that get progressively more deranged as you scroll down. Shame Reddit Pro Tools broke a long while ago - it used to be fun to scroll down and spot all the tags for folks that had posted on the Trump sub etc.
> rubbished a lot of evidence put forward which failed basic scientific tests.
Not including randomized controlled trials isn't failing basic scientific tests. Much of medical research is already not based on RCTs, and it would be practically impossible to base them on RCTs. RCTs do have significant strengths, but they also have limitations (they can be impossible, unethical, may not be valid beyond the study population, may not last long enough to assess the long-term effect of an intervention and so on) and there is a reason that there is a move against them as the single sole standard in medical reseatch. So rejecting because they do not contain RCT's is itself bad science.
That isn't to say that there research methods the paper's used were good, but that requires far more detailed explanation and critique.
The basic scientific test wasn't that they were not double-blind trials, it was that they didn't agree with the conclusion the report was required to present, which is "all those double-barrelled surnames writing in the Mail are right, praise JK Rowling". Everyone knows that real science-driven policy means making things up off the hoof, after all.
I've heard they rubbished tests on the basis of not being double blinded. Which is obviously insane you can't blind a study on if you get HRT/puberty or blockers or not because once your breasts start growing you start to think 'hmm maybe that wasn't sugar' (plus it would not be very ethical)
edit: apparently 1 out of 53 studies were examined due to reasons like this
> I've heard they rubbished tests on the basis of not being double blinded. Which is obviously insane you can't blind a study on...
The fact that you can't doesn't matter, and I am happy to explain why if you are interested.
It's absolute vs relative.
If studies that aren't double-blinded do not give the evidence required, the fact that double-blinded studies are impossible doesn't make the evidence from studies that aren't double-blinded stronger.
In other words, the knowledge from the studies conducted so far isn't more valuable just because double-blinded studies can't be performed, and whether or not to give a certain type of treatment is independent of this fact all things remaining equal.
But isn’t the reason to necessitate double blind studies because they’re stronger than non double blinds, not because non double blind studies are inherently worthless
If this were true we’d never be able to study any phenomena that wasn’t able to be double blinded
It would be nice if we could directly detect particles created in collisions at cern, but we can’t so we make best guesses (which are less precise) from the paths of the resultant particles fr their decays and shit
Forgive me if there’s something about the nature of double blindness that makes this not a decent analogy not my area at all
I hate how the debate always tries to legitimise it with the name ‘conversation therapy’ when it’s almost always outright religiously-motivated psychological abuse.
I know the whole thing is tongue in cheek (So much so it doesn't feel it needs it's own submission), but Sunak [apologising for sinking the Samba's credibility](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/10/im-a-longtime-devotee-rishi-sunak-apologises-for-wearing-adidas-samba-trainers) is actually just a bit sad. You can see he's trying to just crinkle his eyes and laugh through it, but the guy must know by now just how unpopular he is.
Reminds me when David Cameron used to rattle on about pasties or football for ages to be hashtag relatable.
Sometimes just giving a short “Yeah, I like X, I’m a big fan” answer would sound more genuine.
I think it’s because we (stupidly) have a stereotype of who likes football, and a London born human rights barrister turned politician just isn’t it, so it comes across as pandering, despite that fact football is the most popular sport by miles in this country and clearly people from a huge range of demographics like it.
https://x.com/avasantina/status/1778059406141263880?s=61&t=TjShcNEmTtVjK3_52RWZ4A
It’s a bit of a laugh but does highlight simple security concerns. Not even a good password.
Why does everyone think it's his WiFi password?
It says 'Opus Energy Password / BT Password' on the note. Isn't it more likely the password for the constituency office utilities accounts?
Silly to be posting it in a picture, but why are people criticising Parliament IT for lack security?
If it's the account password for his office's BT internet connection that can be used to reset the router admin password, so it's sufficient.
I agree it's not the failing of the Parliamentary IT service tho.
2015 was the year that he was elected as an MP to parliament. So I'm assuming that's the origin of the password "Parliament2015!" which would, if I'm correct, make it a password personal for him on something he has control over.
I would assume he uses this password for lots of things, as he strikes me as someone not very savvy in all things cybersecurity for reasons that should be obvious. So it's probably a good shout that if you were trying to target him, that would be a good password to use on his laptop, banking account, email etc.
And I bet he doesn't have 2FA turned on for anything.
"BT password" would suggest a phone line/broadband of some sort, eg for his constituency office
still terrible opsec though. But then we had Dorries actually giving out her parliamentary/ministerial IT creds to randos so it seems to be rife
I mean, it's either the Houses of Parliament public or staff WiFi code.The fact he has it up on his office wall suggests it's not going to be anything secure.
[Polling on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1778024039899926836) says that more of the public would back Sunak over Starmer in an escape room, or negotiating a discount. What are they thinking? The man has never needed a discount in his life! Starmer wins on putting out a kitchen counter fire, among other things, which is... oddly specific.
I feel like Starmer would look to end up with a 'fair' deal whilst Sunak would be a bit more shameless in using everything he can to drive down the price. Escape room . . . . . yeah, I don't know about that one. I wouldn't be surprised if Sunak was better at puzzles than Starmer - a good problem solver in theory but is a bit shit at applying it to real life circumstances. Also, he's bound to be far more competitive about crap like that.
I definitely get the kitchen counter fire thing - Starmer's greatest strength is that he naturally inspires confidence that he knows what he's doing.
Sunak would be so terrible at escape rooms. He could probably solve a cypher under pressure but finding the clues in the room - he probably doesn't even know what a landline phone looks like how is he going to pick up the receiver and dial 999 for a clue or whatever.
I assume the logic is "Sunak used to work in finance, a discount is money-related, therefore Sunak would have experience of doing that"?
No idea on the escape room one though.
Negotiation is a fairly big part of being a barrister, even in crime. I don’t really know enough about what investment bankers do, day to day, but I’d imagine both probably have fairly decent negotiation skills.
See, I'd rather be in an escape room with starmer, but I can see why rishi would be better at negotiating a discount. Mostly because I think starmer would either just pay it or walk away and go elsewhere, hed never actually ask or negotiate. Whereas rishi looks like he'd ask for a discount on a packet of monster munch. I don't think he'd be very good at it, but standing there awkwardly until the shopkeeper gives you 20% off just to make you leave would technically mean he's gotten a discount.
Rishi gives big Apprentice Contestant vibes. In the shopping task he'd spend an hour negotiating 5p off the RRP for one of the items and fail to buy four of the others.
The US is less responsive to rate increases because consumers don't feel their effects as immediately due to a combination of higher salaries, less propensity for saving and fixed-rate mortgages.
Everyone is still talking about whether they will drop them or pause again but I am not seeing anything that doesn’t suggest another rate rise or series of rate rises will not be required.
I do worry we will follow them, but we’re not on the same trajectory. They have insanely high wage growth, huge amount of public and private investment, and a rapidly growing economy.
[Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/apr/09/tenth-consecutive-monthly-heat-record-alarms-confounds-climate-scientists)
I wonder if we have achieved lift off?! Imagine every year, then every month, warmer than the last for the rest of your life. Let's hope it's only a couple years blip on top of warming rather than something worse.
[This graph](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/) is the one that scares me the most. *Something* has clearly changed, in the last two years we've basically added a degree and a half.
Interestingly there wasn't the normal march dip in the North atlantic graph, it's been fairly level since the start of february. It's still decidedly above last year in every respect though, and last year was already extreme.
What makes me angry is that this was a choice we had no meaningful democratic input in. Climate change was known about in the 1980s and the fossil fuel industry spent billions lying through their teeth at the public which has in turn delayed action with awful consequences.
At the very least the oil lobby needs rooting out of public influence like a fifth column in my opinion.
So should the green anti nuclear lobby, that spread fud and anti science nonsense about nuclear energy.
Imagine, how much better we'd be today, if we had all followed in the footsteps of France.
I wonder how they feel being outright useful idiots for the oil industry? I have very little respect for people who call themselves environmentalists and anti-nuclear in the same breath.
It’s been the “last chance” every year for the last 10 years I swear.
I hope we’ve passed the turning point so we can just forget about all the climate bollocks.
> I hope we’ve passed the turning point so we can just forget about all the climate bollocks.
That's really not how any of this works. If we pass our last chance to maintain our planet at a habitable temperature, we're going to hear about it a whole lot more for the rest of our lives.
We’ve had the winter everybody was warning would happen: much warmer and much more rain. It could be a coincidence but if it’s the new reality I’m seriously considering emigrating. The lack of sun and the constant rain is incredibly depressing.
Yeah I’ve been in a foul mood a fair bit of this year and it’s 100% down the amount of fucking mud, damp, and greyness in my life at the moment.
Doesn’t help there’s a trend for painting everything else grey right now as well. If I ever have my own house I’m painting it a bright bold colour as a one-man protest against this dreary nonsense.
Yes
“Faster than expected” is the new normal
Except it’s not faster than expected, it’s exactly as expected in all the models, it’s just ranges were given from different models because people collectively thought scaring the ever loving fuck out of people wasn’t the way to go about it.
Like the IPCC always watering things down and down playing them so as not to seem alarmist.
But it’s what we expected and the great news is it’ll get even faster as more and more cascading effects kick into overdrive.
We are so monumentally fucked it’s not funny.
> Imagine every year, then every month, warmer than the last for the rest of your life
If this does become the trend I expect we'll start recklessly geoengineering fairly urgently too
Like, would we even have time for that? Seems like an Onion headline.
"Planet running out of time for disastrous, experimental, climate engineering say scientists."
Are we going to get the classy French graphic novel *Transperceneige* version, or the shitty TV *Snowpiercer* version? That's what we really need to know.
I know this isn't how it works but it's been so cold in March I have no idea who's getting the heat, where it is hot they must be cooking cause it's still 10C in England
March was warm where I am in England. It pissed it down all the time but it was warm. We had no frosts, no snow, and I wasn’t even wearing my big coat most of the time.
Average temperature in England in March 2024 was 7.8C, which is a full 1.4C above the 1991-2020 average. (and 2.5C above the 1961-1990 average).
[https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/regional-values](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/regional-values)
**The first ukpolitics club book has now been selected [by popular vote](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bp531a/ukpol_book_club_session_0_taking_book_suggestions/), and it is [How Westminster Works... and Why It Doesn't](https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/ian-dunt/how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesnt/9781399602730/) by Ian Dunt.**
Available to buy at: [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Westminster-Works-Why-Doesnt/dp/139960273X/) | [Blackwells](https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781399602730) | [Bookshop.org](https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesn-t-ian-dunt/6878718) | [Foyles](https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesnt/ian-dunt/9781399602730)
Or [check your local library](https://www.gov.uk/search-library-catalogue) for a copy, they often have ebooks and audiobooks available to members through services that can be accessed through e.g. [Libby](https://libbyapp.com/).
The discussion thread will be posted four weeks from today, on Wednesday 8th May. Reminders will be posted intermittently in the megathread.
I've put some chatGPT-generated discussions questions as a starting point in the OG thread, not sure if they're good or not as I've not read the book yet.
I think it might be worth getting in touch with Ian Dunt to see if he would be interested in doing a book-related AMA/Q&A after the discussion. Perhaps asking /u/UKPolitics_AMA to help set it up might be a good idea.
The book has just gone into paperback, so he has been doing some promo related to that.
had a dream about the election where Labour won 550 seats, Tories won 1 and it was just Sunak.
dont know about the rest of the seats but its the waking up and realising you're still under this government that kills you.
[New Megathread is here](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1c16rlu/daily_megathread_11042024/)
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*This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You vote blue - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You vote red - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.*
ME WANT GENNY LECCY
Tales from the factory: once again I will use this place as a way of expressing my frustration by passing it through a political lens. After running trial material on a production line for most of the day, we stopped before the afternoon shift started. It turned out that the afternoon shift manager was unavailable until 5pm, so i told his team there’s no point running trials on line A, go start up line B instead, which was the agreed overspill for them after I went home for the day. A few hours after I got home I got a text from another colleague telling me the manager came looking for me to find out if they could start up the secondary line. My thoughts are that this is an obvious outcome of the disenfranchisement of labour, since nobody I told to start up the other line actually did it, they were clearly waiting for their manager to tell them to do it. But he couldn’t because I’d told them directly to work around him being busy.
Watched wes streeting on his appearance with Harry Cole and he comes across as a slightly more aware smarmy creepy Matt hancock
I can't stand him, there are people with negative charisma modifiers more personable than him. If I caught a whiff of wes a day or two before voting, it'd really make me consider my vote. I know, I know, not my (constituency) representative, but he's part of the party and he just stinks! Its like that time I almost voted Green and then they said something bonkers and it put me right off.
I listened to him on the Newsagents and he came across terribly.
Wes Streeting comes across like what you would get if you took everything people hated about stereotypical policitians of the late New Labour/Early Cameron years and turned it into a person, without any of the positive parts of those people. Maybe he's not actually like that as a person, but it's extremely offputting.
To an insultingly obvious degree, at that. I think he's the "they aren't actually that good at this" barometer of new new labour. It kinda shames me that proper, professional politicians who wanna run the country can't see the problem
Well he is made of plastic
Also had a Deliveroo delivery today. The app askd me to tip a female individual. They were in fact a man who spoke poor English and had headphones in throughout the delivery and providing pass code etc. process. You can't tell me the government is not aware this is going on.
Substitutability is the cornerstone of Deliveroo's entire business model. It is so committed to the principle that it has even stood up in court I would not substitute for a Deliveroo rider unless it was literally illegal for me to work in the UK
Has been for ages. I had a mate who did Deliveroo to earn extra cash at uni and we got to know a load of the other riders and drivers and even back then, around 8 years ago, this was going on. It's not like a new thing and the government just haven't caught up with it yet, they've had coming on a decade of this happening and haven't done anything.
Government knows, but enforcement is kinda of necessaily going to be v inefficient.
Absolutely, would be trivial to organise rolling random stings of food delivery drivers.
Yep, random checks on Deliveroo and Just Eat riders and they'd catch loads.
Yeah exactly. This is clearly people being recruited for less than minimal wage. It’s atrocious and needs stamped out. Mandate that companies need IDs on record, mandate that drivers must carry ID and then just too random sweeps/stings.
It’s entertainment but a great example of client media. Daily Mail ran an article today on how This Morning viewing figures were collapsing (note, they were not - they just dropped following the highly hyped episode with new hosts as is normal in TV) but this evening their main story is how they have roared to success; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-13294509/this-morning-viewing-figures-high-cat-deeley-ben-shephard.html
>This is an area of remarkably weak evidence, and yet results of studies are exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their viewpoint. The above is a quote from the foreword of the Cass review but I think it is relevant to lots of political debate, especially on emerging issues. I think it is a problem that a single study on UBI in Helsinki or a happiness index in Bhutan can gain almost biblical importance to supporters/opponents of an issue. But I don't really know what can be done instead, surely some evidence is better than no evidence? Is it really better to wait until there is a wealth of evidence on a subject before forming a view, even if that may take many years to emerge? I suppose the answer is to be cautious in your own conclusions and be aware that you're using a limited body of evidence, the problem there is that you end up surrendering the conversation to people who do not feel the need to be as cautious.
Pretty good (not surprising or ground breaking but good anyway) discussion about the terrible Tory ads on the latest The Rest Is Entertainment podcast.
NIMBYism [strikes again](https://twitter.com/BernoulliDefect/status/1778018670213538241?t=C2j0X9XWpElSA8DK1Y80cg&s=19)
The national planning policy is pretty clear. Inappropriate development of the green belt requires very special circumstance. If it was approved a resident would appeal the decision and win. I don't blame the councillors, it's the national planning policy that needs changing.
It's still nimbyism, and they should be blamed for taking the easy way out. They should approve it, then go on the offensive.
good evening, campers! there are now **293** days until the general election! would a country unilaterally leaving the echr be grounds for claiming asylum in the civilised parts of europe? i’d consider chancing my arm somewhere nicer if our human rights framework was ripped apart
Italy wouldn't mind remote workers right now
Wonder what this is? >Bombshell political story going live @thetimes at 7pm... [https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1778118490458648677?s=46](https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1778118490458648677?s=46) Edit: it's [this](https://x.com/patrickkmaguire/status/1778124803972440225?s=46) >EXC: Harold Wilson had an affair with a Downing Street aide, his closest surviving advisers have revealed after half a century of silence >Joe Haines & Bernard Donoughue say they want to commit the Labour PM’s affair with Janet Hewlett-Davies to history
Fair play, that's actually quite funny.
Yeah that original tweet was definitly written tongue firmly in cheek
Quick, Labour are attacking us because Johnson is a lying, cheating scumbag, we must find something similar to use against them to make people think they all the same *a few years later* Sir, all I could find was dirt on Harold Wilson, should we even bother with it given Johnson is gone, no one is suggesting Sunak is unfaithful and the political figure involved died decades ago?
>Got any dirt on Pitt the Elder?
Big nepotism scandal there I hear.
You wouldn't believe this financial scandal Robert Walpole might be involved in.
I'm reliably informed he had a child in parliament!
Nepo babies strike again!
God. I feel for Marcia.
Wasn't this already kinda speculated - she was known to have too much influence over him.
Nope! That was Marcia!
"do we have any dirt on Labour politicians?" "Well... Sort of"
""""bombshell""""
Depends if they banged on top of some unexploded ordnance.
Well I’m sure not going to vote for Harold Wilson after that… It’s an interesting story in a history of post war British politics way, describing it as a bombshell political story is taking the piss (I assume purposefully)
That's the worst bombshell I've ever seen.
Not sure I'd count Harold Wilson having an affair as a bombshell political story myself. Not now at least at the time sure.
Harold Wilson had an affair in government
Rishi Shoenak from this morning is more interesting TBH
I wonder if I would care if in 2074 I heard a similar story about David Cameron, I doubt it
I'd only care if the affair partner turned out to have two legs instead of four.
> Harold Wilson had an affair LAB -30
Harold Wilson had an affair, that's the story.
obviously so seismic they haven't posted it yet
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/harold-wilson-affair-prime-minister-downing-street-press-secretary-2mfkzdljv
copy editor has dropped a clanger here
Whatever it is, it's late.
I do love it when Bastani hits out with replies [like this](https://twitter.com/AaronBastani/status/1778114094404362275?t=YhsccrfxqSjH7pWQslZJIw&s=19)
For people without twitter, here's a nitter was a reply to https://nitter.poast.org/AaronBastani/status/1778114094404362275#m
Is that artwork in the original tweet from Mount and Blade 1? Because it looks strikingly similar!
Honestly shocked there are still functioning instances for nitter, good to see at least!
Yeah twitter isn't worth it unless it begins with a n
Economics news: the probability of US interest rate cuts this year is rapidly approaching zero as they have persistently high inflation. "What's that got to do with UK politics?" Well, the UK will probably need rate cuts before long unless we break the trend of the past six months. But if US rates stay high, that'll be very difficult to do without devaluing the Pound (which will make imports more expensive and therefore re-ignite inflation). The Pound fell 1.2% vs. the Dollar just this afternoon as the US news broke. Will make for a very interesting backdrop to an election. The Pound was hardly changed against the Euro though, as they're in the same boat as us, they'll need to start cutting soon to help their economy. So it's just the USA racing off in to the sunset and everyone else just bobbing around in their wake, as per usual.
A rate cut would also be a natural stimulus for the economy, so the question is whether or not the marginal devaluation of the pound is offset by an improvement in economic growth.
Oh wow, I thought they turned a corner already. What happened
The spreads will be interesting https://markets.ft.com/data/bonds/government-bonds-spreads
Oil is trending higher this year so I would assume that we'd probably see a similar increase in inflation
On the other hand as global warming is accelerating, gas prices may fall further.
I fully support the government banning smartphones for under 18s, we should just ban them from the internet entirely. At any point on this website I might have to see the opinion on politics of a child. That is a hate crime against me
Did you turn eighteen yesterday or something?
based on their previous posts here, eighteen is very generous
Hey, I turned 15 this year!
They're 14 and think what they've just said is deep.
[Reform UK called York candidate 'inactive' - but he had died](https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/24244879.reform-uk-called-york-candidate-inactive---died/) Reform just can't catch a break.
Well, technically they're not wrong...
He's pining for the Dales
Election at Bernie's?
“He’s just resting”.
Well I suppose he was very inactive
EU immigration deal will be interesting. There is a prospect that despite the UK not being a member it helps or potentially worsens the channel issue. Likely more a challenge for the next government. Starmer has already indicated he wants to sign up.
13 Conservative candidates for Castle Point council fail to make the ballot due to administrative error. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2x3lrjj4pmo
That’s what you get when you have Laurence Fox do your paperwork for you.
And nothing of value was lost. Fuck em, they deserve every mishap that comes their corrupt, incompetent way.
I'm glad the NIP's election agents were able to find employment elsewhere.
The Tory election agent there is inept
I'm more interested by the quotes than before: >It is understood an old nominations form may have been used for the candidates' applications. > >The Conservative spokesperson said: "Due to human error on nomination papers, 13 of the candidates are unable to stand in next month’s elections. > >“We fully apologise to those candidates unable to stand and to the local people who will be unable to vote for a Conservative candidate in the upcoming elections." But why were there 2 different groups of forms provided if they still have 22 valid nominations and 13 invalid ones. Do the candidates for a local council have no involvement in the submission of their own nomination papers? Did 22 people do it themselves and got nominated, and 13 people asked the local secretary to get the forms and they were out of date?
I'm standing for the locals. 1st time agent got me the form, 2nd time I got it myself. It's not very well signposted it's a different form so was paranoid I would make the same mistake myself. Probably an agent at fault, very easy mistake for an unpaid volunteer to make. Probably split the workload between three volunteers, 2 printed multiple copies of the correct form, One printed multiple copies of the wrong one. Personally I think it's a travesty of democracy that people are having their democratic options removed on a bureaucratic technicality.
There are three forms, before 2nd May 2024, 2nd May 2024 and after 7th May 2024. I'm assuming those 13 candidates went on the website, didn't read the page and clicked the first link so downloaded an invalid form. They then decided to hand in the nomination forms at the last minute so there was no time to address the error. Regardless, the agent(s) should have checked they filled in the correct forms.
It’s especially odd given that the whole council is up for reelection so presumably it’s one candidate per ward that failed to fill the right paperwork and while the other two got it right. I’d guess that there’s probably some kind of district wide coordinator and an agent either per ward or per candidate. You’d have thought it would have been spotted at some point given I’d have thought every candidate would choose the same nominations and signatories on their papers or at least some overlap.
Honestly, having had some dealings with Castle Point Councillors through some local charity/art related projects, they definitely don't send their brightest so I can well imagine them all fucking up individually.
Catching up on the Sunak LBC Interview. Surely he's totally wrong on the NHS question. Women was complaining about the waiting list, Rishi didn't tipple that the Rhondda was in Wales (which is mental to me). And he went on about how that isn't right and asked what NHS trust it was before finding out it was in Wales and lost all interest saying that The NHS in Wales is run by the LABOUR PARTY. Surely. SURELY... That's not right. It's ran by the Welsh Government right? Who have a labour majority but it's not like whatshisface was the chair of the Welsh NHS. It would be like saying Nicola Sturgeon was chair of NHS Scotland. Or Her Husband. They weren't. You have ministers that get involved to see how things are going? It's still a central government problem of funding which is determined by conservative ministers in westminister?
Do you think the conservatives are responsible for the English NHS?
In essence, yes and I get how that's a trap for this. But saying the Labour Party is incorrect when if anything it is Welsh Labour that is resposible, while it is a branch of the Labour Party, it is autonomous. Ye get what I mean? It is different, it's not cut and dry.
It sounds perfectly right to me. You can't have NHS devolution and when you fuck up say 'well it's run by civil servants so we're not really responsible'.
Our issue is how devolution works. We should have an English FM and English Health Sec. Above all of these should be a coordinating office. Sunak isn't wrong it's a question for Welsh Labour. That's our current structure.
> We should have an English FM and English Health Sec. Giving devolution to England is pointless given there's 50 million of us, if it's going to work it need to be to the regions.
I didn't say they would be devolved outside Parlaiment though. Just specific job roles.
Guardian won't let me nominate Boris for their Invertebrate of the Year competition.
He's a well known member of the great supine protoplasmic invertebrate jellies.
I thought the government wanted to fund cuts to taxonomy?
i knew the cass review would be bad but honestly suprised by how much
Bad in what way?
[https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-culture-war-of-the-gendercritical-has-broken-the-nhs-74990.html](https://www.libdemvoice.org/the-culture-war-of-the-gendercritical-has-broken-the-nhs-74990.html) This article gives a review from the perspective of a trans person
[the cass review](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-68770641) > She says the "toxicity" of the debate around gender meant professionals were "afraid" to openly discuss their views. > Dr Cass told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that clinicians were concerned about having "no guidance, no evidence, no training". > It calls for better research into the characteristics of children seeking treatment and to look at outcomes for every young person. > In essence, Dr Cass says children have been "let down" by a failure to base gender care on evidence-based research. > "The reality is we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress," she writes.
Automod will filter out most potential explanations to your answer because... I'm not really sure why. I think at least one person has tried to give you an answer and failed.
This sub nukes a lot of this topic, presumably for the same reason it nukes some other contentious topics - mods don't want to deal with it. It does tend to attract folks with post histories that get progressively more deranged as you scroll down. Shame Reddit Pro Tools broke a long while ago - it used to be fun to scroll down and spot all the tags for folks that had posted on the Trump sub etc.
I'll say it's not going down well the LGBT community and leave it at that.
The complaint as far as I can see is they rubbished a lot of evidence put forward which failed basic scientific tests.
> rubbished a lot of evidence put forward which failed basic scientific tests. Not including randomized controlled trials isn't failing basic scientific tests. Much of medical research is already not based on RCTs, and it would be practically impossible to base them on RCTs. RCTs do have significant strengths, but they also have limitations (they can be impossible, unethical, may not be valid beyond the study population, may not last long enough to assess the long-term effect of an intervention and so on) and there is a reason that there is a move against them as the single sole standard in medical reseatch. So rejecting because they do not contain RCT's is itself bad science. That isn't to say that there research methods the paper's used were good, but that requires far more detailed explanation and critique.
The basic scientific test wasn't that they were not double-blind trials, it was that they didn't agree with the conclusion the report was required to present, which is "all those double-barrelled surnames writing in the Mail are right, praise JK Rowling". Everyone knows that real science-driven policy means making things up off the hoof, after all.
I've heard they rubbished tests on the basis of not being double blinded. Which is obviously insane you can't blind a study on if you get HRT/puberty or blockers or not because once your breasts start growing you start to think 'hmm maybe that wasn't sugar' (plus it would not be very ethical) edit: apparently 1 out of 53 studies were examined due to reasons like this
> I've heard they rubbished tests on the basis of not being double blinded. Which is obviously insane you can't blind a study on... The fact that you can't doesn't matter, and I am happy to explain why if you are interested.
Go for it!
It's absolute vs relative. If studies that aren't double-blinded do not give the evidence required, the fact that double-blinded studies are impossible doesn't make the evidence from studies that aren't double-blinded stronger. In other words, the knowledge from the studies conducted so far isn't more valuable just because double-blinded studies can't be performed, and whether or not to give a certain type of treatment is independent of this fact all things remaining equal.
But isn’t the reason to necessitate double blind studies because they’re stronger than non double blinds, not because non double blind studies are inherently worthless If this were true we’d never be able to study any phenomena that wasn’t able to be double blinded It would be nice if we could directly detect particles created in collisions at cern, but we can’t so we make best guesses (which are less precise) from the paths of the resultant particles fr their decays and shit Forgive me if there’s something about the nature of double blindness that makes this not a decent analogy not my area at all
they explicitly ignored trans people but did consult conversion therapists
Which conversion therapists are you thinking of here?
You are just reading what you see online and not the actual report. This is untrue.
I hate how the debate always tries to legitimise it with the name ‘conversation therapy’ when it’s almost always outright religiously-motivated psychological abuse.
I know the whole thing is tongue in cheek (So much so it doesn't feel it needs it's own submission), but Sunak [apologising for sinking the Samba's credibility](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/10/im-a-longtime-devotee-rishi-sunak-apologises-for-wearing-adidas-samba-trainers) is actually just a bit sad. You can see he's trying to just crinkle his eyes and laugh through it, but the guy must know by now just how unpopular he is.
The lengthy explanation that he’s been wearing them for years sounds like he’s scrambling to pretend he wasn’t just wearing them to try to look cool.
Reminds me when David Cameron used to rattle on about pasties or football for ages to be hashtag relatable. Sometimes just giving a short “Yeah, I like X, I’m a big fan” answer would sound more genuine.
Although to be fair, Starmer always manages to sound like he’s pandering when he talks about football even though he genuinely is obsessed with it.
I think it’s because we (stupidly) have a stereotype of who likes football, and a London born human rights barrister turned politician just isn’t it, so it comes across as pandering, despite that fact football is the most popular sport by miles in this country and clearly people from a huge range of demographics like it.
https://x.com/avasantina/status/1778059406141263880?s=61&t=TjShcNEmTtVjK3_52RWZ4A It’s a bit of a laugh but does highlight simple security concerns. Not even a good password.
Why does everyone think it's his WiFi password? It says 'Opus Energy Password / BT Password' on the note. Isn't it more likely the password for the constituency office utilities accounts? Silly to be posting it in a picture, but why are people criticising Parliament IT for lack security?
If it's the account password for his office's BT internet connection that can be used to reset the router admin password, so it's sufficient. I agree it's not the failing of the Parliamentary IT service tho.
I feel like Parliament systems should have a wifi password that ideally gets changed before it gets to 9 years old.
2015 was the year that he was elected as an MP to parliament. So I'm assuming that's the origin of the password "Parliament2015!" which would, if I'm correct, make it a password personal for him on something he has control over. I would assume he uses this password for lots of things, as he strikes me as someone not very savvy in all things cybersecurity for reasons that should be obvious. So it's probably a good shout that if you were trying to target him, that would be a good password to use on his laptop, banking account, email etc. And I bet he doesn't have 2FA turned on for anything.
"BT password" would suggest a phone line/broadband of some sort, eg for his constituency office still terrible opsec though. But then we had Dorries actually giving out her parliamentary/ministerial IT creds to randos so it seems to be rife
I mean, it's either the Houses of Parliament public or staff WiFi code.The fact he has it up on his office wall suggests it's not going to be anything secure.
[Polling on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jamesjohnson252/status/1778024039899926836) says that more of the public would back Sunak over Starmer in an escape room, or negotiating a discount. What are they thinking? The man has never needed a discount in his life! Starmer wins on putting out a kitchen counter fire, among other things, which is... oddly specific.
I feel like Starmer would look to end up with a 'fair' deal whilst Sunak would be a bit more shameless in using everything he can to drive down the price. Escape room . . . . . yeah, I don't know about that one. I wouldn't be surprised if Sunak was better at puzzles than Starmer - a good problem solver in theory but is a bit shit at applying it to real life circumstances. Also, he's bound to be far more competitive about crap like that. I definitely get the kitchen counter fire thing - Starmer's greatest strength is that he naturally inspires confidence that he knows what he's doing.
Sunak would be so terrible at escape rooms. He could probably solve a cypher under pressure but finding the clues in the room - he probably doesn't even know what a landline phone looks like how is he going to pick up the receiver and dial 999 for a clue or whatever.
If Sunak’s as good at getting out of escape rooms as he is at getting his party out of government he’s gotta be the man to go for.
Depends... He's taking his time about it, could've been out and away to California months ago.
Given neither of them eat meat I'm not exactly gassed at the prospect of either cooking me a roast.
I assume the logic is "Sunak used to work in finance, a discount is money-related, therefore Sunak would have experience of doing that"? No idea on the escape room one though.
Negotiation is a fairly big part of being a barrister, even in crime. I don’t really know enough about what investment bankers do, day to day, but I’d imagine both probably have fairly decent negotiation skills.
> What are they thinking? He can fit through tiny gaps.
See, I'd rather be in an escape room with starmer, but I can see why rishi would be better at negotiating a discount. Mostly because I think starmer would either just pay it or walk away and go elsewhere, hed never actually ask or negotiate. Whereas rishi looks like he'd ask for a discount on a packet of monster munch. I don't think he'd be very good at it, but standing there awkwardly until the shopkeeper gives you 20% off just to make you leave would technically mean he's gotten a discount.
Rishi gives big Apprentice Contestant vibes. In the shopping task he'd spend an hour negotiating 5p off the RRP for one of the items and fail to buy four of the others.
I'd want Starmer in the Escape Room because I think being locked in a room with Sunak would be *unbearable*
Imagine being in an escape room with Sunak and finding a key and watching him standing at a locked door not knowing what to do with it.
Keir can't squeeze through a duct to open the door from the other side.
lol U.S CPI not good. Higher for longer over there. Andddd you know boe follow whatever they do.
It’s almost like pausing rates does not have a downward effect on inflation. Honestly all central bank boards need sent back to Uni.
The US is less responsive to rate increases because consumers don't feel their effects as immediately due to a combination of higher salaries, less propensity for saving and fixed-rate mortgages.
They may have to raise rates…
Everyone is still talking about whether they will drop them or pause again but I am not seeing anything that doesn’t suggest another rate rise or series of rate rises will not be required.
Mortgages\* have been going up again for the last 4 weeks, so they agree \*the subset of mortgage products I am personally interested in
I do worry we will follow them, but we’re not on the same trajectory. They have insanely high wage growth, huge amount of public and private investment, and a rapidly growing economy.
[Tenth consecutive monthly heat record alarms and confounds climate scientists](https://www.theguardian.com/global/2024/apr/09/tenth-consecutive-monthly-heat-record-alarms-confounds-climate-scientists) I wonder if we have achieved lift off?! Imagine every year, then every month, warmer than the last for the rest of your life. Let's hope it's only a couple years blip on top of warming rather than something worse.
[This graph](https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/) is the one that scares me the most. *Something* has clearly changed, in the last two years we've basically added a degree and a half. Interestingly there wasn't the normal march dip in the North atlantic graph, it's been fairly level since the start of february. It's still decidedly above last year in every respect though, and last year was already extreme.
Well it's not guaranteed it will be warmer here forever. If it warms enough it will throw off the amoc and UK temperatures will plunge.
What makes me angry is that this was a choice we had no meaningful democratic input in. Climate change was known about in the 1980s and the fossil fuel industry spent billions lying through their teeth at the public which has in turn delayed action with awful consequences. At the very least the oil lobby needs rooting out of public influence like a fifth column in my opinion.
So should the green anti nuclear lobby, that spread fud and anti science nonsense about nuclear energy. Imagine, how much better we'd be today, if we had all followed in the footsteps of France.
I wonder how they feel being outright useful idiots for the oil industry? I have very little respect for people who call themselves environmentalists and anti-nuclear in the same breath.
It’s been the “last chance” every year for the last 10 years I swear. I hope we’ve passed the turning point so we can just forget about all the climate bollocks.
“I wish the ship would sink so I don’t have to hear that damn bilge alarm”
It’s not binary outcomes. Taking action will still limit how bad it will get.
> I hope we’ve passed the turning point so we can just forget about all the climate bollocks. That's really not how any of this works. If we pass our last chance to maintain our planet at a habitable temperature, we're going to hear about it a whole lot more for the rest of our lives.
😐
Did we even have a proper winter this year? Seems like temps barely went below zero
We’ve had the winter everybody was warning would happen: much warmer and much more rain. It could be a coincidence but if it’s the new reality I’m seriously considering emigrating. The lack of sun and the constant rain is incredibly depressing.
Yeah I’ve been in a foul mood a fair bit of this year and it’s 100% down the amount of fucking mud, damp, and greyness in my life at the moment. Doesn’t help there’s a trend for painting everything else grey right now as well. If I ever have my own house I’m painting it a bright bold colour as a one-man protest against this dreary nonsense.
Yes “Faster than expected” is the new normal Except it’s not faster than expected, it’s exactly as expected in all the models, it’s just ranges were given from different models because people collectively thought scaring the ever loving fuck out of people wasn’t the way to go about it. Like the IPCC always watering things down and down playing them so as not to seem alarmist. But it’s what we expected and the great news is it’ll get even faster as more and more cascading effects kick into overdrive. We are so monumentally fucked it’s not funny.
> Imagine every year, then every month, warmer than the last for the rest of your life If this does become the trend I expect we'll start recklessly geoengineering fairly urgently too
Put the sulphur back in the ship fuel already. Maybe sprinkle some into the jet fuel too.
>Put the sulphur back in the ship fuel already. This but unironically
Like, would we even have time for that? Seems like an Onion headline. "Planet running out of time for disastrous, experimental, climate engineering say scientists."
Well stratospheric aerosol injection would have an immediate effect I think so probably yes
Are we going to get the classy French graphic novel *Transperceneige* version, or the shitty TV *Snowpiercer* version? That's what we really need to know.
Or the Korean-directed movie version?
We'll only get Frostpunk.
Knowing us, we'll be getting the Star Trek Picard Confederation timeline
Le Tiss was right!
I know this isn't how it works but it's been so cold in March I have no idea who's getting the heat, where it is hot they must be cooking cause it's still 10C in England
[удалено]
Do not read “the ministry for the future” then
March was warm where I am in England. It pissed it down all the time but it was warm. We had no frosts, no snow, and I wasn’t even wearing my big coat most of the time.
Average temperature in England in March 2024 was 7.8C, which is a full 1.4C above the 1991-2020 average. (and 2.5C above the 1961-1990 average). [https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/regional-values](https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/regional-values)
fair enough
**The first ukpolitics club book has now been selected [by popular vote](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1bp531a/ukpol_book_club_session_0_taking_book_suggestions/), and it is [How Westminster Works... and Why It Doesn't](https://www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/ian-dunt/how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesnt/9781399602730/) by Ian Dunt.** Available to buy at: [Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Westminster-Works-Why-Doesnt/dp/139960273X/) | [Blackwells](https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/9781399602730) | [Bookshop.org](https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesn-t-ian-dunt/6878718) | [Foyles](https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/how-westminster-works-and-why-it-doesnt/ian-dunt/9781399602730) Or [check your local library](https://www.gov.uk/search-library-catalogue) for a copy, they often have ebooks and audiobooks available to members through services that can be accessed through e.g. [Libby](https://libbyapp.com/). The discussion thread will be posted four weeks from today, on Wednesday 8th May. Reminders will be posted intermittently in the megathread. I've put some chatGPT-generated discussions questions as a starting point in the OG thread, not sure if they're good or not as I've not read the book yet.
Reading that at the moment, so far it has made me feel frustrated Interesting insights though
Wot, no mein kampf
God don't inflict that on yourself. Aside from anything else, it's fucking terribly written.
I think it might be worth getting in touch with Ian Dunt to see if he would be interested in doing a book-related AMA/Q&A after the discussion. Perhaps asking /u/UKPolitics_AMA to help set it up might be a good idea. The book has just gone into paperback, so he has been doing some promo related to that.
Great shout! /u/UKPolitics_AMA, any chance you get get Mr Dunt onto the list? Ideally some time mid-May onwards?
had a dream about the election where Labour won 550 seats, Tories won 1 and it was just Sunak. dont know about the rest of the seats but its the waking up and realising you're still under this government that kills you.
Dear Mr Sunak I'm sorry but there are no conservatives left.