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Well, maybe

The Dubai airline has ordered a total of 270 new 777X planes from Boeing at $440m (£330m) apiece, with the first jet built in 2019. But repeated delays stemming from design modifications has meant Emirates is still waiting for the planes seven years later.
Sir Tim Clark, the president of Emirates, said the initial batch of 10 of the jets required such a patchwork of changes to update them that they were not fit for purpose.
“We’re not taking that batch and that’s it,” he told The Telegraph at the Farnborough International Airshow. “As far as we’re concerned, what they do with them is up to them.”
Sir Tim said he understood that Boeing had been trying to find a home for the aircraft, before adding: “Heinz would be interested – baked bean cans.”

Except planes are made of aluminium and carbon fibre, baked bean cans of steel…..coke cans possibly, but not beans

Nope, wrong

And in the age of AI, stolen images of children matter. Taken in real life or scraped from the internet, they’re the raw material for generating realistic-looking child abuse material of the most extreme and disturbing kind. (If that sounds like a grim but ultimately fairly victimless crime, the Internet Watch Foundation warned in a recent report that AI-generated material risks fuelling sexual interest in children, normalising violence and increasing the risk of real-life offending.)

That some will be inflamed by piccies into doing is clearly true. That others will wank themselves into a stupor over piccies and not do is also, obviously, true. What we want to know is what is the balance? Does more piccies mean less action and more stupor?

Yes. We know this. Overall porn acts sa a substitute, not a complement. Therefore we don’t actually want to stop people AIing porn at all, rather encourage it.

Not that that’s an argument that’s likely to fly in political circles…..

Oh, right

Nicaragua’s long-serving president, Daniel Ortega, has said the country will hold no further elections to prevent the opposition from coming to power.

The 80-year-old authoritarian leader, who has been in office since 2007, also said he would work with the congress he controls to pass new laws that would “build a wall” against the opposition.

Is he still a lefty hero? Or has all that passed?

Fairly naked demand

No one needs to play around to find £16 billion of potential spending capacity in UK fiscal rules. They just need to highlight the folly of such rules when the UK also has around £8 trillion of supposed financial wealth (and maybe more), most of whih is used for financial speculation. It could instead be used to fund constructive investment in ways I have outlined, many times.

You’ve got what I want to spend. Gimme.

What glorious joy, eh?

Heat pump households face winter warmth rationing as the drive to net zero raises increasing fears of blackouts.
By the end of next year, electricity suppliers will be able to remotely turn down heat pump central heating to help Britain’s energy system cope with high demand.
Suppliers are expected to do so on the instructions of the quango responsible for coordinating the grid, which is overseen by Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ).

How long before someone starts to use it to punish BadThink?

Loud cameras?

The Odyssey is the first feature movie to be filmed entirely with Imax cameras – a system of very heavy and loud cameras that capture a sharper, brighter and higher-resolution content.

Someone here will be able to eplain the “loud” part to us all?

Snigger

But something else struck me while reading example after example of quoted texts. It was all tawdry, poorly written, poorly argued stuff. You come away not with the sense that this is an august magazine dedicating its formidable intellectual and journalistic resources towards a problematic minority it is concerned about, but with the sense that it isn’t a serious publication.

Its articles are the sort of content you get from GB News, or a bellicose radio phone-in, or a tabloid on a tear.

Nesrine, in The Guardian, says this about The Spectator?

The Spectator and its broader universe constitute what is now mostly a low-brow media attempting to dress up racist audience-baiting as high-end journalism, all of which is met not with alarm and objection by establishment politics, but a “cheers” in the sunshine. It is not that Muslims have turned into a bigger problem for the country, but that the country itself, and its so-called intellectual elites, have become small. In resisting the feeling that this is all just how it is, in not glazing over, we resist becoming small along with them.

Yes, Nesrine, in The G.

Eh?

In the wake of his withdrawal, Democrats are asking themselves many questions, chief among them, who will replace him as their party’s nominee in the marquee Senate race? But the saga has also revived a deeper debate over whose flaws are forgivable – and whose are disqualifying.

“White men get to fail,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young, progressive candidates to run for office. “Women do not get to make mistakes. People of color do not get to make mistakes.”

So, white bloke gets thrown out of Sentate race for mistakes made. Now this bint says that white folks what?

Umm

My starting point is definitional and a departure from conventional framing. A government bond, or, in the UK context, a gilt, is not in any meaningful economic sense a loan that the government takes out and must repay. It is the equivalent of a fixed-term bank deposit account.

But a bank deposit account is the bank borrowing your money from you. And yes, we are all rather keen on banks repaying our deposit accounts.

Digital ID

We Couldn’t Have Done This Without You

Yesterday was a huge moment for the No to Digital ID campaign. Following months of public pressure, incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced that the Digital ID policy will be scrapped.

This is a victory that belongs to every one of you.

From day one, this campaign has been powered by people who refused to stay silent. Together we’ve grown to more than 55,000 supporters, delivered over 100,000 leaflets across the UK, and even secured the backing of former Prime Minister Liz Truss.

Every donation, every leaflet, every share, every conversation, and every message of support helped build the momentum that made this impossible to ignore.

I’d also like to extend a special thank you to Tim Worstall for giving our campaign a platform at a crucial time. Your support helped us reach a wider audience and ensured our concerns about Digital ID were heard.

But we’re not declaring victory just yet.

A promise is only as good as the action that follows. We’ll be watching closely to make sure Andy Burnham keeps his word and that Digital ID doesn’t quietly return under a different name or through the back door.

If you’d like to help us continue holding the government to account and defending privacy, freedom and security, please consider supporting the campaign.


Support the Campaign

Today we can celebrate what we’ve achieved together. Tomorrow, we keep the pressure on.

Thank you for standing with us. The campaign continues.

Depends what he axes, no?

Outlining plans to axe the digital ID scheme, a spokesman for Mr Burnham said: “One of the first things this government will do is put its focus where people need it right now: creating breathing space and delivering change they can feel in their everyday lives.
“That means all the time and resource that was going to be spent on a national ID scheme will go instead to where it’s most needed, such as helping with the cost of living.
“This government is determined to bring power back to communities, instead of hoarding it in Whitehall. We will work every day to lift this country back up to where it belongs, with growth in every postcode, and hope in every heart.”

Will anyone using Companies House still have to have one? If so then it’s not really axed, is it?

So, not going to solve the problem at all then

The options. Burnham could revisit the idea of tightening eligibility requirements, or he could reduce the value of some benefits. But this seems unlikely given his political instincts and pledge to avoid “crude cuts”. Instead he will probably focus on reducing demand.
Clues. Burnham has already given indications he intends to pursue this path. He has promised a massive programme of council house building and described the growing number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) as “deeply concerning”.

He’ll destroy a vast amount of wealth – council houses are worth very much less than it costs to build them – and not kill any part of the benefits bill.

Well done, Andy.

Snigger

The grants are part of a broader shift that has caused dismay among veterans of the state department. In interviews, five former officials suggested that there has been a months-long effort by Trump-aligned individuals in the state department to subvert normal funding procedures and allocate US taxpayer money to conservative and Maga-aligned causes in the UK and Europe.

They’d prefer all the money continue to go to the usual NGO types, obviously. But, you know, when you concentrate so much power into government and then you have an election that power does become available to your enemies, no?

Umm, OK.

Patrick Spencer was seen on camera coming up behind two women and putting his arms around them at the private members’ club during a night out in August 2023, less than a year before he was elected to the seat of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich.

Spencer, 38, was accused of “cupping” the breasts of both women, who he did not know, before “fist pumping” towards his friends nearby.

During his police interview, Spencer apologised for grabbing hold of the two women – from behind – and conceded it was “not acceptable in this day and age”. At his trial at Southwark crown court, Spencer insisted that he had not touched the breasts of one of the women, while contact with the other woman had been unintentional.
…
Spencer is the son of Michael Spencer, a billionaire donor to the Conservative party. He told the court he had drunk red wine with his father at lunch, beers at Twickenham while watching an England rugby match, and drank wine and negroni cocktails at the members’ club.

Umm, well, I dunno.

Drunk slobbering over titties in a club is, well, yes, sexual, we can call it an assault, but “sexual assault”? According to the wimmins, yes. But what’s a crime runs into the wall of what society as a whole considers to be a crime. Drunks slobbering over titties might be something considered to be one of those things best met by a punch to the mouth. Or ejection, say. And the people who decide this are the jury. Or even, just one of those things.

No wonder they want juryless trials, right? How can you impose your vision upon society if there’s a roadblock of the commonplace wisdom?

My own view tends toward much of life being best managed by us, the people, rather than by the law. Which is rather Burkean, Hayekian, even, and it’s easy to mock that view too. So it’s open season on titties then, is it? For drunks you say? At which point I’m left mumbling well, but, yes, that is the best way large parts of life should be managed. By us in the right here and now.

Pfft.

Don’t clubs have steps people can be thrashed upon these days?

At lesat they’re mentioning it now

In Spain, firefighters used to dealing with a couple of blazes at a time say they struggle with an increase in number and strength. The situation has been worsened by recent wet winters and springs that allow vegetation to flourish – leaving more surplus fuel when it inevitably dries in summer – as well as the abandonment of farmland that once broke up flammable countryside. On Thursday, authorities said they expected a large fire in rural Aragón, one of dozens still burning across the country, to take days to control.

Wet winters means more fireload. Abandoned land the same.

Sure, they’re still going “Oooooh, climate change” but at least they’re mentioning the right reasons now.

Ignorance, ignorance

The Washington Consensus was the notorious neoliberal prescription delivered to many developing countries by both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank from the late 1980s onwards.

My glossary entry on this subject is well worth noting. It explains how these two Bretton Woods agencies were captured by neoliberal economics to spread its evil around the world, and what it meant.

It was actually a list of 10 bad things that you shouldn’t do to an economy. And the astonishing fall in absolute poverty out there over the past 50 years shows that it was a pretty good list, a pretty good consensus, too.

Just can’t trust ’em

Drivers have been hit with parking charges while queueing for petrol pumps in a possible breach of consumer law, the competition watchdog has said.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating Euro Car Parks over whether its practices at petrol stations and its handling of appeals may have broken the law.
The watchdog said it would consider whether it was “fair” for drivers to receive parking charge notices while “queuing for, or using, petrol pumps”, as well as other services at forecourts such as car washes and EV chargers.

Euro, d’ye see? Forriners.

Because it’s said in Parliament

Nicola Sturgeon tried to destroy Alex Salmond to stop him uncovering her husband’s embezzlement of SNP funds, MPs have been told.
Speaking in the House of Commons, Sir David Davis said that Ms Sturgeon “knew full well” that Peter Murrell was stealing money from the party and using it to fund “luxury purchases”.
But the senior Tory MP said that “her most evil act was stitching up Alex Salmond to hide the truth” about Murrell’s crimes.

It can be said, we can repeat it.
But probably best if we do not discuss it all the same. But it is a fun and interesting claim, no?