Very much agree with all these points. I also don’t think it’s that useful to be spamming this community with polls as they come out. But thought this was a helpful bit of information to see where things roughly stand at the beginning of campaign time.

* tory moment *

Weirdest set of things in the prize task for quite a while, I loved it.

I think their origial plan was to try and ensure that Daniel Korski, the CCHQ preferred candidate, would get selected by putting him up against insane choices like Susan Hall. Unfortunately Korski had to exit because of sexual assault allegations (name a more iconic duo than Tory politicians and criminal sleaze) leaving only the insane candidates.

This sort of situation has become a bit of a classic Tory tale with the amount of times similar things have happened since 2019.

Loved the thumb war task. It felt very much like a classic task from the earlier seasons.

One of the points made quite astutely in the FT comments section mentioned that ofwat was also strongly responsible for this.

Apparently the regulatory model is set up in the following way - in order to encourage investment in infrastructure, the calculated amount that customers are charged is based on a ratio of how much money is invested into infrastructure. Supposedly Thames Water and other water companies in England wanted to invest more in infrastructure, however ofwat did not allow it as they wanted to protect customers from price increases. Furthermore because of the silly shell game of holding companies that were set up to move the debt around, ofwat didn’t understand just how much debt was being racked up and didn’t make any moves to stop it.

However what this all shows is that the regulatory model is absolutely broken. So not only is ofwat toothless in allowing a ridiculous corporate structure to be set up to obfuscate the silly financial leveraging going on, they are also operating on an entirely faulty premise.

What it all shows is that trying to set up a functional privatised system for water companies that incentivises investment and works for citizens is extremely difficult, is prone to regulatory capture, is still under pressure from meddling ministers and ultimately costs more for customers and the government than servicing the government debt that would be used to pay for investment under a nationalised system.

Just bloody nationalised it.

Not to say I fully agree with the author’s viewpoint, but this article is a good, non-sensational, explanation of the current Thames Water situation. Worth a read if you’re interested in what’s actually going on.

Apart from the fact it didn’t work, I thought his tension task was great and the commitment to continue the stunts was top comedy.

I never thought of it before but your comment just made me realise this would be a great backdoor way to get the PR ball rolling. Make the lord’s elected with a full PR system. Maybe with half the seats going up for election every 7 years or something.

Counterstrike 1.6/Source/GO/2

Started playing around 2005. Playtime has waxed and waned over the years in my friend group, but we’ve generally played it fairly regularly for nearly 20 years now.

They pay a lower rate.

If they were dead set on doing a tax cut (unfortunately for the good of the country) at least they made it an NI cut rather than an income tax cut.

I can see a way forward for labour if they want to raise more money without straight up reversing these cuts by abolishing NI (or gradually reducing it to phase it out) and correspondingly increasing income and/or capital gains tax.

They can chalk it up as making the tax system fairer by removing the tax on which employees pay more than self employed or those with passive wealth-based income. Simultaneously they can say they are building on the one positive outcome of the previous budget.

Thanks for writing this.

When a nationalised company is seen as inefficient or poor service. We all instantly know who to blame. The ministers in charge of that company. Whereas we see an extra layer of blame for privrate non competing companies.

Specifically this aspect is not something I’d really considered before but it’s an astute point.

The numbers quoted indicate much more of a sea change has occurred than I would have expected.

in the 1960s around an eighth of British voters switched their choice between elections. By the 1980s it was a fifth. At the last election Professor Edward Fieldhouse, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, and his colleagues concluded that most of the electorate were swing voters. Politicians see it on the doorstep. “In 1997 around 40% of voters were up for grabs but today it is probably around 70%,” says Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s shadow business secretary and an MP in the north-west.

Maybe there’s hope for PR within the next 20 years.

Mr Robot, you missed an important sentence:

Abolishing the non-dom tax regime would raise an estimated £3.6bn a year.

Britons, for instance, think they live in a country where only 37 per cent of people would give 1 per cent of their income to the climate fight, but the study indicates the real figure is 48 per cent.

"48% Vs 52%” Oh god it’s the cursed numbers again!

Trolling is a art…

I’m a big fan of middle class ideals. Just have a look on Google maps, there’s more around than you might expect.

See if you have a local pottery near you that could make a new lid to fit.

In comparison, grocery sales were hugely increased this past Christmas - https://www.kantar.com/uki/inspiration/fmcg/2024-wp-record-numbers-hit-the-shops-as-supermarkets-experience-busiest-christmas-since-2019 .

Perhaps messages about being eco conscious have moved some people away from spending on plastic tat and focused more on having lavish food for the Christmas period? Or does this figure not take into account inflation and this is just to do with food price inflation being higher than other sectors?