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#41

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by Valmy - December 22, 2025, 03:12:04 PM

I have just discovered that workers at the National Coal Mining Museum have been on strike for more than four months and they're now balloting to keep the strike going to the summer:


Apparently the police are now being called to help maintain the picket line.

Wow. Talk about a commitment to commemorating coal labor relations. A living history exhibit. Very clever coal museum.

#42

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by HVC - December 22, 2025, 03:02:19 PM

Where's Thatcher when you need her

#43

Off the Record / Re: The Off Topic Topic

Last post by Sheilbh - December 22, 2025, 02:49:29 PM

I have just discovered that workers at the National Coal Mining Museum have been on strike for more than four months and they're now balloting to keep the strike going to the summer:


Apparently the police are now being called to help maintain the picket line.

#44

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Sheilbh - December 22, 2025, 02:46:22 PM

This article has a point, why does a journo needs to publish such a list why isn't the Labour Party busy pushing these into people's faces:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/22/labour-2025-apprenticeships-workers-wages-price-rises-children

Their comms are shit. FWIW they do often do the big list of achievements (I think as in everything else they're mimicking what Blair and Brown did at the dispatch box). I think you can also caveat or question a lot of Toynbee's list - and I would on many points. But her role in Guardian commentary (previously seen under Blair and Brown) is to be filled with hope about Labour and then gradually disillusioned.

On their comms I've mentioned before but they announced ID cards as their big policy idea and have since never mentioned it again. You need to build an argument. You need to do it before announcements (Cameron called it "rolling the pitch", Blair "framing the argument"). Then you need to mke your argument. You then need to keep the pressure. But also it's just very, very old school. I don't want to push this too far because I'm not sure on cause/symptom - but Number 10 is full of people recommended by Blair who previously worked for him (to an unprecedented degree - it'd be like if Cameron's Downing Street was full of Major hands, or Blair's first team had Bernard Donoughue and Marcia Williams back in situ). To nick Cameron's line - they were the future once. They were fantastic at comms and strategy in the late 90s early 2000s. For example, Alastair Campbell came from tabloid journalism (owned by Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine, incidentally - mad to think there'd be a more disreputable member of that family than Robert). The people around Starmer either come from that background still or are trying to cosplay it.

On that modernity you posted about Reform having a studio that was being covered - that's just 21st century comms. They have used some of their space in Westminster to build an instant reaction studio - it can be used for events but more often it's used to do really short clips for YouTube and TikTok on reaction. Zack Polanski has a podcast where he does long interviews with people (Farage has noted that's a really good idea they should have got their first). I think Starmer launching a Substack is a step in the right direction - but the last TikTok by Number 10 was when Boris Johnson was PM. Again on ID cards within the first day Tories and Reform (possibly Lib Dems and Greens too) had already done social media videos, opposed groups had launched a joint social media campaign - Labour did one Instagram post. They've recently hired someone from the Sun whose line is that we're no longer in a 24 hour news cycle but a 24 second one - but I've not yet seen a shift.

I think part of it is also the lack of analysis and strategy because the comms are downstream of that in my view - and I think this might be the bigger issue. They don't have a narrative to tell because they don't have an analysis of where we are, or a strategy of where they want us to go. It is a list of things - disconnected, isolated from each other, piled up and presented to voters "will this do?" And I think that ultimately comes from the top.

#45

Off the Record / Re: Climate Change/Mass Extinc...

Last post by Duque de Bragança - December 22, 2025, 02:31:24 PM

Look on the bright side, the North Atlantic conveyor shuts down, Iceland drops to -25C, so Legbiter and his 'cousins' are forced to raid Northern British monasteries for gold and deritos; which vastly increases the likelihood of future old style pan-European Languish meet-ups.   

We herd lava when it gets too bothersome. We survived the Little Ice Age, smallpox and Laki.

Also, I'd raid for Mars bars...

 

One day I'll make it to Iceland, maybe as the director of a theatre production re-imagining the 1972 Cod Wars through the medium of interpretive dance.   

Interpretive Dance? 
I'd like to see mongers going full Kate Bush on us. 

#46

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Tamas - December 22, 2025, 01:46:33 PM

This article has a point, why does a journo needs to publish such a list why isn't the Labour Party busy pushing these into people's faces:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/22/labour-2025-apprenticeships-workers-wages-price-rises-children

#47

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Tamas - December 22, 2025, 01:39:08 PM

This sounds like very flawed right wing logic. That you can't keep helping the poor as they will just choose to stay poor and supported on a survival level rather than try to better themselves.
Not sure where you're coming from here as I know you aren't a rightist.

It's part of Sheilbh's left-wing switch 

#48

Off the Record / Re: Brexit and the waning days...

Last post by Josquius - December 22, 2025, 01:35:37 PM

I'm very much down with more decentralisation.
Though reluctant around what that means for money. We don't want regions being responsible for setting their own taxes as I just don't trust a lot of people to look beyond their immediate income and to recognise the value of investing in their area.
Itd be a race to the bottom.
What the solution is though I don't know.

So I actually think this is the key.

We have more regional transfers administered by central government from rich regions (basically London and the South East) to poor regions (literally everywhere else) on an annual basis than Germany ever had from West-East following reunification. In that time I think basically all East Germand states have now overtaken the North of England economically. I'd add that because East Germany is getting richer, the fiscal transfers are shrinking while in the UK they are just increasing - it's a little out of date but this also means its coming from a smaller base too as more regions fall behind:


This is from 2010 and in £s not % but the poorest region in Germany receives less of a fiscal transfer than several regions of the UK:


(I'd add here that Scotland's interesting because it is growing at a faster rate than most of England - or Wales - and converging, it's fiscal transfer is growing at a slower rate than the rest of the UK. My suspicion for that is that's because they've got meaningful devolution and a party incentivised to do things differently in some ways - even if I'm not necessarily a fan of the SNP in power.)

I think that is because if you are generating your own revenue then you have an incentive to try and grow - for example by signing and paying for your own transport infrstructure or housing projects. Local government in the UK just gets given lots of statutory duties (social care, homelessness, roads, bins) and cash from government to do it, but because they collect so littleof their own taxes basically no incentive to do anything else. We have the lowest rate of tax collection by local authority/government in the OECD and I think this is a huge part of our problem.

I also think if central government is paying and ultimately the money comes from London that means central government (based in and full of Londoners) will, justifiably, want to stick their oar in and insist on cost benefit analyses etc on a national spreadsheet of projects. I think that's actually a problem for regions that are doing relatively well - and I think this ties to the "tall poppy" syndrome of worrying about Manchester - it's the point made about Leeds and why it keeps getting shafted. Leeds is broadly doing okay. It's not so poor that it requires loads of cash or redevelopment, but also not so rich that it can compete - and that means it's exactly the sort of place that gets ignored and overlooked by central government. You can fully see central government deciding to basically slash any funding or projects that benefit Manchester in coming years because they're already doing well enough (this logic never applies to London because the CBA always looks good there because it's rich so the relative benefit is normally very high).

But what you're saying is I think why, while I think decentralisation is the key, it will never happen in this country. We are a country not just with a National Health Service but proposals for a National Education Service and a National Care Service. We have a National Chewing Gum Strategy that councils must follow, a National Bin Strategy, and, indeed, a National Planning Policy Framework. We hate any idea of a "postcode lottery" or people in different places receiving a different service which means everything gets hoovered up to the national, but I think that then just means we increase the power and wealth of the centre v everyone else.

The other reason is that I think because local authorities/government are not seen as meaningful by people they are perceived as just a layer of politicians/bureaucracy that doesn't add anything. I think this is why MPs are increasingly acting as councillors and calling for things like a National Bin Strategy, but also a vicious circle where their meaninglessness means people don't really want/think they should have powers over things that are actual material (like regional economic policy, tax etc) which in turn means they're perceived as increasingly meaningless. 

This sounds like very flawed right wing logic. That you can't keep helping the poor as they will just choose to stay poor and supported on a survival level rather than try to better themselves.
Not sure where you're coming from here as I know you aren't a rightist.

Leaving it entirely up to areas to fund themselves will just further deepen our inequality. The places that could most benefit from investment will be amongst those less able to afford it.

I also think it is a real risk in the current climate that the areas that most need investment are also those that have lost a lot of their young educated population. More likely to vote in populists promising low taxes and just generally destroying the state and further fucking the region - passing the blame elsewhere of course.

In this there's also the broader problem of a race to the bottom. It wouldn't help anyone to have places competing to attract investment on the promise of the lowest taxes. They will be unlikely to bring in much new investment and far more likely to just leech it from elsewhere in the country. I wager largely purely on paper with little actual benefit in jobs or anything. Just tax income.

The way we do CBAs absolutely needs an overhaul. This isn't an objective scientific measure. We decide what factors go into making it up. We should put far more weight on social good and reduced costs off that than our current 2D direct costs weighting.

Worth noting in your Germany example they had the transfers and the decentralisation.
We just have transfers to keep the lights on with little freedom on spending.

I hate it I don't know how that would work as someone who grew up in Liverpool, Scotland, Oxfordshire and London. I actually think we're not mobile enough as a country as it is and not really sure this feudal tying you to your place of origin helps that. To me it's exactly the sort of thing we need to destroy utterly

I disagree that we aren't mobile. We are far more likely to go to university in another city than people in many other countries, often this sticks or people then move onto a 3rd place.
Small towns greying as half of its youth move to London (or other cities) is a common cliche.

Where would you pick... In Japan its anywhere.
In the Japanese case it's weird as its not necessarily your home town. You can have zero links to a place and choose it. The towns often bid against each other with gifts. Which is not what I'd want to replicate, I would want to do it right.

I really don't see issue with linking you to where you come from. That place made you like it or not. Places that persistently create high earners should get some of the benefits from this.

It could also help with restoring a sense of place in much of the country. A key problem which is core to why so many towns are such disasters.

#49

Off the Record / Re: Trump's Venezuela Vendetta

Last post by Razgovory - December 22, 2025, 12:58:55 PM

I think Greenland is more likely than Venezuela.  Not many people to resist in Greenland.

If Denmark invokes Article 5, we are in deep shit

I didn't say it was good idea.

#50

Gaming HQ / Re: Europa Universalis V confi...

Last post by Syt - December 22, 2025, 12:49:20 PM

I like the idea of Cortez going full Col. Kurtz