Luke Baxter

It’s so hard to put yourself in their heads. Even as massive narcissists, which they so often are, would they love the feeling of being known as the person who ended world hunger? Musk would still have many, many billions left!
At least Bill Gates has given away a lot of his cash for good deeds.

What do you do with all that money?

- The wealth of wealthiest going up by £35M a day, so the increase in their wealth in a year could pay for all the £5bn welfare cuts and still leave them with £8bn in spare change as well as all the billions they already had last year.

- If the richest 30 billionaires combined to pick up the cost of the cut for ten years, that would cost them 6% of their combined wealth meaning that collectively, they would still be worth almost £750bn.

- The top 20 billionaires in the UK have a combined wealth of £303bn
- The richest billionaires - the Hinduja family are £8bn richer than the next richest person on the list, Leonard Blavatnik: Hindujas could pay the £5bn cost of the welfare cuts and still be the richest people in Britain by £3bn.

Andy Zaltzman came up with some great stats like this on The Bugle Podcast when discussing Labour’s welfare cuts.
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👏👏👏

I haven’t been following this closely but ditching Jess Philips can’t be right. She is dedicated herself to all this sort of thing for years. And she seems a good egg!

You two haven’t met my daughter!!

What always blows my mind is that English was his third language and he learned it at 21 and then went on to become one of the great writers of his age!

They did meet but Conrad turned his back on him when Casement went rogue.

The horror?

I did my MA on HofD and Latin American literature. I was given an extra 3 months to turn my stoned, handwritten scribblings into “a proper MA”, put me off academia but what a book!

Jerry Lee Lewis’ Great Balls of Fire certainly got him in a lot of trouble!

The Guardian Crossword with a clue for Green Party leader (4,6)

@zackpolanski.bsky.social you know you have arrived when you are a Guardian crossword clue!

I imagine that as it was largely racist good-natured fun he is fine with it. Throwing bananas at John Barnes - what a jape!

Or that he would be saved by some pissy beer no longer being woke and someone not kneeling anymore!

Do they know they aren’t really supposed to watch South Park and regurgitate it verbatim?

I love that piece. I saw Benjamin Zephaniah perform in about 1986 and joined the Green Party shortly after. Been a member off and on ever since. On for a while now. You’re definitely winning and winning me over @zackpolanski.bsky.social

Bangor of a guest, surely? (Sorry!)

Honk! Actually you had me at devotee of the Oxford Comma!

The Luthen to Blair’s Luke Skywalker.

Haha!!

Nice! I might _do those_ instead of *doing these* or <doing these>
Seriously though, and I mean seriously! The asterisks in Teams bold the text so I can’t be my usual sardonic self on work chats! Is life even worth living!?

Are you <doing these> because *doing these* make text go bold? (Not really a question - more of an experiment)

Checks your profile pic: no you don’t!

English test scandal: students renew fight to clear names after 10 years Exclusive: Push follows new evidence that raises questions over Home Office’s cheating accusations against 35,000 international students

There have been English language tests for ages but not problem free. The Cambridge tests, IELTS, FCE (as was) are expensive to administer, so moved to cheaper ETS tests, TOEFL/TOEIC, and there was a bit of a Post Office-like scandal of man vs machine. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024...

You made some very solid points that made me rethink my ID scepticism. But, unfortunately, this government is incompetent and the next might be authoritarian which is a worry.
And hurrah for people with daughters with DS!!

You were great - though hosting does mean you can’t be as funny as usual.

Our one has the invaluable advice to remember to blink!