Duncan Parsons @jefph

I’m afraid we are pretty fucked pretty soon and not one of us can say we were not warned. #heatwave #climatebreakdown

This is the highest CAPE I've ever seen modelled for the UK, and potentially the highest we'll ever see. The risk of severe thunderstorms begins tomorrow and could continue right through to the end of the week. Monday currently looks like the most likely day for widespread thunderstorm development, as clear triggers are present. There is much more uncertainty from Tuesday through Friday. While models continue to show extreme instability, they currently lack obvious triggers, although that could change as we get closer. Even taking a conservative approach, CAPE values of 2,000–5,000 J/kg appear possible across much of the UK, particularly across southern and central areas. These are exceptionally high values for the UK and would support severe thunderstorms and potentially supercells, especially where strong wind shear is present. Very frequent lightning, large hail, damaging winds, tornadoes, and flash flooding could all be possible at various points between Monday and Friday if storms develop. Tomorrow may see a more widespread outbreak of thunderstorms, particularly along the M4 corridor, including areas around Bristol, Gloucester, Swindon, and extending into North Wales. Temperatures are expected to reach the mid to high 30s°C, while dew points could climb into the low to mid 20s°C. This combination is creating an extremely unstable airmass and is the reason such extraordinary CAPE values are being forecast. I do not say this lightly: if sufficient triggers develop to release this instability, we could be looking at a historic week of severe weather by UK standards.

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1) people come up with a completely undefined idea, Brexit 2) the least educated vote for it 3) 7 successive Prime Ministers and millions of government man-hours cannot make it a success At what point does a sensible government say we're stopping Brexit?

In 1990, the average wage for a job that would now be minimum wage was around £5 an hour and the average price of a pint was around £1.22. This means that for one hour of work you could afford to buy 4 pints.  Fast forward to 2026 and minimum wage is £12.71 and the average price of a pint is around £5.50, meaning you would only be able to afford 2 pints for an hour of work.  If wages had kept up with the price of pints then the minimum wage would be around £22.54 per hour.  But the problem is coffees and subscriptions right?

If people genuinely believe Burnham won’t receive the exact same media onslaught, they’ve not been paying attention. Starmer is not, objectively, bad. This idea that he is somehow the worst PM in British history is frankly laughable. Liz truss lasted 49 days, crashed the pound and was laughed out of Downing Street. Since Labour took office, Keir Starmer’s government has: • Scrapped the two-child benefit limit, lifting hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty and putting money back into some of the hardest-pressed households in the country. • Expanded free school meals, cutting costs for families and making sure more children get a proper meal during the school day. • Expanded funded childcare, reducing one of the biggest monthly costs facing working parents and making it easier for people to stay in work. • Raised the National Living Wage, increasing pay for millions of low-paid workers. • Strengthened workers’ rights, giving people greater protection against insecure work and bad employers. • Introduced statutory sick pay from the first day of illness, so workers are less likely to choose between their health and their wages. • Ended no-fault evictions, giving renters more security in their homes. • Brought rail operators back into public ownership, taking key services out of failed private hands and giving the public a stronger stake in how they are run. • Cut NHS waiting lists from their post-pandemic peak, meaning more patients are being seen sooner. • Raised the state pension through the triple lock, protecting pensioners’ incomes against rising costs. • Scrapped the old non-dom tax regime, making some of the wealthiest people in the country pay more fairly. • Added VAT to private school fees, raising money from those most able to contribute. • Removed business rates relief from private schools, ending an unjustified tax break. • Increased neighbourhood policing, putting more officers and PCSOs back into communities. • Helped bring knife crime down, meaning fewer families face the devastation of serious violence. • Recorded the lowest homicide rate since the 1970s, a material improvement in public safety. • Created Great British Energy, giving Britain a publicly owned clean energy company. • Created the National Wealth Fund, backing investment in industry, infrastructure and clean energy. • Passed planning reforms aimed at getting homes and major projects built faster. • Improved relations with the EU, reducing diplomatic hostility and rebuilding practical cooperation. • Agreed a UK-EU security partnership, strengthening cooperation on defence and European security. • Signed a long-term partnership with Ukraine, reinforcing Britain’s support against Putin’s invasion. • Secured new trade agreements, opening up markets for British businesses. • Helped restore seriousness to government after years of scandal, chaos and decline. People do not have to like Starmer. They do not have to vote Labour. But pretending this is the record of the worst Prime Minister in British history is absurd.

Actually, if capitalism truly rewarded skill or intelligence, the richest people would be neurosurgeons, engineers, and scientists. If it rewarded talent, it would be artists, writers, and creators. If it rewarded hard work, it would be cleaners, laborers, and service workers. But it's none of them.

He really was right on time, wasn’t he

SERIOUS QUESTION: Now if capitalism is so great, why do corporations need tax breaks, subsidies, exemptions, grants, bailouts, legal protections, and trade barriers to survive ?? And when ordinary people ask for help, why is it suddenly called socialism ??

We lost the plot when we started viewing Earth as a giant store or landfill instead of a life-supporting miracle we’re part of.

Call me whatever you want, but I believe the goal of a society should be to secure the happiness and highest quality of life possible for its citizens and not to endlessly generate capital for the ownership class at the expense of everyone else.

The man who groomed Hector and rode him through years of his service still comes to see him. Not as a one-off, not as a tidy bow on the end of the story, but regularly, whenever leave and the long drive allow, which is more often than you would expect of a busy man visiting a horse he no longer owns. He never announces himself. He does not need to. Hector knows the note of that engine in the lane before the car is in sight, and by the time the man is out of it the old horse is at the rail, head up, ears forward, nickering across the field in the low private rumble he keeps for the few he has decided are his own. The man heard it on a hundred cold London mornings before the parades. It still goes through him every time. For years this man mucked him out, fed him, polished his coat to black glass, and rode him down the Mall through the bands and the crowds and the saluting guns, the two of them holding the line while half a tonne of flight animal trusted a soldier to tell it the world was not ending. You do not unmake a partnership like that by handing in your kit. It goes quiet for a while, and then a car turns into a lane in Denbighshire and picks up where it left off. They stand at the rail a long time. The man talks. Hector leans his great head into the familiar hands, content in a way he is for nobody else. There is nothing to do and nowhere to be, which is the whole point of the visit, and both of them know it. In the background, Nelson is being Nelson. He has assessed the reunion, judged it no concern of his, and noted that the visitor's arrival has usefully coincided with the good hay being left unguarded. He is already at it. At some point the man comes over and scratches him at the base of the ears, because Nelson has established over several visits that this is the toll, and he means to be paid. He accepts it as his due and does not look up from the hay. Then the man goes back to Hector, and the two old soldiers stand a while longer in the quiet. He always stays longer than he meant to, and always has to leave in the end. Hector watches the car to the turn in the lane, and then, because he is a horse who has finally learned that the people who matter come back, he puts his head down and grazes, beside a donkey who never doubted it for a second and did not look up from the hay to confirm it.

Funny how the day after the election, the tsunami of ultra violent, misogynistic and racist comments from Reform/Restore/ MAGA accounts has disappeared. Almost as if this app is co-opted by a headcase to interfere in democratic elections on behalf of foreign actors, isn’t it?

The electorate are not ungovernable, the media is. Levison 2, by the looks of it, will never come, and it's already years overdue.

Peter Hague @peterrhague

a day ago

No British PM has completed a term in office since 2015, despite two of those PMs being elected with landslide majorities. The country is essentially ungovernable - at least under the existing system of governance. Good luck Burnham.

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David Lammy speaking in 2019 "Brexit is a con, a trick, a swindle, a fraud, a deception that will hurt most of those it promised to help." He was right, and it is time we had a government with the wisdom and courage to put an end to this disastrous ultra right-wing experiment. We should be looking forward to the economic boost which would come with rejoining – the Rejoin Dividend.

Just one coal power station I worked at (there have been 14,000 since 1950’s) lifetime waste Mined coal 240 million tonnes Mined limestone 18 MT Solids waste 100 MT Decommissioning waste 3 million tonnes solid scrap waste 200,000 tonnes controlled hazardous waste

I had a magical experience with a bumblebee yesterday. I saw her on the bike path and thought she was a goner, she couldn’t move her front legs but I still didn’t want her squished so I tried bringing her to a flower and she starting eating! But the coolest thing was… 1/

DO NOT touch that keyboard. This is one of the most dangerous attacks circulating right now. This is called a ClickFix attack. It is not a CAPTCHA. It is not a verification step. It is a social engineering attack designed to make you execute malicious code on your own machine while believing you are proving you are human. Here is exactly what happens if you follow those steps. The fake page has already silently copied a malicious PowerShell command to your clipboard without you knowing. It happened the moment the page loaded. You did not click anything. You did not consent to anything. The clipboard was written to in the background by JavaScript running on the page. When you press Win + R you open the Windows Run dialog. When you press Ctrl + V you paste that malicious command directly into it. When you press Run you execute it with your own permissions on your own machine. No exploit needed. No vulnerability needed. You did it yourself. Willingly. While thinking you were completing a CAPTCHA. The payload varies. Researchers have documented ClickFix delivering infostealers, remote access trojans, and credential harvesters. The malware executes instantly and silently. By the time the Run dialog closes the damage is done. The reason this attack works so well is threefold. The fake CAPTCHA looks visually identical to a real one. The instructions sound technical and therefore trustworthy. And critically, you are the one executing the command so endpoint security tools see a legitimate user action rather than an automated attack. Real CAPTCHAs never ask you to open Run dialogs. Real CAPTCHAs never ask you to paste anything. Real CAPTCHAs never give you keyboard shortcuts. If a webpage ever asks you to press Win + R for any reason, close the tab immediately.

52 Questions for Andy Burnham, if he wants to be Prime Minister. If Andy Burnham is serious about becoming prime minister, then there are a series of questions he needs to answer before anyone can sensibly judge whether he offers a genuine alternative to the current government, or merely a different personality pursuing much the same agenda. The questions need to go beyond personality, competence, or electability. They need to establish what he believes, what he would do, and how he understands the challenges the UK faces. Here are 52 questions, including one final critical one, I would like him to answer. The economy 1. What is the fundamental purpose of the UK economy? 2. Do you believe economic policy should prioritise GDP growth, or should it prioritise wellbeing, security and sustainability? 3. Do you believe the UK government is financially constrained in the same way as a household, business or local authority? 4. Do you accept that a government issuing its own currency can always meet obligations denominated in that currency? 5. What role do you think taxation plays in the economy: revenue raising, redistribution, inflation control, market shaping, or all of these? 6. What is your view on the current fiscal rules, and would you retain, reform or abolish them? 7. Would you continue paying interest on all commercial bank reserve balances held at the Bank of England? 8. What is your view on quantitative easing and quantitative tightening? 9. What would you do to improve productivity in the UK economy? 10. How would you reduce Britain’s dependence on rent extraction, financial speculation and asset price inflation? Wealth, tax and inequality 11. Do you believe wealth inequality is now a greater problem than income inequality? 12. What specific measures would you introduce to tax wealth more effectively? 13. Should income from wealth be taxed at least as heavily as income from work? 14. How would you tackle tax avoidance by large companies and wealthy individuals? 15. What is your view on reforming inheritance tax? 16. How would you reduce regional inequality within the UK? Housing 17. Do you think housing should primarily be a home or an investment asset? 18. What would you do to reduce house prices relative to earnings? 19. How many social homes would you build each year? 20. How would you finance a large-scale social housing programme? 21. What would you do to reform the private rented sector? 22. Would you support land value taxation, compulsory purchase reform, or other measures to tackle land speculation? Climate and the environment 23. Do you believe economic growth can be fully reconciled with environmental sustainability? 24. What is your strategy for achieving net zero while maintaining public support? 25. How would you fund the transition to a low-carbon economy? 26. What role should public ownership play in energy generation, transmission and distribution? 27. How would you ensure that the costs of climate transition are borne fairly? 28. What policies would you adopt to restore biodiversity, waterways and ecosystems? Public services and the state 29. What should be the balance between public provision and private provision in healthcare? 30. Would you reverse NHS privatisation measures introduced since 2012? 31. How would you tackle the social care crisis? 32. What reforms would you make to education? 33. How would you rebuild local government after fifteen years of austerity? 34. What powers and funding would you devolve to local and regional government, and are you open to independence if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland wish for it? Work, income and social security 35. What is your vision for the future of work? 36. Do you support stronger trade union rights and sectoral collective bargaining? 37. What is your view on a job guarantee programme? 38. How would you address economic insecurity among younger generations? 39. What reforms would you make to Universal Credit and social security more generally? Debt, money and finance 40. Do you believe the national debt is a major problem facing the UK? Please explain your logic. 41. What do you understand government debt to be? Should government debt always be reduced, or can it sometimes be increased for good economic reasons? 42. How do you distinguish between productive public investment and current spending? 43. What role should government borrowing play in funding infrastructure, housing and climate transition? 44. Should the Bank of England’s mandate be reformed? Should it pay interest on central bank reserve accounts? 45. What reforms would you make to the banking system? Britain and the world 46. What should Britain’s economic relationship with Europe be? 47. What industrial strategy would you pursue? 48. How would you respond to increasing geopolitical instability and trade fragmentation? 49. How do we resolve conflicts in the Middle East? What is the UK’s role in that? 50. What role should Britain play in tackling global inequality and climate change? 51. What is the future of our relationship with the USA and NATO? What are the defence consequences of that? The biggest question And perhaps the most important question of all: 52. What is your theory of society? That question matters because every successful political project ultimately rests on an answer to that question: - Neoliberalism begins with the individual. - Conservatism begins with institutions. - Reform begins with belonging and identity. - The Greens begin with nature and climate. - Labour traditionally began with solidarity, but that no longer seems to be the case. Before Andy Burnham can ask people to support him, he needs to tell them where he begins and what his priorities are, because every policy choice that follows depends upon his answer to that question. Isn't that the least we should expect?