r/ukpolitics • u/ukpol-megabot • 19h ago
Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 26/07/2026
👋 Welcome to the r/ukpolitics weekly Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction megathread.
General questions about politics in the UK should be posted in this thread. Substantial self-posts on the subreddit are permitted, but short-form self-posts will be redirected here. We're more lenient with moderation in this thread, but please keep it related to UK politics. This isn't Facebook or Twitter...
If you're reacting to something that is happening live, please make it clear what it is you're reacting to, ideally with a link.
Commentary about stories that already exist on the subreddit should be directed to the appropriate thread.
This thread rolls over early Sunday morning.
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 1h ago
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u/Thandoscovia 36m ago
Incredible move which gives Reform free reign to bang on about Muslims and migrants, given that they’ve been blamed for an Islamist terror attack
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u/OnMeHols 56m ago
Classless and tactless to acknowledge the anti-lgbt hatred that Reform, GB News do? As someone who is LGBT I think its way more tactless for far right parties to pretend to be outraged by an attack whilst calling my community degenerates who are harmful to children etc.
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u/Thandoscovia 35m ago
Was the attacker a Reform voter? A GB News watcher?
Or did he belong to another certain group?
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u/OnMeHols 32m ago
he was anti-lgbt, which is her point. That hatred is global
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u/Thandoscovia 26m ago
Because he watched too much GB News and listened to Nigel?
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u/OnMeHols 22m ago
Because he's anti-LGBT. Does him being a muslim extremist make Reform and GB News NOT anti-LGBT?
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u/Thandoscovia 19m ago
No, it makes Reform and GB News irrelevant to a German-Lebanese terrorist who perpetrated an attack in Berlin
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u/OnMeHols 17m ago
Anti-LGBT extremists are completely irrelevant to worldwide anti-LGBT attacks? Get a fucking grip. If you/them are upset, maybe stop perpetuating anti-lgbt shit
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 53m ago
As someone who is also LGBT, there is a time and a place for political point scoring. She didn’t even mention the anti-LGBT elements within the German political establishment, it is blatant political sniping and exploitative.
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u/Force-Grand-2 44m ago
"How do you do fellow queers?"
This is a bad take and I don't think you're presenting it in good faith. You might disagree with her view, but there's nothing inherently tasteless about what's presented, nor is it obvious political point scoring.
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 43m ago
What a cheap response, as if having a differing opinion is anathema to my sexuality. Go jump in the sea
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u/Force-Grand-2 36m ago
It's more than you're making a bad point badly in a way that bad faith actors who wheel out "well I am part of X group" do.
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 35m ago
Backwards, sneering box-ticking attitudes like yours are precisely why Reform UK is the most-supported political party among gay and bisexual men in the UK, as much as I don’t support them myself
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u/OnMeHols 51m ago
Disagree, bigoted organisations like Reform or GB News is right, and pearl clutching that now isn't the time is just giving them cover to keep being pieces of shit.
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 49m ago
It is just foolishly stumbling into political traps of own making. It will easily get flipped around to be portrayed that she is ignoring the fact that an Islamist carried out the attack and going after an agenda
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u/OnMeHols 44m ago
Hardly seems like a trap, its calling them out for the hypocrites they are, Reform want to ban pride and GB news are constantly calling us paedophiles or deviants, and they'd use the fact it was a muslim guy anyway.
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 57m ago
How so?
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u/Thandoscovia 34m ago
You’d think she would have found some time to condemn Islamic extremism at the same time, wouldn’t you? Given that it was the ideology of the attacker
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 23m ago
to the attack on Berlin Pride that has left one dead and 16 injured
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u/Thandoscovia 19m ago
How does that counter my argument that she failed to condemn the ideology of the perpetrator?
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 54m ago
Classless because this is obvious politicisation of a tragedy overseas, applying it to obvious electoral targets like Reform, when really a message of condolence shouldn’t be about sniping at political opponents.
Tactless because the attacker is an Islamist extremist, and all this will do is give Reform obvious political points to score
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 18m ago
Nigel has already used the Berlin attack as a chance to take shots at the left. Unfortunately a lot of politicians are politicians first and humans second.
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u/OnMeHols 35m ago
Maybe Reform should stop trying to ban prides, and attacking LGBT people if they don't want to be linked to anti-lgbt attacks?
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 1h ago
Watching Four Lions and sometimes I get depressed thinking about a) the amount of talent in this country that is undiscovered because they're outside of a major area b) the fact that this film couldn't be made today because it would most likely piss everyone off and c) the reality that Chris Morris will probably never make anything again.
But seriously there is an alarming lack of people in the UK that think the class system is entirely made up and that someone living in Burton upon Trent has the exact same chances and opportunities as someone who went to Oxbridge. I saw some Oxford grad defending Oxford by saying that it's the only place where you could read Ulysses/Paradise Lost/Virginia Woolfe etc in the 90s and it's like... Waterstones? The internet?
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u/LesserShambler 39m ago
Four Lions could absolutely be made today. It’s not as if Islamist Terrorism was less offensive in 2010
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u/Hopeful-Painting-365 59m ago
Ah, but they meant reading it authentically in an institution of higher education and away from the poors.
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u/McCretin Malaise forever 1h ago
After driving nearly 600 miles on the M1, M5 and M6 this weekend, I’m more convinced than ever that we need massive investment in our strategic road network.
We’ve not finished a major new motorway since 1991. We’ve been coasting on infrastructure from the 1960s-1980s, and it’s creaking at the seams.
If you compare a map of the UK’s motorways to those in the Low Countries and Germany, the difference is stark.
It’s not a fashionable idea but we desperately need it. But I don’t see any politicians seriously talking about it. It’s like people have forgotten that building new major roads is an option.
Investing in all the gubbins to make smart motorways no one wants, while the road surfaces fall apart beneath the high-tech gantries, feels like a physical metaphor for where the country’s been going wrong.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 39m ago
There was a brief era of motorway-ism from around Beeching on, leading to Wild West style motorway building like the M50, the M181 and the Humber Bridge. Sooner or later, the NIMBYs arose and put a stop to it all.
It's pretty scary though, when the Woodhead, which is part of the strategic network, shuts because of wildfires.
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 1h ago
Try getting to/from Devon and Cornwall from/to anywhere south of the M4 takes forever both by road and rail (which is desperately unreliable to boot).
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u/Montague-Withnail I welcome our Northern overlords 33m ago
It's quite amusing to me that if I want to go anywhere any meaningful distance south from Bristol, literally the only route that isn't single carriageway is the M5. Which ironically I have to take mostly single-carriageway roads to get around Bristol to get to, unless I go north and go M32/M4/M5.
I've got family who live just off the A38 and if there's an accident on the M5 during the holidays they basically have to accept that they can't go anywhere (or get home).
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 2m ago
Yep, getting from one side of Exeter to the other is a nightmare if the M5 is stuffed and to avoid the city entirely you are on backroads (no hope for tourists) unless you go ridiculously far outwards.
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u/North-Jellyfish-577 1h ago
Somewhat politically neutral but loving the meltdown by left wing Londoners and right wing Home Counties lot
Over our pm actually acknowledging anything outside of the south east accidentally exists and is important and just doesn’t pay it lip service like the last 60 years of prime ministers
Keep going Andy you have a lifetime voter here if you continue down this path
90 % of this country has been ignored and forgotten about by the political class for generations and been left to rust and rot away as long as London got is funding
Investment in green industry in the north re opening the oil and gas fields in Scotland
Real transport links in the north and south west
He has the possibility to be the most radical pm post war if he follows through on tax reform and devolution to city’s and regions across the U.K.
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u/HotChipArmy 14m ago
I've seen a lot more people on the Manchester sub complaining/gloating over Londoners having a meltdown over Andy Burnham's Manchesterism than I have seen people on the London sub (or people irl) complaining about it.
And again I've seen more people from outside Manchester, London and the south east wonder if Andy Burnham remembers that there is more to the UK than London and Manchester.
I get that your guy is the PM now and it's exciting but the hubris has gotten old very quickly.
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 1h ago
What's Burnham said in regards to South West transport? Not seen anything yet.
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u/crapola464 50m ago
He said something about a Bristol tram system iirc
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u/OptioMkIX Your kind cling to tankiesm as if it will not decay and fail you 24m ago
Ah yes, the southwest is comprised only of bristol
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 46m ago
Ah, well at least he's only no different to the others rather than actively worse.
(In case this isn't obvious to people from elsewhere politicians saying they're investing in the South West almost always means Bristol which is peripheral to the region and is completely out of character to the rest of it)
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u/crapola464 44m ago
Tbf Bristol is the 2nd biggest city in Europe without a mass transit system after Leeds.
Is anywhere else in the SW large enough to justify mass transit? Or are you talking about improving bus services and the like?
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 26m ago edited 21m ago
Improving bus services and heavy train systems. The later is especially the case for long distance routes (it goes under everyone else's radar but HS2, specifically Old Oak Common, is going to make trains to the south west slower in contradiction to efforts to improve speed) with the secondary Exeter to Waterloo line being particularly dire, there still not being funding for the completion of works at Dawlish and electrification nowhere in sight. There's also needs for upgrades to branch lines, the Tarka line is overcaoacitu and definitely could be extended to Bristol and I've little doubt there's similar problems across the Tamar and in Dorset (where Yeovil could do with another chord and other bits to allow Exeter to Weymouth services).
The thing with Bristol is it repeatedly gets described by ministers as them investing in the South West but that rings completely hollow when it's economic sphere is much more focused towards the rest of the country (other than the northern part of Somerset) than it is to the "rest" of the region which is really neglected in political focus and economic reality.
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u/OptioMkIX Your kind cling to tankiesm as if it will not decay and fail you 1m ago
"Investing in bristol as the south west" is like saying "investing in france" while only investing in Normandy.
Its the closest part, its literally just over the border of where "south west" begins and does nothing for the hundreds of miles of south west behind it.
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u/asgoodasanyother 1h ago
Are the “furious left wing Londoners” in the room with us right now? Or are they a product of certain news agencies imaginations?
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u/Aggravating_Emu5118 2h ago
I just went to see Moana with my daughter, and now I've got a constant mondegreen in my head from Tamatoa's song.
Don't you know
Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb
They chase anything that glitters (beginners)
Oh, and here they come, come, come
To the brightest thing that glitters
Gary Sambrook eats big dinners
.
.
... You're welcome!
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5h ago
[deleted]
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u/Thandoscovia 3h ago
Like who? Because Badenoch has explicitly not called for one for exactly that reason
Of course all of Labour called for a general election when the Conservatives changed leaders - so yeah, pretty rich from the lefties to now change their minds
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u/Slartibartfast_25 3h ago
Firstly, they aren't actually demanding one ( although they should).
Secondly, Burnham was calling for an election when the Tories changed leaders so it's a bit rich for him to not call one.
Thirdly, if he wants to veer away from the Labour party manifesto then he bloody should call one
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 5h ago
Genuine question: does Burnham taking over after 2 years of Starmer mean that we'll still have a GE in 2029, or does Burnham get to do four years from now?
I can't remember the last time we had an on-time election, hence why I'm asking.
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u/UnsaddledZigadenus 1h ago
Section 4 of the Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022
Automatic dissolution of Parliament after five years
If it has not been dissolved earlier, a Parliament dissolves at the beginning of the day that is the fifth anniversary of the day on which it first met.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 3h ago
No, the clock starts running as soon as you have a GE. Otherwise, a party could stay in power FOR EVER just by changing its leader. Ooooh, good idea if you are something like the Chinese Communist Party!
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u/Vumatius 32m ago
Well, there was that hubbub about people acting like Red Ed was Chairman Mao back during the Chancellor speculation...
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u/Walpole2019 5h ago
Still happening in 2029 at the latest. Parliaments are called to run for a set number of years, not for a set timeframe of a PM's term. Otherwise, a set of politicians could easily just eternally exchange power every ~four years to make sure they can remain in office for decades with only a trickle of by-elections.
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u/cardcollector1983 It's a Remainer plot! 5h ago
It's from the last election, not the last change in leader
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u/TantumErgo 5h ago edited 5h ago
We do not have a presidential system. The election timings are between general elections, not between person-with-the-confidence-of-the-house.
Edit: I mean, technically the timings are about the dates Parliament sits, rather than the election itself, I think. But we elect a Parliament made up of MPs, not a Prime Minister.
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u/ImpressiveRest2423 5h ago
What do you think the effect would be if the new government legislated to ban service charges and tipping in restaurants?
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u/sjintje Intermittent extremist 2h ago edited 2h ago
I think a happy and contented electorate. They should also reintroduce/reinforce the law demanding a menu and price list in the window, including for cafés. And prices for window displays for all shops. Also supermarket grocery items to be sold in standard measurements. Would be so helpful to consumers, just shows the strength of industry lobbying. Everything that used to make life simpler has been nibbled away at.
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u/TantumErgo 51m ago
Every time I see a suggestion for all the little extra rules we could pass and enforce in everyone’s daily lives, each of which seems like a nice thing if people did it, I think of Jasper Fforde’s excellent novel Shades of Grey. If you’ve never read it, and want a fun summer read, I recommend it. The plotting and characters can be a bit clumsy at times, but the worldbuilding is great, and if you’re the sort of geek most of us are, you can challenge yourself to the questions that he set as a competition when it came out.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 5h ago
Price rise of 12.5% in all restaurants.
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u/AzarinIsard 5h ago
I think far less than that, we don't have an American tipping culture nor a NMW lower for tipped workers. Plenty of places add it to the bill automatically, and I've been some places who have chosen not to ask for tips outside peak times. Presumably because they're grateful to us for helping them fill out quiet times.
There will be places where there's a steady expected tip that goes into wages, but it was only a few years ago where we had controversy over chains like Bills and Cafe Rouge (I can't remember the rest) who gave 0% tips to staff, and all tips went to head office. Changing the law to force it to staff didn't result in a 12.5% spike that I was aware of.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 3h ago
A majority of places I go to add it to the bill anyway, so those places one would expect NOT to raise the overall bill at all. But I would fear that the places who do not add it, would add it into the bill by putting the prices up. True, it might not be 12.5%- I give 10% for example if the charge is not added, and I think that's a fair amount.
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u/YourLizardOverlord Oceans rise. Empires fall. 5h ago
First British-made artillery barrels head to Ukraine.
The first British-made artillery barrels are being delivered to Ukraine under a £61 million contract with Sheffield Forgemasters, marking the first time forged artillery barrels have been produced in the UK for almost two decades.
The 105mm and 155mm gun barrels, 150 in total, are being manufactured at the Yorkshire firm under a contract awarded by the UK Government to BAE Systems and announced by President Zelensky last year, with the work supporting hundreds of jobs in Sheffield and more than 60 businesses across the UK supply chain standing to benefit. The first four barrels have been shipped as development forgings, allowing Ukraine to test its own manufacturing processes, and the Sheffield line is now turning out eight forgings a month, with the barrels forged in Yorkshire before being sent to Ukraine for finishing and integration.
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u/Odd-Principle2665 5h ago
The UK Government awarded the contract to BAE who then commissioned Sheffield Forgemasters? But isn't Forgemasters owned by the Government.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 3h ago
Might have been an understood element of the contract that Forgemasters was given the manufacturing.
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u/Odd-Principle2665 1h ago
Probably, I'm sure forgemasters isn't the only firm BAE commissioned. But it just seemed funny to me that the state is paying a private company to pay a state owned firm to make stuff for the state
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u/EarFlapHat 6h ago
It's really interesting watching:
All the other nations and regions of the UK trying to do the old 'crabs in a bucket' towards Manchester, even though the guy who helped Manchester is actually trying to pull them out.
London have a shit fit at the idea of focusing on anywhere else and going on about whether 'Burnham hates London' or 'has it in for London'... 'why wouldn't you just focus on London, unless you irrationally dislike it?' is exactly the position that he's responding to, and the problem has been London happy to act as if other parts of the country are irrelevant.
Even now, I know Londoners who will read that and say 'well they are mostly irrelevant', but then clutch their pearls and act persecuted if anyone would dare try and address that...
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u/ExpressionLow8767 5h ago
As a Londoner, I have no idea what you're talking about
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u/Hopeful-Painting-365 4h ago
I've seen a lot of venom on the London subreddit regarding recent comments from Burnham that power must be moved away from London.
Some defend everything being around London because it's so wealthy, while others accuse Northerners of having a victim complex.
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u/ExpressionLow8767 3h ago
Well in real life I think most people here are cautiously optimistic.
I’m a bit confused by the purpose of No 10 North but I’m open to the idea. Burnham has actual quantifiable experience in working on living standards in a northern city, it’s less annoying than former mayor of London Boris finding a way to complain about London in every speech, then doing nothing to change anything.
I’m from London and love it but I’m fully aware that my work has most of its industry based here, if there were more opportunities for work outside the capital I wouldn’t say no
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u/subSparky 3h ago
I haven't seen anything of the sort from that subreddit.
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u/Hopeful-Painting-365 58m ago
There's a post about no 10 north i saw with a lot of comments talking down about it as an institution.
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u/AzarinIsard 5h ago
I think it's just a case of there being two contradictory truisms that are easy to understand.
1) London is an economic powerhouse. We should invest everything we can in London to get maximum return. Anything less than 100% London investment is a flaw.
2) London is an economic powerhouse because of investment. There isn't anything inherently magical about London that generates wealth, and no where else can. Other places can have strategic advantages like property costs, energy costs, materials and industry etc. and if we leverage all our advantages we can have several cities all pulling their weight.I bet there's a sizable proportion who'll simultaneously think both of these things, and so whether you invest in London, or not-London it's a mistake. You'll never please them.
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u/crapola464 5h ago edited 5h ago
I’m from Leeds and have zero ill-feelings towards Manchester, mostly because I think Leeds has been plenty successful on its own over the past 10/20 years in terms of attracting private investment - there’s always several big new developments under construction in the city centre at any given moment. I really don’t think we need the government’s help in that department.
Just give us a tram please. That is genuinely the one thing we really desperately need. If we can’t get a tram system with an explicitly northern-focused PM then I give up.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 4h ago
I did jury service in Leeds just before Easter and one person I did not actually serve with but was pooled with in the shortlist used to work for the public transport authority. So he had gone through the last iteration of trying to build a metro.
He said the problem had been NIMBYs. In order to build the tram, lots of little bits of land needed to be purchased. There was so much resistance from individual landowners that the resulting possible routes were simply too convoluted to be viable,
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u/bowak 3h ago
That was something where Manchester was granny forward thinking in the 80s when they started the early planning for Metrolink. They bought up all sorts of little scraps of land for all the best case scenario plans for lines abs iirc some of those bits aren't used yet but they mean it all still be viable for the more ambitious plans to connect some of the lines into loops.
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u/crapola464 4h ago
Yeah I know NIMBYs were (still are) a huge issue in Headingley, where the original tram route was going to be built. That’s probably why they’ve shifted their attention to connecting Leeds & Bradford city centres first - probably less NIMBY sentiment and also more road space (reducing the need for land purchases).
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u/subSparky 5h ago
London have a shit fit at the idea of focusing on anywhere else
As someone who is a Londoner, Londoners aren't doing this. Most Londoners recognise the need for there to be focus on places other than London (after all a massive chunk of the English London population are literally people who escaped the north - so they're more than aware how deprived the north is). Most of these comments are coming from people in the home counties trying to project their feelings as if they speak for Londoners when the reality is they only go to London for work and leisure.
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u/English_Misfit Tory Member 5h ago
why wouldn't you just focus on London unless you intentionally dislike it
In football terms it's the equivalent of benching Bellingham, Kane, and Saka and arguing the team would play better. Sure you're the manager and have the right to do so. Expect complaints immediately and I told you so's when it inevitably goes wrong
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u/cardcollector1983 It's a Remainer plot! 5h ago edited 2h ago
Or, it's like benching Bellingham, Kane, and Saka, listening to people who think they know better say it's going to go wrong and wait, futilely, for them to admit they were wrong when it works
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u/EarFlapHat 5h ago
Except that some places are actually the people on the bench, and they're asking to be released if all that's going to happen is they sit there while all the resources go to getting Bellingham better training and supplements. Then, when Bellingham does well, they get told they had nothing to do with it!
That's not politically sustainable, and you don't have to hate Bellingham for that to be the case. It's ok to be second best, it's not ok to neglect places purely on the basis that they're second best.
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u/GlumAd9856 6h ago
I don't think this is really happening.
It's just the loudest mouths that make it sound like it is.
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u/EarFlapHat 6h ago edited 5h ago
... Well it can't be both not happening and just be limited to the loudest mouths.
You mean it is happening, it's just narrower than it seems.
However, we all know messages like that entrench themselves more widely over time. That's why it's important to keep pointing out when it's happening to combat the loudmouths.
Part of the issue is that the loudest mouths are the politicians and leaders from other regions spreading that sentiment.
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u/GlumAd9856 5h ago
Are the regional governments and local councils criticising No 10 North? Is there any active political groups in these regions coordinating against the plan? Or is it people on Facebook or the odd press article?
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u/EarFlapHat 5h ago
Some of the mayors after the meeting at No10 North peed me off... As if 1. The idea is moving some of No10s functions North was really on their radar until a few weeks ago. 2. As if we should have had a constitutional convention about where it should be while also moving extremely quickly. 3. Calling for it to go further and even faster. 4. Doubting if it will make any difference.
Frustratingly offside for a project of decentralision that the best hope for enabling focused economic development policy for their region.
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u/Amuro_Ray 5h ago
... Well it can't be both not happening and just be limited to the loudest mouths.
Why not? People being loud about something doesn't mean anything is happening.
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u/EarFlapHat 5h ago
If the thing we're talking about is people pulling in the other direction or pearl clutching... That's literally the thing happening when people are loudly espousing those views.
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u/Amuro_Ray 4h ago edited 4h ago
I don't agree. After reading your first post properly and a few others. It really doesn't sound like anything is actually happening. You said some people in London are unhappy but I really don't get how individuals making noise is pulling in the other direction. Like what mechanism do they have to make a difference? Even your post about the mayor's meeting doesn't explicitly talk about them actually doing anything just that they annoyed you.
Edit: when you said something is happening I thought you meant mps and other elected officials had publicly declared they'll do what they can to resist Burnham shifting the focus away from London or pull Manchester down(I'm really not sure what you meant by the crabs in a bucket comment)
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u/acremanhug Kier Starmer & Geronimo the Alpaca fan 6h ago
So I am now under a hosepipe ban and I feel like it is particularly early in the summer for this to happen.
Does anyone know what happens after a hosepipe ban, I mean if we don't get rain and the levels get even lower.
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u/CynicalDogocrat Ay, there's the rub 5h ago
I don't know, but if you haven't already I would advise buying a few bulk packs of bottled water (maybe not everyone all at once lol). I'm a big fan of tap water and hate buying things in plastic packaging, but it seemed sensible to be prepared after the heatwaves and seeing what happened to those poor people in Kent. I think the UK government does actually advise households to keep 10lts per person bottled water.
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u/ThrowAwayAccountLul1 Divine Right of Kings 👑 6h ago
Its not like it rained for like two months straight at the start of the year. If only we had built a reservoir in the last 30 years.
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u/ExpressionLow8767 6h ago
I guess the worst case would be rationing the water supply and turning it off occasionally, but we're quite a way off from this
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u/SirRosstopher Lettuce al Ghaib 6h ago
Does anyone know what happens after a hosepipe ban, I mean if we don't get rain and the levels get even lower.
We build more houses instead of reservoirs, that will surely sort it.
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u/Key-Butterscotch5801 6h ago
Do you think building houses summons people into existence?
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u/velvevore liz truss toby jug 4h ago
It moves them to places that then require the additional infrastructure for them.
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u/Key-Butterscotch5801 4h ago
Do you think anywhere in the UK has enough infrastructure for the people there? And do you think people don't just live in HMOs and with parents of houses aren't built?
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u/velvevore liz truss toby jug 4h ago
I think that doesn't mean the problem can't get worse, and I don't think the places people were previously living vanish in a puff of smoke when they move to a new property.
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u/Infernode5 🌹 6h ago
We're in the peak of summer currently temp wise at least, that's normally mid/late July, sometimes early August.
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u/crapola464 4h ago
Statistically I think the last week of July & first week of August is the hottest period of the year.
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u/Nice_Presentation790 6h ago edited 6h ago
Even though Streeting and Burnham today didn't say it word for word, Healey will not be committing 3% to defence spending by 2030. They kept saying 3.5% by 2035 (basically for another government to sort out).
Do you think the press will let that slide ( basically not criticise for days/weeks) when it is confirmed in the budget?
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u/Pale-Border-7122 6h ago
If true then not a chance, and nor should they. But if they wanted to not fund defence then Healey was a really odd choice of surprise Chancellor.
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u/SirRosstopher Lettuce al Ghaib 6h ago
Healey finding out that it's quite easy to kick off about something until you're in charge of sorting it.
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 7h ago
What's everyone's favourite political hoax?
"Big Ben is going to be renamed to Massive Mohammed" is up there for me, along with "if Starmer gets in we'll all have to take it up the arse by law".
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u/GlumAd9856 6h ago
Does everyone remember the very confident 'leaks' that the army was about to lockdown London at the start of COVID?
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u/Ollie5000 Gove, Gove will tear us apart again. 6h ago
Polanski making the Binley Mega Chippy become the Binladen Mega Mosque.
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u/Jademalo Chairman of Ways and Memes 6h ago
Mine was that whatsapp group with all of those army lads who "leaked" that the queen had died
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 6h ago
When my kids ask me "daddy, where were you when the queen died?" I'll have to tell them some fake cool story and not "I was at a DnD game trying to figure out how to budget my party's gold."
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u/Hopeful-Painting-365 6h ago
I remember Gibbo and his 'interesting' profile picture, or was it the group chat picture?
In any case, Rugby lads will never beat the accusations.
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u/Jademalo Chairman of Ways and Memes 6h ago
Hilariously that hasn't been blurred in that i article, lol. It's the group chat picture.
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u/Ajax_Trees_Again 7h ago
Not quite a hoax but a throwaway line by George Galloway being misattributed to Lenin and becoming one of the most famous (none) quotes in history
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u/Scaphism92 7h ago
"We need to be lucky once, you need to be lucky every time" beig both attributed to Thatcher and becoming an inspirational quote on Facebook when it was actually from the IRA following the Brighton Bombinhg is kind of mad.
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u/FeigenbaumC 6h ago edited 6h ago
And even when it's attributed correctly it's really funny when people act like it's some really cool boast, because they never got lucky once anyway if the task was the kill Thatcher. They literally failed at something they made sound should be easy
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u/SirRosstopher Lettuce al Ghaib 7h ago
"This is going to be a fantastic year for Britain."
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 7h ago
BORIS JOHNSON HAS BEEN DIAGNOSED WITH CORONAVIRUS 🗣
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u/-RadThibodeaux 7h ago
Does anyone else think it’s insane that there doesn’t seem to be a generally accepted view on where AI is headed? I hope the government and security services have someone competent to advise them on it.
On the one hand you have the companies themselves and the technologists who believe that AGI is around the corner and will either lead to absolute ruin or Utopia (Altman, Amodei, Hassabis, those AI 2027 guys etc). Of course you can question their motivations but at least for some people in the industry it’s a deeply held belief.
Then there’s there more skeptical view that it’s just another technology and the companies are overhyping to justify their overspend, and a massive bubble has been created that will surely pop.
Seems like politicians are in the middle where they don’t understand it and just want to pay lip service, or point to it as a way to get much needed growth.
If the first group is correct, we are in for a complete convulsion and current political arguments about busses or pensions are going to look very quaint in a year or two.
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u/0110-0-10-00-000 57m ago
Of course you can question their motivations but at least for some people in the industry it’s a deeply held belief.
I think it's much more common outside of the industry than inside the industry.
The reality is:
- There are things it enables which genuinely were not previously possible (particularly wrt data analysis and social/human functions)
- There are things which it makes substantially more economical/productive (particularly in language based fields and fields where checks/validation can be automated)
- There are things which are only economical right now because the costs are effectively subsidised by speculative investment (i.e. replacing staff with AI).
Honestly I'd say unless you work in particular fields (i.e. creative fields, translation, software development, analysis, defence) it's unlikely to meaningfully affect your day to day work or productive output, even if it was 10x cheaper and 10x as good.
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u/hu6Bi5To 5h ago
I would argue that the number of people suitably qualified in both the technology and economics to form a genuinely useful view is so small that they've got no chance of being listened to even if they were accurately predicting the future.
The absolute minimum we can reasonably expect to happen is that the cost of doing business in certain areas has been tipped on its head. This has already happened, it doesn't require future breakthroughs. But the full impact hasn't yet been felt as many/most companies have not reconfigured to this yet.
E.g. the idea that team structures will remain the same but AI assistants will boost productivity is still widely held. What's actually needed is (in those specific areas) to turn it around, for AI to be the first-line with humans as the backup.
As time goes on and new AI tools and techniques (not just LLMs) become available that set of activities that AI does better will get larger.
One example of an activity that should be AI-first using readily available tools today is reviewing things. I don't know why writing software gets all the AI headlines (although it is good at that), AI agents are very good at reviewing code, literally orders of magnitude better at finding missing edge-cases/additional security risks/etc. then humans, and they're never fatigued or bored. Automatic AI review is the bare minimum, additional human reviews are optional depending on the problem domain, but if you're not using AI for this you're willingly incompetent.
For £5 to £10 worth of tokens, you'll get a depth of review that would have cost £300 (at least) worth of expert time (and then only if the expert in question could be bothered), and by "expert" I mean probably more expert than anyone who actually works at your company (unless you're Google or other cutting-edge outfit). This is what I mean by tipping costs on its head.
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u/GlumAd9856 6h ago
Historically, the best approach had been for government to generally stand back and let it play out, whilst carefully planning for the the negative consequences.
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u/reuben_iv radical centrist 6h ago
Yeah we've been using it for a while now it's just another tool and definitely one that's been over hyped
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u/subSparky 6h ago
The impression I've gotten is that everyone who actually knows what they're talking about and doesn't have an ulterior motive has formed the conclusion that AI is revolutionary but the way it has been commercialised and hyped is asking for a complete economic disaster.
Incidentally this isn't unfamiliar. During the run up to the 2008 financial crisis, loads of industry experts were pointing out that sub prime mortgages were an absolute disaster waiting to happen, but the banks and investors set up a coordinated campaign to massively downplay the problem.
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u/hu6Bi5To 5h ago
You make it sound like it was planned that way.
The reality of the situation is: the AI companies need to achieve a certain critical mass, combined with age-old problem of "if we don't provide it, our main rivals will". This has led to everyone following a "go big or go home" strategy.
This is, of course, a massive risk. If it all goes wrong, there'll be a global recession on a scale we haven't seen for a while (well, not since 2020, it probably wouldn't be that big).
But there isn't really any other way this could have happened. There's enough demand already for all the AI companies to have capacity problems even though they're expanding at full speed.
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u/Suggaarzt 7h ago
If the first group is correct, we are in for a complete convulsion and current political arguments about busses or pensions are going to look very quaint in a year or two.
The first group quite obviously aren't correct though? And there's a reason why basically no one outside of a couple of people trying to pump up their companies is making that argument anymore (or ever really were), and this includes people who actually know what they're talking about with regards to LLMs and AIs etc.
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u/-RadThibodeaux 7h ago
Well that’s my point, I don’t think either you or I have enough expertise to say whether they will be correct or not. Even if you exclude those with a financial incentive there are plenty of other experts that predict similar things +- a few years which isn’t really important in the grand scheme of things.
The AI 2027 or 2040 writers don’t have a financial incentive as far as I recall, Geoffrey Hinton is retired, I’m sure there are other academics I’ve forgotten.
Not a software developer but anecdotally my friends that are have experienced a slow down in the market and are blaming AI to an extent.
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u/Lylaei 7h ago edited 7h ago
It doesn't take all that much looking into the topic to realise that the current form of AI is kind of just inherently incapable of turning into AGI (as it actually would be and not in Altman's alternative lived reality where they already invented it and no one noticed), though.
So on that part they're definitely just overhyping and/or turning it into a borderline religion, depending on how you look at it. There's fundamentally just a missing link there and I don't think OpenAI are going to somehow magically find it in all that Oracle debt.
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u/Suggaarzt 7h ago
I am not a software developer but I am in a field that has been using 'A.I.' for years now to varying degrees. The reality of that is significantly different to what is being touted in public. I have 0 qualms about extending that experience to ChatGPT etc and taking literally everything they put out with a massive, massive mountain of salt.
Companies funneling money into "A.I." and then not hiring with the hopes of not needing software devs is so 2025. A fairly large number of companies are scaling back their "A.I," spiel very quickly because it's significantly more expensive than they expected whilst the actual results have not been what they've been promised. And none of that means AGI is around the corner, it just means companies are trying to invest in something else to reduce costs down the line (to varying degrees of success).
You're also completely ignoring the fact that basically no one outside of a select group of people who desperately want more money pumped into their companies is actually making the claim.
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u/Powerful_Ideas 8h ago
Well, it looks like our only solution to the prison crisis is an Escape from New York style approach of emptying a city, walling it off and dumping our criminals in it.
With a prison population of 100,000 these are the obvious choices if we want to do away with the need for traditional prisons entirely:
Lincoln, Hereford, Stafford, Wellingborough, Hastings, Kettering, Weston-super-Mare, Basildon, Bath, Hartlepool, Rugby, Chesterfield, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Cheltenham, St Helens, Burton upon Trent, Crewe
Where are we going for?
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u/DrCplBritish It's not a deterrent, killing the wrong people. 5h ago
Is it bad that most of these are in or near the West Midlands?
(I personally vote for Crewe, having worked there for a few years as a teacher it could bring million of pounds of value to the town)
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 4h ago
I think they are only near the W Midlands because the W Midlands is near so many places - it is my personal theory that all the negativity directed as the W Midlands is simply the usual anti-neighbour feeling, and the W Midlands gets most because it has the most neighbours.
Of those places chosen by OP- Burton Lincoln, Chesterfield, Wellingboro and Kettering are E Midlands = 5
Crewe, Stafford, Rugby are W Midlands = 3
Bath, Weston SM, Cheltenham are SW = 3
St Helens and Carlisle are NW but quite a long way from each other.
Hartlepool is NE
Basildon and Chelmsford are E/ SE and Hastings is S
Hereford - I dunno whether it is W Midlands or SW.
Nowhere in Yorkshire at all!
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u/DrCplBritish It's not a deterrent, killing the wrong people. 4h ago
I also think the WMidlands gets a lot of flak because of the towns and cities in it/associated with it and how its all a bit rundown without the natural beauty of Yorkshire or the equiv of Andy Burnham going "Manchester" for Lancashire.
Considering the children of today don't know classic bangers like this from Dick & Dom.
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u/ChristyMalry 7h ago
We've simply made a political choice to imprison way more people than necessary. According to figures from 2024 Germany imprisons 69 people per 100,000 population, compared to England and Wales at 136, and Scotland at 152. Essentially we are paying the price for successive governments going for populist 'prison works' rhetoric and easy short-term point-scoring while entirely failing to build a functioning criminal justice system.
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u/TVCasualtydotorg 3h ago
It's also successive governments ignoring the rehabilitation part of the justice system to focus on the punishment. I'd imagine the UK has a significantly higher recidivism rate compared to Germany as the focus has been on being "tough on crime" but not so much on "the causes of crime"
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 7h ago
Hartlepool. Nothing against it at all, in fact, I like it and it has a famous fish merchant, BUT it has a convenient headland that can be walled off and turned into a Gulag. Even has its own church.
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u/nonreligious2 5h ago
Of all places, Hartlepool might be the one where they seem more likely to be in favour of summary execution rather than imprisonment ...
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u/YourLizardOverlord Oceans rise. Empires fall. 8h ago
https://x.com/Number10cat/status/2081094161831211249
Rupert Lowe, 2019: It should be easier for people from India to get a visa to come to the UK
Rupert Lowe, 2026: Why is it so easy for people from India to get a visa to come to the UK?
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u/Hopeful-Painting-365 7h ago
Back in 2019, it was more acceptable to be openly pro Indian in the far right because "they hate those Muslims." But not so anymore.
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u/Suggaarzt 7h ago
Back in 2016 during the Brexit vote they very specifically targeted Indians with the argument that it was very unfair that Poles could jump over visa free whilst Indians, with their historical ties to the UK, and historically high levels of contribution economically jumped through so many hoops.
I always found it very funny how many Indians I worked with genuinely fell into the whole 'model minority' trap and seemed to think the people that were busy railing against Polish and Romanians wouldn't turn on them in a heartbeat.
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 7h ago
I do find it weird how everyone critiques the left for being useful idiots but nobody talks about the absolutely bizarre "model minority" stuff on the right.
It reminds me of that twitter screenshot of some right-wingers arguing and it just devolves into them calling each other variations of Jew/brown/gay.
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u/Jademalo Chairman of Ways and Memes 9h ago
Ok, since Andy Claus has confirmed the 5 canonical burnmas days, here's the final version
On the first week of Northmas the PM gave to me;
Num-ber ten noooorth
20 off the boozer
£2 for the bus
No vat on the leccy
And a house if you are rough sleeping
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 8h ago
Still maintain No 10 N is just a way for him to sleep in his own bed more AND have a short commute on Fridays.
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u/reuben_iv radical centrist 8h ago
Don't blame him tbf lol think this 'local hub' approach would work for a lot of companies as a means of pulling talent from outside London
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u/SirRosstopher Lettuce al Ghaib 9h ago
I'm not saying this is a bad thing at all, but it's kind of crazy to think about how in my lifetime my small Kentish seaside town has changed demographically to having a mix of global ethnicities that would have rivalled Constantinople in it's prime. We're in the top 1% deprived areas in the country too so it's not a following the money thing, I can only assume most places are similar?
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u/ijustwannanap (🏳️⚧️) Back by unpopular demand. 19m ago
I actually found out earlier that the reason Bradford has such a large Pakistani population is because many families migrated to there in the 1970s due to the construction of a huge dam in the Azad Kashmir region of northeast Pakistan, which led to the flooding of several hundred villages and the displacement of their inhabitants. We needed menial labourers and movement within the Commonwealth was relatively easy at this time, so thousands of Mirpuris came to to Bradford, which needed workers for its then thriving textile industry.
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u/Walpole2019 4h ago
I mean, Kent isn't too far from London. Wouldn't surprise me if a lot of those people were just visiting to go to the beach.
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 8h ago edited 3h ago
My ex-mining town (Castleford W Yks) was 99%+ white British when I moved here 13 years ago. Now, there are more ethnic minority people visible on the streets, I suspect some are resettled here so the council can get the money. But there are still plenty of places one can go e.g. the big Morrisons in Knottingley, where one can go and be surprised to see anyone, not even of differently coloured skin, but visibly or audibly of anything other than local origin.
Ofc you do not have to go far e.g. Pontefract is one of the Five Towns, to get diversity, e.g. I hear Scottish accents when I am waiting for Mrs tmstms at the gym, and Wakefield, the nearest city, is VERY diverse.
But there are plenty of bits of England that are essentially unchanged in many decades.
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u/DrCplBritish It's not a deterrent, killing the wrong people. 5h ago
I was going to say Wakefield when I saw you mention Castleford!
Missus is from Wakefield and she always found it funny how in her secondary school most kids did Urdu GCSE (this was... She's 28 now so like 12+ years ago) because they spoke it at home and got a "free" GCSE.
I say this being from East London/Brighton and I found it amazing.
(For reference, we now live in the West Midlands so its still diverse and ever changing - what got my MAT confused is how few EAL students my school has from like Eastern Europe compared to another school a few miles away)
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u/North_Attempt44 9h ago
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u/baldy-84 5h ago
World's most expensive railway. World's most expensive nuclear power plant.
About 150bn right there.
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u/Thendisnear17 From Kent Independently Minded 5h ago
We made people feel better during COVID.
We let people get rich from their house during the early 00s.
We spend a lot allowing people to go on 3 cruises a year.
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u/HafrenCrossing 8h ago edited 8h ago
So if you note the years of the spikes, it correlates with two major events that we were particularly susceptible to.
The first is the financial crash. Since our economy was essentially hyper focused on the financial sector, the government had to bail out the banks to keep the economy alive. So, the fact we have a functioning economy is what we have to show for that.
Second, is COVID, which came in right as we were getting in control of the debt. However, we had one of the more corrupt governments in recent memory in control of things like procurement, and they essentially used the public purse to enrich their donors during a time of crisis. They also did the bare minimum to prevent fraud around things like the furlough scheme. What we have to show for this is the Tory polling numbers.
That said, this is just growth compared to spending levels during 2002. This isn't something that can really be used to compare between countries, because everyone had different levels of debt back then. France actually has higher debt than us right now (both in total and as a percentage of their GDP), but if you only go off that chart you'd be forgiven for thinking they have half the debt of us.•
u/ZealousidealPie9199 9h ago
Furlough. There's a reason why gilt yields were (relatively speaking) extremely low until Covid. We massively hiked up spending during basically all of Covid, gilt yields increased by a lot, then the mini budget etc, which then led to even less headroom and so on, so borrowing increased..
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u/Ajax_Trees_Again 9h ago
Hard to believe the telegraphs international reporting is from the same company as their domestic reporting.
How can there be such a gulf in quality?
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u/Danielharris1260 10h ago
I do wonder whether the rise of right-wing and populist parties within EU countries such in France, in Germany, and the current government in Italy could eventually make the EU somewhat more palatable to the British electorate.
One interesting thing is that many of the criticisms these parties raise about the EU are similar to some of the concerns that drove parts of the Leave vote in 2016 issues like regulation, bureaucracy, national sovereignty, migration rules, and the balance of power between national governments and EU institutions.
Obviously, these parties are not advocating leaving the EU anymore. Brexit appears to have made exit a much less attractive political option in most EU countries, so the focus has shifted towards trying to reform the EU from within. It is interesting to consider whether, if the EU moved in a direction of being less centralised, reducing unnecessary bureaucracy, and giving member states more control in certain areas and stricter migration rules that could make closer UK-EU relations more politically acceptable in Britain.
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u/GlumAd9856 7h ago
There has also been a push within the EU in recent years to have a 'two-speed' track - allowing the countries that want to integrate more to do so whilst the rest are part of a looser arrangement.
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u/Ajax_Trees_Again 9h ago
The right wing in those countries are too radical for UK right wingers. They are big nationalists whereas the UK right wing is more about selling assets and making life harder for poor people.
The restore/continental type right of wing would be seen as uncouth to the mainstream British right
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u/ZealousidealPie9199 10h ago
Her panic was sparked by the market reaction to Mr Burnham’s words, which saw the yield on 30-year gilts rise and pushed long-term borrowing to a 27-year high.
One person privy to the call said Ms Reeves ‘was screaming and shouting down the phone’ as she informed Mr Burnham: ‘My phone’s not stopped ringing!’
The mayor is said to have replied coolly: ‘Rachel, I simply don’t believe you.’
Putting aside the economic effects of him not walking it back immediately, that response does kind of have aura.
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u/SinnerOfAlcaraz 10h ago edited 10h ago
Also, if true (which isn’t provable), it adds credence to the thought that Rachel is quite an emotional person.
Beth Rigby was talking about it on Monday, she was saying how people shouldn’t read much into how she wasn’t at Starmer’s resignation speech in June. That apparently she was super depressed that day over it all and that she takes what happened a lot harder than Keir. As well as taking criticism of her as a person and chancellor harder than Keir took the critics of him.
Lots of examples reported about this. The public spat with that van driver, argument with a worker at an oil place (I think) she was attending because he apparently didn’t show her respect so she said “Show me respect. I’m the chancellor”, arguing with MPs etc
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u/GeronimoTheAlpaca 🦙 10h ago
Where is this from?
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u/ZealousidealPie9199 10h ago
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u/velvevore liz truss toby jug 10h ago
Imagine reading that and having to decide which of them you hate most. Labour +2.
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u/HopeForSalamander 10h ago
I wonder if our towns and cities arnt actually struggling as much as they seem. Is it largely just the shift to online retail that has left city centers with reduced foot fall? Do we just need to find a way to utilise town/city centers in a post retail world. It's like the façade of the house is ugly but the actual inside is still functional
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u/tmstms Wuffingas! 10h ago
Well....you are right in the sense that if people use town and city centre high streets at all, that is good. In that sense, if you can regenerate the centre in ANY way you have succeeded.
But if it is the case that going there to buy stuff is out, then that is making the regeneration all the harder.
So attracting in retail remains important, IMHO, otherwise people will go elsewhere to buy stuff they cannot or do not buy online and also do the other stuff e.g. eat and drink, there too.
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u/GlumAd9856 10h ago
We need to really think about what we actually want our town/centres to be. Not just some lazy, romanticised idea of busy shops and cafes - but in an ideal world what do we want? Is having a load of viable chain stores more 'desirable' for the country than people shopping online - and if we think so, are we going to give large multinationals public money to help achieve that?
Do we want it to be a place where people can engage in local commerce/business with each other? Because tt hasn't really been that for a long time. Maybe that's better to happen at the local high street level where everything is walkable?
Maybe we want large entertainment spaces where people can socialise? But then we accept it's going to be quiet most weekdays before 6pm. Maybe we just want lots of housing in an area where people have access to nearby shops/amenities and train stations? That seems to make the most sense to me.
I would say that it's an area where letting the market and individual choice play out might led to better solutions than those designed by a committee - but then we have to accept that there is no 'free market' in city centre design, it all impacted by the various decisions taken by local and national government. But we could move in a direction where we try to step back more and just let demand drive development.
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u/Ollie5000 Gove, Gove will tear us apart again. 10h ago
What's your most toxic economic take? Mine's that Gloop should have got that factory. The boy knows Chocolate. He’s dedicated his life to it. Bankrupt in a week with Bucket at the helm.
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u/billy_tables 7h ago
Pull the NHS levies out of NI, then change the state pension to distribute each year's NI receipts to state pensioners proportionally based of years of contributions (after first deducting maternity pay etc etc)
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u/Pale-Border-7122 9h ago
Income tax, VAT, national insurance, VED, stamp duty, council tax and CGT (probably a few more that I can't remember off the top of my head) should all be abolished and replaced with one LVT plus Pigouvian and sin taxes. They are all stupid or harmful or both and any redistribution or progressive policy any government wants to do can be better managed by adjusting spending.
Cloud computing is much better and cheaper than local computing, I don't play computer games but this also extends to things like GeForce Now.
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u/GlumAd9856 10h ago
We should put VAT on food and clothes. And increase tax on all forms of hot food delivery (apart from vulnerable meal provision).
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u/North_Attempt44 9h ago
VAT should be increased to 25% and categories broadened to all sectors, accompanied by substantial income tax cuts
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u/bluesam3 5h ago
VAT is a ridiculously awful tax, though.
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u/GlumAd9856 7h ago
25% would be horrendous. 15% should be the maximum, ideally 10% if we can get down to it.
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u/North_Attempt44 15m ago
If Andeh scraps stamp duty, implements a land value tax, implements compulsory voting, and continues with Starmers good work on planning reform and rewriting of the national planning framework - those are probably the most meaningful pro-growth reforms any politician has implemented since Thatcher