Barbe bleu

Not much at all I suspect is the answer. Starmer has been on the front benches long enough that any gotcha will already be out there if it existed. I dont think this will be a negative campaign from the conservatives. Rather I see that it will be policy driven and designed to make starmer reveal what he would do in the hope that he offers nothing substantial in key areas and still opens himself up to criticism on his exposed left flank. The PO / Saville cards will probably only be played if starmer continues to pursue the 'quietly competent' narrative and makes out that he is a details man with a forensic, fine tooth comb approach to all he does. At that point these will come out with the claim that "you say that, but your forensic approach didn't capture this..." Starmer though is smart enough to see the pit he might fall in and isn't up against ' lazy' Johnson anymore so won't adopt the strategy.

Ooo. A guessing game, i'll play! I'd say that the complete opposite is true. I think you and LYB have identified the crux issues but I would see the way they are resolved at 180 degrees to you if i were a gambler i would say: First the Supreme Court will be doing anything it can to delay this getting to judgment before the election and if they can't there will be lots of reasons they can find to let the public decide. It's worth remembering that the Colorado lower court refused the petition and it only got through 4:3 in the upper court there. That tells me that there is opportunity for the US Supreme Court to find in Trump's favour. As judges are evenly split on the issue it might just be a choice for the Supreme court: will they be the first (?) To take a name off the ballot and, as many will see it frustrate the most basic democratic right or be seen as an 'enabler' for trump. I can't see that conservative judges will see much harm to them in the second, after all the public gets what the public wants and its only four years we are talking, but the first is constitutional crisis stuff that is in text books for centuries, and they have already put their names into history.

You joke about it but there might be something in the basic point any post master wrongly convicted can take £600,000 no questions asked if they agree that's the end of it. £175,000 if they were caught up but not convicted. If this scheme was set up in 2019 after the high court judgment we'd have saved a lot of money and delay.

Devil is in the detail of course but £5000 sounds way too little. There is some talk about the government having set aside £1billion for the overall package, no idea if that is true but that sounds about right to me. I dont really blame the politicians of any flavour for this, but I do think that everything (not just in the PO scandal) happens so so slowly and it always seems that the only ones that come out on top are the lawyers.

They didn't arrange an inquiry in repaonse to the programme. That's been running since 2019 and in flow since 2022. What they did was (rightly) shout loudly 'nothing to do with me' and put legislation to have all convictions quashed on the table. They could have done that anytime, it's been done now for political reasons. Whether it's the right thing delivered too late or the wrong thing is a matter for you.

War is always a failure, sometimes necessary but always a failure. Still, I'd rather they used billions of pounds of western weapons than have been pushed into relationships with arms manufacturers in Russia or China.

That's one example bit you could have picked any number of these. And in a lot of cases they tell us nothing we didn't already know. Its almost as though some are purely performative. £400 million and 12 years to tell us what happened on bloody Sunday?

Yes, you might be onto something with this. When matters are party political blinkers and microscopes come out and people are genuinely blind to their own prejudices. But this is different- with a small an exception for Ed Davey, this isn't really about party politics and everyone can form an unencumbered view. I think you are also right about this being regarded as an 'us against them' issue. We can see ourselves in the postmaster shoes- we dont relate to multinationals and corporate board members so easily.

Given that the inquiry, which has been hearing evidence since February 2022, was set up in 2019 after the high court came to its findings and five years after parliament started looking seriously into the issue I think that is a good guess. There is nothing remotely new about this other than the drama caught the public mood.

The way I see it being a competent manager and a strong leader are subtly different things. Sometimes you need the one quality to come to the fore sometimes you need the other. Generally I expect our elected politicians to fulfill the leadership role (setting the strategic intent, enthusing the public and keeping the momentum going ) and leaving the day to day management to the civil service. In this model it is vital that civil servants, to whom the details are entrusted, that have the greater need to be 'competent'. Politicians need 'only' be clear in what is to be achieved, be able to delegate appropriately and know when to ask the right questions - they cannot possibly be all over everything in their remit But..right now with fractures everywhere in society we need a bit of peace and quiet. Being bland, boring or however you want to term it is, I feel, a positive asset for the time being, but in a few years time once the noise has settled I probably do want a strong leader to sell the idea of things like carbon reductions and being beige isn't going to be the best way to convince people to be green

I'm edging towards this for the next election, a period of relative silence would be welcome. Not sure I'd want all our future prime ministers to be bland though. There must be sense of purpose about the agenda they set and they must lead the nation in achieving those aims, and its difficult to lead in today's society if you are practically invisible. Let the civil servants be blandly competent, elected politicians need something different, or what's the point of them?

I think that is generally right, we do want politics to be less assertive and less pervasive. I'm not sure that starmer would be served by staying purely managerial though. There are certain topics that we probably want to stop hearing about and a new approach will be welcomed by pretty much everyone but we still want and need a leadership figure and we still care about a lot of things. Labour can still drop the ball on this. It still needs a positive agenda, calm but visible leadership. and it still needs to control the angry finger pointers, the boomerangs assault squads and the hard left media demagogues that will want to reopen Pandora's box

I've confirmed with a mate in the Islington Labour party that starmer does in fact get the drinks in as required.

After the Court of appeal decisions in April 2021 the Inquiry that was opened in September 2020 was put on a statutory footing, its not published a final report yet https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/ I read a lot of politicking from the big 3 parties - plenty of deflection and finger pointing but I think if you are examining the party politics of this you are missing the really important questions such as: Should individual public bodies be able to bring criminal prosecutions ? Should there be a review body that looks at how prosections are conducted in a way that individual case officers in the weeds of their investigation probably cannot? And, Why does it take 3 years for a public inquiry to not even get to the end of evidence?

Suggestions that the NHS is propped up by foreign recruitment are demonstrable, and this trend is growing. How sustainable worldwide recruitment is likely to be should be a consideration in pay consideration. Recruitment from the EEA fell before the brexit vote and appears to have stablised https://www.gmc-uk.org/about/what-we-do-and-why/data-and-research/the-state-of-medical-education-and-practice-in-the-uk/workforce-report#executive-summary

The overall number of doctors has increased in recent years. therefore it must be concluded that doctors are (or were until 2021 at least) joining the NHS at a faster rate than they are leaving. This is borne out by data which shows no change in leaving rates there is little evidence that rates at which doctors are leaving the profession are disproportionate in the junior category. Of those that left the NHS wanting to live or practice abroad was a common motivation, albeit not much more common than wishing to retire. The number of doctors retiring or leaving to practice abroad is less than the number of new trainees enrolled into medical school each year (9500).

Medical school remains a very attractive prospect for school leavers despite the relative cut in starting salary. UK medical schools can all essily fill their places with between 6 and 21 applicants per place. With entry standards seemingly set at a minimum AAA at A level there is no data to suggest that the standard of person wanted to enter the profession has slipped over the last decade or so. https://www.medschools.ac.uk/about-us

I looked into comparative pay and found the following which might help frame some thoughts: Junior doctors in England start on a basic salary of £32,398, this rises to £37,303 after one year and £63,152 after seven. There are various training and specialism premiums and other pathways available that can add several thousand to the basic (weekends etc also add to the basic package) 9-10 years after starting training junior doctors can begin to consider the rise to consultant where the basic salary is £93,666 Median salary for FT workers in the UK is £34,963. For people with degrees that rises to £38,500. These are 'whole career' averages, I didn't find anything that directly shows average pay progression with experience.

Exactly. He really needs to start pushing on his agenda. Silence has kept him safe until now but that'd not an option in a full campaign and if he doesn't choose his battles they will be chosen for him. Starmer is right to walk away from the culture wars- they are relatively unimportant and probably counter productive, people are tired of them and labour's position is weak. What's even cleverer is making out that there was only ever one side in these matters, that's a nonsense of course as every war has people in trenches on both sides, but if labour supporters do finally see sense and stop throwing those culture war boomerangs he can withdraw successfully and put all the blame for dragging things back onto the Conservatives.

Probably something you need to sort out in private

As far as i know It's not currently unlawful to sell still wine in 500ml bottles. I dont see a lot of 500ml bottles on sale so you are probably right. It's sparkling wine that cannot be sold in 500ml quantities (But can be sold by then the 200, unlike still wine- which cannot). I'm not sure why a really small change is causing so much conversation, but I'm happy to jump in because the TV right now is a bit slow) For what it's worth I'm very mildly in favour of the change (it may open up some very niche areas for UK production and sales and could add to consumer choice) but it constitutes 0.00005% of things that concern me right now.

The first ones have the same plots, but spoilt. Badly acted, none of the subtlety and without the mild pathos (ie it lacks the very things that make the original great). Its OK because the source is brilliant but it's not really a comparison.

I cant see big demand for wine by the pint. I'm sure a few providers will do it for the novelty but it won't change anyone's world. The bigger change might be in allowing still and sparkling wines to be sold in a range of sizes. Mildly interesting to see how that pans out. Overall though this is just a tiny, tiny thing probably designed in part to get people all excited over nothing. Which it seems to have done!

If I were Portuguese I wouldn't want him. I don't really want him here either. I've no idea if they have to take him though. It's a bit like the Shemina Begum thing I guess.

Going on the tube in the smoke would be an eye opener for you. Years ago rush hour carriages would have loads of papers, the free one or the one people brought with them and you'd have to get up early to get a fresh copy of the Metro. Its not like that at all now - phones all the way instead. In my view casual readership of papers is very probably dead, with the twitching corpse kept going only by the ritualists and the odd few that are attracted by a particular headline