jamesbottomley.bsky.social
UK-based older project consultant guy with history in both public and private sectors. Enjoys chatting about politics, society, culture, etc. Spent time in many countries, including working in the US, so moderately familiar with other lands.
1,339 posts
297 followers
209 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
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Yeah, in the end it's not really about cost, it's about kowtowing to the Blackrocks of this world, but also ministers don't want to be in the direct firing line for the protests about broken rivers and polluted seas. Keeping key services arms length was a major privatisation motive.
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US police have been at training courses run by the IDF and this is straight out of the Israeli playbook, shooting reporters.
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Maybe this cop was one of the ones trained by Israeli security forces? Shooting reporters is pretty standard stuff for them.
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Not really any different now to Peron's Argentina, Gaddafi's Libya or Kim's North Korea.
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He's changed his tune.
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Funny thing is though, if the BBC and other media focus too much on stories away from Oxbridge people, it starts to feel like they aren't covering the news properly, or making the right dramas.
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He's a member of the upper classes of England. He gets paid £1m a year for his ranting and posturing. He owns property all over the place, particularly in EU countries. He doesn't even really drink the beer he's always getting himself pictured drinking, he prefers fine clarets and expensive wines.
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There'd be the usual rants in the Mail and the Telegraph about the rich departing in droves, but the funny thing is, they generally either don't leave, or come back. It's basically a lot nicer in England and London than it is in Monaco or Dubai. Money isn't worth having if the society is in a mess.
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Have you tried countering with AC/DC's 'Hell's Bells'?
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Hopefully it will bring down crypto as well when it crashes.
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Yes indeed. Personally I'm sick to the back teeth of the word 'intelligence' being applied to what are in fact semantic analysis and text pattern regurgitation systems and generally not very good ones at that. The only well defined smart thing they can do currently is spit out some code solutions.
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Good to see Geoffrey Cox in 2nd place, busy as he is defending tax havens and spending his time in Caribbean islands doing that vital work instead of the constituency. I'm sure it's what his electorate voted for!
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Yeah, they worked together, the markets panicked at the whole deal, but I guess as you say she also failed to convince in personality terms. Kwarteng didn't help, he was pretty useless.
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She's a coffee shop barista in waiting.
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They are also planning to cut fire brigade spending below the minimum required - this to a service already deeply struggling to maintain cover. There really is no logic and no sense.
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It's not that false in a global market economy for bonds, which unfortunately the UK lives in. When bond rates go up (as they do when govt spending plans don't make sense) then debt costs rise and debt becomes harder to sell, inhibiting spending further. This is what happened under Truss.
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Yes indeed. Against a backdrop of cutting services beyond even the basic minimum (as they are currently planning for our emergency services, amongst other things) this also looks like a misallocation of resources from the critical to the non-critical.
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It's not so much that we're 'bankrupt' but that there is no reality to their depiction of the current position on taxes and spending. They need to increase income tax by 2 or 3p in the £ and of course they are deeply reluctant as it would be unpopular, but biting the bullet now would be better.
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The only way to do that is to cut critical services.
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Oh dear. Zoe hasn't taken the blue tablet this morning again.
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Interesting because the Treasury still value each Welsh person at roughly 2/3 the value of an English person from the point of view of investment justification. I suppose rigging the books still makes more sense than actual spending.
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Is he in reality though? These 'commitments' are all vaguely defined, most are 'in the next Parliament', classic spin for sometime, maybe, never. Not sure who they're aiming this PR at. Washington maybe.
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A terrific book, read it avidly and have recommended it to others, congratulations on telling this crazy tale so well and widely.
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What's actually happened is that the taxpayer has lost a net £10bn, whilst the directors of the company who created the egomaniacal insanity that was RBS have walked away with massive pensions. Hope that clears things up.
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All seen through the mighty focal lens of ketamine, ecstasy and assorted other crystals.
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Staff no doubt replaced with Bangladeshis on poverty pay and working in harsh conditions.
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Whilst stoned out of his brain.
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
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She meant "you're all going to die"...
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They will also doubtless face pressures from the MAGAs, the US govt is already sending threatening letters to universities around the world. Oxford and Cambridge both benefit from US funded places and other monies and will be attacked before long.
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Although he does donate his semen widely and you can't get much more giving than that.
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He genuinely has zero radar for that kind of thing, the result of spending all his life living in a massive wealth bubble. He's like the disgusting rich brat in Succession who gets that poor little kid running desperately round the court on a 'promise' of $1m - no concern whatever for his feelings.
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Apologising to a bunch of dog whistlers for something he never said and was also 100% accurate.
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It was a very promising programme until Cherie Blair popped up, had to turn over at that point.🤢
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Nobody's outraged.
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Mass murderers, all of them. You can add their best mates, the Murdochs, to the prison line.
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The way I read that article, it's more of a depressingly futile piece of posturing with very little to show of it and no chance of real progress. Sad stuff.
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The BBC is increasingly similar. Cummings himself just talks streams of garbage. He is currently 'predicting' that Badenoch won't last as Tory leader, which is about as hard as saying that asparagus will again be available next May.
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Places to be, weapons to sell.
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It's a policy downloaded from the early 30s and the Third Reich, the next step will be demanding the sacking of any academic not conforming to MAGA. This woman McMahon should be banned from travelling to Europe and placed under sanctions. We should welcome American academics fleeing persecution.
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All designed to hide the truth that most universities remain very conservative, both politically and organisationally. Ammunition in a brainless culture war for Fox-monkies.