thebaracus

@juan_dla_mancha @afneil No. He should have tipped the first amount.

@afneil You should have tipped 200 but the waiter did not handle it professionally

This true story has generated a lot of untrue responses from the usual know-nothing Twitter pontificators. So here’s the full story. It’s 2013, I hosted a dinner for US contacts and journos in NYC in a rather fancy, expensive restaurant owned by a friend. It was a thank you. Not on expenses. I’m forking out — happily. Good people. A great fun dinner but the bill came to circa $1,000. Gulp. I paid by card and slipped the waiter, a young aspiring actor (as they tend to be in NY), $150 cash. I thought that was quite generous. Especially $150 in 2013 prices. More like $200+ today. Anyway he quickly returned and asked loudly and aggressively if there was a problem. No, I said. All good. Well, he said the tip was ‘bit light’. By now the whole table was looking at me and him. I panicked and bunged him more dollars. He departed without a word of thanks. On the way home my partner saw I was fuming with the embarrassment, almost humiliation. Call the owner, she said. I did. I didn’t ask him to fire the waiter but said it was an embarrassing/humiliating experience in front of colleagues and I doubt I’d go back to his restaurant. Perhaps he could have a word. I learned later he fired him because he had something of a trackrecord in this matter. I lost no sleep over that even if it wasn’t my aim. Ever since I’ve taken no nonsense from aggressive NY waiters. I’m from Paisley and can give as good if not better than I get. One waiter who subsequently complained about his 20%(!) tip found it cut to 10%. Tips are war in NY restaurants. Stand up for yourself. Don’t be mean but don’t fall over in embarrassent when they behave badly. And please don’t import this culture from USA to dear old Blighty. End of.

@JChimirie66677 @paddyjstephen @jemmm85517813 @KemiBadenoch @JulieWe67969919 Lord Ollie Robbins it is then ...,

Paddy, Olly Robbins walks into that committee tomorrow in a position unlike any witness this affair has yet produced. He was sacked without process, without the chance to make his case, by a Prime Minister who needed someone to blame before the weekend. He has taken legal advice. He has allies who have spoken publicly on his behalf. And he has direct, first-hand knowledge of decisions that Starmer has spent a week characterising in ways that Robbins may dispute under oath. The question of whether he skewers Starmer depends on how far he is willing to go. A careful civil servant might limit himself to correcting the factual record, establishing that he followed the process as he understood it and believed he was legally constrained. That alone would damage Starmer without destroying him. But Robbins is not an ordinary witness in an ordinary circumstance. He was publicly sacrificed. His reputation has been traduced. His career has been ended. And he told the Prime Minister directly on Thursday that he believed he could not share the information. Starmer contradicted that account in Parliament today. Robbins will have heard what Starmer said. He will have his own view of its accuracy. A man in that position, with nothing left to protect and everything to correct, is the most dangerous witness a Prime Minister can face. Whether Robbins chooses to be that witness tomorrow is the only question that matters tonight.

For the first time ever, I provided my questions to Keir Starmer in advance. You’ll notice that after 5 non-answers he completely refused to answer Question 6 -that he knew Mandelson had remained a Director of a Russian company reportedly linked to Putin. Why didn’t he answer?👇

@JustMe19122792 @JChimirie66677 It's the Chinese friends that are pulling the strings. China wants to control Chagos. Starmer happy to sell it to them and needs Mandleson to smooth over the US...

@JChimirie66677 @JChimirie66677 why DID they have to appoint Mandelson before Trump's inauguration? Why the rush?

The Warning Came in 2023. The Ignorance Defence Was Always a Lie The claim at the heart of Keir Starmer's survival strategy is simple. He did not know. He was not told. The system failed him. Set against that claim is a single reported fact that, if confirmed, ends the argument entirely. The Mail on Sunday is reporting that the security services handed Labour a dossier in 2023, while still in opposition, detailing Mandelson's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and raising concerns about his links to hostile states. Senior shadow ministers received it. The warning was formal, documented and delivered more than a year before Starmer announced the appointment in December 2024. If that report is accurate, the ignorance defence does not merely weaken. It disappears. A Prime Minister cannot claim he was kept in the dark about a security risk that his own party was formally warned about before he even took office. Set this alongside what is already on the record. Lammy has admitted his department was under time pressure to complete the appointment before Trump's inauguration. Civil servants treated the announcement as a fait accompli before vetting was complete. Robbins told a Commons committee in November that it was clear the Prime Minister wanted to make this appointment himself. Helen MacNamara, former Whitehall ethics chief, said Robbins's job was to do what the Prime Minister wanted. And the vetting process, working exactly as designed, subsequently said no. Now Liz Kendall and David Lammy are telling us Starmer would have blocked the appointment had he known. The claim requires us to believe several things simultaneously. That a Prime Minister so invested in the appointment that civil servants treated it as beyond question would have reversed course on the word of a vetting recommendation. That a man who knew about the Epstein connection, who had been warned about reputational risk in the formal vetting advice, who received the 2023 dossier through his shadow ministers, somehow remained genuinely ignorant of the security services' conclusion. And that Lammy, whose department sponsored the vetting, overrode the recommendation and admitted to time pressure, played no conscious role in ensuring the appointment proceeded. None of that holds together. The Kendall defence is hypothetical assertion dressed as character witness. The Lammy admission is the most revealing detail in this morning's reporting. Time pressure is not a justification for overriding the security services. It is a confession that the political timetable was placed above the security assessment. The appointment had to happen before Trump's inauguration. The vetting outcome was therefore, in practical terms, irrelevant to the decision. Robbins understood this. MacNamara has said so explicitly. The Prime Minister wanted the appointment. The civil service's job was to make it happen and manage the risks. When the security services said no, the Foreign Office reached for exceptional powers because the alternative was telling the Prime Minister that his chosen ambassador could not take up his post days before the new American administration arrived in Washington. Kendall and Lammy are asking the country to believe that same Prime Minister would have calmly accepted that news and cancelled the appointment. The man who sacked a civil servant for following the rules. The man who told Parliament three times that due process had been followed. The man whose own officials recorded in writing that they believed he had inadvertently misled the Commons. The 2023 dossier, if confirmed, closes the last door. Starmer was warned before he took office. He was warned during the appointment process. The security services said no. The appointment proceeded. The ignorance defence was always implausible. It is now, on the available evidence, unsustainable. Monday's statement will not save him. It will be measured against everything the documents have already established.

@TheRealJamieKay To judge people solely on the basis of their skin colour? I'm sure there's a word for people like you.........

Unbelievable diversity 😂😂😂

@TheRealJamieKay @harras31 Why not?

@harras31 No.

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 I'll take your inability to answer as the acknowledgement that you have nothing of substance to say. Bye bye Simple Simon.

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 🤖

No one serious is claiming that North Sea oil and gas is state-owned. That's a strawman. The actual argument is about what extracting it does for Britain - and the answer is straightforward. North Sea oil gets sold on the global market, yes. Around 80% of it bypasses our refineries entirely, partly because those refineries were built to process Libyan crude, not the light sweet crude the North Sea produces. Fine. But when oil companies extract that oil and turn a profit, the Exchequer taxes that profit. That tax revenue is real money that can subsidise bills during supply disruptions. That's our stake - and it's a legitimate one. Gas is even more direct. North Sea gas feeds straight into the UK pipeline network. Britain consumes between 65% and 85% of the gas it extracts domestically. It stabilises supply. It generates taxable profit. There is no coherent argument for leaving it in the ground. Now, climate. Britain produces less than 2% of global greenhouse emissions. Not a single major polluter on earth is adjusting their behaviour based on UK climate commitments. What actually happens when we strangle our own energy sector in pursuit of rapid decarbonisation is simple - we de-industrialise, we export jobs to China, and China builds EVs powered by coal. We get poorer. The climate is unaffected. Leaving recoverable North Sea reserves untouched doesn't save the planet. It just makes Britain weaker.

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 The licenses should have already been issued. The clueless ideologue Miliband has been criminally negligent. However we would be better to issue them now to help alleviate further trouble.

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 So you see issuing wildcat licenses in a diminishing O&G field as the answer to today’s issues which are caused by a war that markets are pricing in a resolution of by mid April to mid May? Is that right?

@robert65281 @RealAdamB1 @seledka_vodka You didn't need to state you level of expertise as you demonstrated that part very well. ....

@RealAdamB1 @thebaracus @seledka_vodka Never said I was an expert. But I pay attention to them over paid shills and clueless politicians.

@MIT_IO_ @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka Solar panels and insulation do not drastically reduce fuel bills. The benefits of solar are several orders of magnitude too low to adequately replace oil.

@thebaracus @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka Cost of living includes your home energy bill - what home insulation & solar panels drastically cut down - & the consumer prices of goods & servicesvl impacted by high energy prices from geopolitical fuck ups & the domestic dysfunctional market price setting mechanism #Renewables

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 No. You just can't answer the simple question. If these are not viable, then the market will not put capital into it. There is no reason not to issue licenses other then stupidity.

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 Bot

@MIT_IO_ @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka Residential insulation and solar panels won't fill the shelves in your local supermarket. Do you have an allotment full of potatoes ready to feed yourself?

@thebaracus @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka Keep the levy that actually brings money to the treasury & use it to ease the cost of living from fossil fuel volatility through residential insulation and solar panels, instead of subsidising big oil marginal new drilling projects. #Renewables

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 So why not issue them?

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 And those licenses have proved a massive let down in terms of discovery. I’m sure if the 2025 round had gone ahead the price of oil and gas would now be in the pennies and we’d all be millionaires.

@robert65281 @RealAdamB1 @seledka_vodka No they're not experts. They're Ideologues. I think you are also in the latter not the former.

@RealAdamB1 @thebaracus @seledka_vodka The experts say otherwise. But good for you.

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 The 33rd Offshore Licensing Round ended in 2024. The Labour government has stopped issuing licenses as part of it's daft net zero nonsense.

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 Licenses are available. They’re not deemed to be economically viable so the private sector don’t take them up. O&G exploration is very expensive. Kind of going round in circles on this.

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 Fantastic. Issue them the licenses then.

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 That’s why the ‘capitalistic companies’ aren’t doing it except in a couple of exceptional cases.

@robert65281 @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 If there is no point doing it then the capitalistic oil companies won't bother. No reason the government should not issue licenses.

@thebaracus @seledka_vodka @RealAdamB1 There’s no point in doing it. Just Spend the money elsewhere.

@MIT_IO_ @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka Well guess what? Those projects that need high pricing to be profitable, just got profitable. Offering tax breaks to encourage enterprise in the national good is what sensible government does.

@thebaracus @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka Well, it does not, it gets subsidies to drill, for years to come & even for end of life decommisioning Barrel.Bottom.Scrapping

@MIT_IO_ @AthelwulfG @seledka_vodka So the new drilling does yeild a return. Excellent. The capitalistic big oil takes the financial risk and the exchequer gets paid.. a win win for the country with no downside.

@AthelwulfG @thebaracus @seledka_vodka From the "Energy profits levy" "2022-23 £3.6 billion", something big oil was lobbying to end and Reeves was considering, just prior to the latest bout of war profits galore kick in. Keep the levy! &don't confuse ongoing production (green) with NEW drilling of diminishing returns

@MIT_IO_ @seledka_vodka Your own post states that the government receives "significant revenue". You've made the case yourself.

@seledka_vodka Lots of words for the diminishing returns from an entire industry of bumper profits and meagre tax contribution.

@GearsAndInk @seledka_vodka So your suggestion is to do nothing?

@seledka_vodka How long will it take until the government sees this extra tax revenue? A year? Things could well be back to normal by then. How does this help us now? Also, how much tax revenue is it even likely to be? Would it be enough to make a difference, even if we got it today?