Alasdair Smith

BREAKING: The speaker of Iran's parliament, Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, has rejected Donald Trump’s claim that he has been negotiating with the U.S. Live updates: trib.al/nfN5w9b 📺 Sky 501, Virgin 602, Freeview 233 and YouTube

@JimCognito2016 @peterjukes Over 4000 of City population lives on the (pretty expensive) Barbican Estate.

Matt Goodwin uses "the City of London" rather than "London" because he's betting on his target audience not realising that he's talking about an area with a population of 8000. A bit like when his definition of "non-white" included the King of England.

Music of my childhood playing on @BBCRadio3 but I think the precentor is not the @DonaldMacleod01

@JohnRalfe1 @TheTimes_UK @RachelReevesMP I agree; and include public sector NON-financial assets too.

See my @TheTimes_UK letter on @RachelReevesMP new "investment rule" . Where are the £1.4trn of unfunded public sector pension liabilities?

@s8mb Carpisa sell such suitcases but not in UK. You do pretty much have to remove the wheels if you check the bags or they are liable to get detached in transit.

Are there any suitcases that come with removable wheels, so if you're required to put them into the bag size checker they fit, but you don't lose carrying space otherwise?

@magpiemixture @peter_daly And one mildly amusing compensation is that BSky flashes you notifications of messages that never arrive, presumably from blocked senders - the notification is triggered before the block clicks in!

@magpiemixture @peter_daly What happens on BSky if you speak out in support of free speech for gender-critical feminists is not pleasant. You have to block, and you get put on some list. But the alternative is to accept that a cabal closes BSky to a range of legal and reasonable views they don’t like.

@Samfr @johnmcternan Indeed, I was on Prison Service Pay Review Body 2001-4 and the system was heading downhill even then.

@johnmcternan First a lot of these metrics (like prison education) were already poor in 2010, and secondly the actual administration of the service is also poor. Austerity is part of the story but it's not the only part.

The annual report from the chief inspector of prisons is utterly dire. One of the worst examples of state failure.

@WalkerMarcus @StBartholomews Very good piece, engaging and touching.

Two years ago, my account of the utterly bizarre day as the news began to break that The Queen was ill, probably dying, and how @StBartholomews sprung into action as a church. spectator.co.uk/article/the-po…

@PickardJE @dsquareddigest How many of the 2849000 are millionaires only because of the value of their home?

the idea of 9,000 millionaires leaving Britain sounds dramatic until you remember there are 2,849,000 millionaires in this country it’s literally a rounding error given the ebb and flow of migration

@DavidHenigUK Especially since it is could be a virtue from an objective UK perspective.

Labour has to reset the UKs narrative on EU relations and the sooner the better. As we've seen before, EU asks claimed to be unthinkable soon become reality, so why not make a virtue of this?

This is fair. And implies correctly that the UK has to sign up to youth mobility of some sort to get the improvements it wants in the trade relationship.

@JosephineCumbo Tell him not to worry; he’ll have a queue of universities making offers by the end of the day.

Genuinely heart broken for son. He worked so hard for his results and was 10 points off A stars in Further Maths/Physics. No university course yet offered to him.

Son achieved AAA in Physics, Further Maths and Maths and no offer from First Choice or Insurance University. Now doing mad scramble for Clearing places. Stress levels are high.

@alanbeattie She could put him in charge of wildlife protection. (Endless scope for bear jokes.)

@drphilhammond A common practice in competition law trials in USA and UK is a ‘hot tub’ in which expert witnesses on both sides are got together with the aim of clarifying what is common ground and what are the differences.

A lot of expert witnesses are touchingly naive in their belief that they are independent, and not representing one side or the other. Here’s what one of the UK’s leading forensic psychiatry expert witnesses told me about the training they receive and the pressure they are put under to toe the line for the side that is paying them. “Doctors who train as experts often go on training courses run by lawyers. Whilst there is inevitably emphasis on the law in these courses, there is also a legal bias in describing ‘what makes a good expert’. What makes a good expert for a lawyer, is an expert who helps them win a case (or at least gets them the outcome they think there should be). The other issue is the question of how you know you’re a good expert. Is it if you ‘win’ cases? Is it if the judge thinks you’re good? It should be if you are genuinely clinical expert, balanced, unbiased, objective etc, but that’s not very exciting. Sometimes the most clinically expert are the most biased so it is complicated. No barrister wants an expert who lacks credibility, but they do want someone who is persuasive.”   “One requirement of experts is that they are supposed to include, in their opinion, the range of possible opinions. They should not be ‘arguing’ anything but if they do fall on one side of a fence, they should explain why, but also include what is on the other side. It’s a confirmation bias point, but a lot of people don’t even glance over the fence. Again, if you were to ask the lawyers, they would be a bit reluctant for their expert to do this too much. I’ve certainly been encouraged not to give the other side of the argument.”  Which is precisely why a fair trial requires experts on both sides, and Letby – whether guilty of innocent - should be allowed a retrial in my view, so that all the experts articulating the science and statistics that weren’t heard in the original trial can now be heard by a jury. You are of course welcome to your view.

@pmdfoster @fetzert @bencobley What some train enthusiast (not me) discovered! Would like to link it to the decision in the same department at the same time to upgrade the A23 between Handcross and Warninglid to a lower standard than rest of A23 as another permanent testament to short-sighted austerity.

@fetzert @AlasdairMSmith @bencobley @AlasdairMSmith fancy a thread summarising what you discovered?!

No plugs. No tables and, most of time, no WiFi. This is a Thameslink train. It serves as main link between London and Brighton/Cambridge. Prime commuter line. 000s of wasted hours. It’s like the UK is *built* for low-productivity. The worst kind of penny-pinching procurement.

@fetzert @bencobley @pmdfoster History of decisions at whatdotheyknow.com/request/decisi…

And how do you think that works? The EU forced the UK to buy trains without sockets etc? No. If you followed the other bits in the thread there actually was a person @AlasdairMSmith who seemed familiar with the decision back then and pointed out it was very much a decision of the buyer (the UK).

@fetzert @pmdfoster I recall (sorry forgotten the documentation) that the decision not to have tables or power sockets (or in many trains WiFi) was made by a minor civil servant.

Yes, and on most trains you dont even have space to work despite poor wifi, poor connectivity. EU trains are MUCH better. I do think penny pinching is a key to it, but I think some is also explained by short platforms and just old infrastructure and baked in institutional conservatism. It is a tax on productivity, breeds frustration, passive aggressiveness and well, I think quite polarized rural/urban divides.

@boulezian Great to see you back. The site has deteriorated in your absence (only partly because of your absence).

Listening to the marvellous Andrew Cotter commentating on the athletics at #Paris2024 I’m reminded again of this:

@redmondmichael1 @MooseAllain I vaguely remember a Glasgow story of a young woman with a baby buying chips and saying “no vinegar, they’re for the wean”.

@redmondmichael1 @MooseAllain In case the wean needs a drink.