Larry

@aedmans If you think the regulators are lazy thick and ineffectual just wait until these utilities are run by civil servants !!!

Andy Burnham is completely wrong to say that Thatcher deregulated water, gas, and electricity. She privatised them – and simultaneously regulated them by creating Ofwat, Ofgas, and Offer. Regulation goes hand-in-hand with privatisation to ensure that utilities don't abuse monopoly power. If utilities are not maximising societal welfare, the solution is stronger regulation, not re-nationalisation.

@kelvmackenzie Same thing happens on flights in India

The Times says Starmer will OK an £18bn increase in defence spending. It’s welcome, but I want Labour to embrace the Services emotionally as they do in the US where they invite the military to board commercial flights first and are then publicly “ thanked for their service” by check-in staff. If, whoever becomes PM, won’t bring in this small act of kindness, I would be grateful If Farage, Kemi or Rupert Lowe says they will.

@benmoores2 I live 2 minute walk from that Putney Bridge pill box. I look at it every time I take the tube

A thread on the 50 best fortifications to go and visit in the world according to me. They are all fun for at least one in the family. They are listed in reverse rank order as determined by how much fun, unique and awesome they are.

@PatrickChristys Do you think that’s a genuine Prada hat?😂😂

Look at the state of this

@rcolvile Noooooooo

Not sure any team has ever had the support among complete neutrals that Hearts will for the next 90 minutes.

@OnDisasters I was working at Brands Hatch when he raced a Surtees. Lovely guy, and as a 17 year old I thought he was wet cool. Desiree and her husband Alan, who gave me that summer job also so nice.

“While rushing to the car, I noticed small splotches of a peculiar gray substance marking a trail on the asphalt leading up to the driver. When I reached the car, I was shocked to see that Smiley's helmet was gone, along with the top of his skull. He had essentially been scalped by the debris fence. The material on the race track was most of his brain. His helmet, due to massive centrifugal force, was literally pulled from his head on impact ... I rode to the care center with the body. On the way in I performed a cursory examination and realized that nearly every bone in his body was shattered. He had a gaping wound in his side that looked as if he had been attacked by a large shark. I had never seen such trauma.” Description of CART medical director Steve Olvey on the accident that killed Gordon Smiley, that happened on this day in 1982. During qualifying, on the second warm-up lap, his March 81C Cosworth began to oversteer on turn 3, causing the car to slightly slide. When Smiley steered right to correct this, the front wheels gained grip suddenly, sending his car directly across the track and into the wall nose-first at nearly 200 mph (320 km/h). He was killed instantly. According to team mate Desiree Wilson, (…) “the biggest piece was a little ball of engine. There was nothing else except shattered bits, a bit of gearbox, a bit of a wheel, not even a seat. It was very ugly.”(…) This was Smiley´s third run at Indy after competing mostly on the US domestic series, but the driver obtained a record overseas that remains to this day. In 1979, Smiley raced in the British Formula One Championship (sometimes called the "Aurora Formula One Championship") that used mostly obsolete F1 cars. Smiley won a race, and to this day, this is the last F1 win by an American driver in a FIA-sanctioned event. (I will drop more details on Smiley´s career in a video in the comments)

Is the answer more socialism ? It doesn’t appear to be the case in the other European countries Unless Labour works for the working , that’s not class that’s the people who get up , go to work and pay taxes , then they should be doomed. If a country tries to get too many people living off the hard work of an increasingly few workers it is headed the way of a failed state.

I know the news Andy Burnham has a route back to Westminster will divide opinion. So, before anything else, I want to speak plainly – to Labour members and voters, to those who have left us, and to anyone on the centre-left, whether you vote Green, Lib Dem, or are simply looking for a politics that hasn't given up on you. Last week's local election results were, for many of us, existential. Not disappointing. Not a setback. Existential. Look across Europe and beyond at what happens to social democratic parties that refuse to step outside the economic orthodoxy of the last forty years – the one that hollowed out our public services, privatised what was ours, drove inequality to indecent levels, and cleared the ground for the authoritarian right to march into. That is the path we are on. Keir Starmer has refused to see it, and the country cannot afford another general election spent finding out the hard way. So let me be direct. The Prime Minister should set out a timeline for an orderly transition. I have said this before. I say it again now because the stakes have changed. Reform is not a protest – it is a project. And it will not be beaten by a Labour Party that mistakes managerial caution for strategy. As regards Andy, I want to set down here that I do not see him as some kind of messiah. Far from it. As someone who has been around frontline politics for more than twenty years, he has made his fair share of mistakes. But for the last ten years he has been a serious, grounded, and effective Mayor of Greater Manchester. The party and the country need their strongest players on the pitch, and he has a great deal to offer at a moment when the national stage has rarely mattered more. I hope the NEC will listen to the overwhelming view of the Cabinet, the PLP, the membership, and the unions, and let Andy stand. And I hope and believe the people of Makerfield will send him back to Parliament. But that is not a given. We know Reform will throw everything at this by-election. We must do the same and then some. Reform have spent a year being told they are inevitable. Makerfield is where we find out whether that is true. Every advance has a limit. This is where we set it. Millions of people, including my constituents in Norwich South, need this government to succeed. They need housing, working public services, secure jobs, water and energy that serves them rather than extracts from them. That work is not finished. But the honest truth is that stopping Reform and rebuilding the country is bigger than any one party. It will take a progressive politics willing to listen, willing to cooperate where the public interest demands it, and willing to drop the tribal habits that got us here. The country is ahead of us on this. It is time we caught up. Makerfield is one of many places where Labour has lost trust. It is an area Andy knows and has lived in for many years. If selected, he will work hard to win that trust back and make the case for a Labour Party worth voting for again. That case has to be made not only to people who once voted Labour, but to everyone who believes the answer to Reform is a serious, democratic, social alternative – not a paler imitation of the politics that created the problem. This by-election is not about one seat. It is a test of whether Labour understands the moment we are in. No single party is going to stop Reform on its own. The progressive majority in this country is real – but it is scattered across Labour, the Greens, the Lib Dems, nationalists, independents, and millions of people who have stopped voting altogether. Our job is not to demand they all come back to us. It is to earn the right to work with them, on shared ground, for a shared future. To former Labour voters: come and talk to us again. To Green and Lib Dem voters: we are not enemies. To Labour members and MPs: this is the fight. Let's get on with it. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

@malcolm_reavell True if you want the pound to be worth close to zero but that may not help the economy overall.

UK govt neither needs to sell bonds nor pay interest. A currency issuer doesn’t borrow that of which it is the monopoly issuer. It creates & spends money. It then drains the excess reserves its prior spending created by selling bonds. Govt doesn’t need markets. Markets need bonds

@linmeitalks Because he is a sad loser. Of the country was populates by people like him we would think Somalia is a developed economy.

Bit harsh but I kind of agree… Zack Polanski has no dependants / children from what we know, why does he live like a student at 45? House share in a terraced town house with 5 others and you’re nearly 50…. Is he a struggling actor or musician who refuses to grow up? I mean it’s totally his choice, but how can you run a country if you’ve never ran a household which is yours/ by yourself or with your dependant family/partner, understand what holding down a long term career is like, never opened a business with staff/ understand profit and loss, don’t own a house….. what adult things can he relate to and understand. No way would I take him seriously in running this country. More suited to running a student union.

The guy is a crook. He stood up in the London Assembly to criticize council tax , knowing he didn’t pay it. Either he is so stupid he should be on some form of welfare or, more likely , he was simply avoiding paying it Bloke has bender done a proper days work in his life so why should he pay taxes ?😂

The real world: Dan saw an opportunity to damage the reputation of the biggest threat to Starmer and gleefully jumped in with both feet; discovered he’d massively overstated his case but got the media pile-on he was after so would now like to move on. Damage done. ✅

The DMO don’t just issues Gilts, in fact that’s a small amount of their role. What they do every day in the billions of £ is organize the cash flow and needs of the Government. An enormous complicated and vital job. Stop borrowing gilts and bills and within days no money to pay the NHS, welfare bills , the army, navy, MPs😂. Then watch what happens

This is economic ignorance of a high degree, even for my old mate Diane. If you don’t want to be ‘dominated’ by the bond markets then don’t borrow £3 trillion from them. Be honest with the people and explain how your idea of socialism will entail EVERYBODY paying a shed load more in tax. If you can’t do that then you will be in hock to the bond markets. It’s as simple as that.

@PatriciaNPino Brilliant idea. No money to pay the lazy and feckless who can’t be bothered to go to work.

Stop issuing bonds. See how quickly the bond markets fall in line.

@seledka_vodka @LukeJohnsonRCP @HBO NO but we are getting there quickly. The hatred and disgust of anyone deemed “ rich “ is very much a part of that. It’s simple jealousy but dressed up as virtue but no more than simply virtue signalling

There is a scene in @HBO's Chernobyl that most viewers miss. A scientist presents evidence of the disaster to a Belarusian party official. The official dismisses her expertise, then boasts that he used to run a shoe factory. It is not central to the plot, but it explains everything. The Soviet Union was governed by a snowball of incompetence - decades of nepotism where ministries were handed to people with no relevant knowledge, provided they had the right party connections. Pedigree was political, not professional. I grew up there. My parents were subject matter experts who spent their careers battling apparatchiks enforcing decisions they did not understand. That is why I flinch when I hear the same logic here in Britain. @UKLabour politicians celebrate the "right background" - the poorer, the more deprived, the better. Council house to government, presented as triumph. Progress and resilience deserve recognition. But in these jubilations, merit vanishes. And celebrating ascent without competence is not progress. It is the embryo of disaster. Look at the Labour Party's front bench. Britain's central challenge is wealth creation - economic growth. Yet these are former charity workers, public sector lifers, people who have always been on the receiving end of funds rather than generating them. They have never had to create value others willingly pay for. So they look to regulators for growth ideas. It is farcical. It is only possible in a culture where navigating party structures replaces proven ability. A friend told me recently his wife had to close her coffee shop - high traffic, real revenue, still unprofitable due to taxes and business rates. In his frustration he said something raw: he no longer cares if folks running the government are toolmakers' sons or landed gentry. He wants competence. He found himself saying he would rather be ruled by Old Etonians. Not because Eton College guarantees talent. It does not. But sheer competence - knowing your subject - has become so scarce in British governance that the impulse is understandable. We are not the Soviet Union. We are nowhere near collapse. But on the left of our politics, the distance is shrinking faster than we admit.

@Taxi_Point This is just the beginning. Putney Wandsworth and Battersea to follow

BREAKING: TfL BLOCKS heavy vehicles from using Vauxhall Bridge after structural deterioration found 🚨🚨 taxi-point.co.uk/post/tfl-block…

@earthygirl011 “ reasonably believed “ so if you lived in a council flat did you “ reasonably believe “ the tax was included in the rent ?? Guys is a crook and he knows it just like he knows he is a fantasist

Isn't actual story this: Zack Polanski lived on a narrowboat at a marina for a while where all residents for 35 years reasonanly believed their council tax was inc in mooring fees as the council never told them otherwise? Isn't this 'expose' actually abt the council not Zack?

@MartyBowen11 He didn’t notice he is paying zero council tax? Even this moron is not that stupid I notice I pay my council tax and I am am worth many many multiples of his net worth

So the story about Polanski dodging tax is actually wrong, and it's the council/marina who have messed up. Looks like a lot of folk living on those boats are getting an unexpected tax bill thanks to Dan. Labour are even pissing off the floating voters now lmao.

@DanNeidle What a pleasant fellow. Bet he leads an exciting life

The massive racists are out:

@LondonTrafficW1 Putney Bridge next. Ultimately there will be riots as people cannot cross the Thames. Within the next 3 years we will have Vauxhall Albert Battersea Wandsworth Putney and Hammersmith all closed.

Breaking Safety-critical temporary weight restriction on Vauxhall Bridge to be introduced from July 2026 brixtonbuzz.com/2026/05/safety…

@ThomasFTurrell @LondonTrafficW1 The buses average 7mph. Why get a bus? Walk quickly it will make you healthier as well

Anything to make transport cheaper for Londoners is of course welcome. But Sadiq Khan must be honest with Londoners as to how this being funded. We know he is paying Paul, but which Peter is he robbing?

@kelvmackenzie No just the usual

In South Carolina on business. Much happening back home?