AB

Can we go back to most people being normal? That used to cover a very broad spectrum of things. We’d developed it well to a point where we’d even got to being sympathetic and caring towards the problems faced by people who weren’t normal but would have liked to have been.

I’m sure over the last ten years I’ve thought Tame Impala to be a resolutely mid sort of band. I’ve seen them play live.

But Radio 6 seem to have elevated their 2015 album to being some sort of epochal work of genius meriting wanging on about it all day.

Maybe I’m just old.

He probably has no idea who he is and had nothing to do with him being stood as a candidate. After the election he didn’t even wait for his declaration before doing a photoshoot of “all” 4 Reform MPs.

Maybe we should do fewer reports and inquiries and just do stuff because it’s the right thing to do and we’re confident enough in it to take a lead without needing to point at a fat document to justify doing it.

For anyone who has qualified to be offered a ST for 25/26, BFC has said they will check to ensure your old membership does not autorenew. We would advise you check your account to ensure you do not get charged for both membership and a ST. Renewals are due to open on 13th June.

Given Mr Coksun is of Turkish heritage, how come all the “deport all foreign criminals” gang haven’t added him to their list?

But are they actually done now by those sixth formers?

Are EPQs often done by less academic pupils/ones doing vocational courses? Would Y10-11s who needed to be relieved of the load of an extra couple of GCSEs be capable of doing a worthwhile junior EPQ?

The truly politically homeless at the moment are those who are socially and economically liberal. So to the left of Labour now socially and way to the right of Con/LD/Ref economically. Maybe the group most likely to stay Tory through lack of alternative and hopes of outlasting those who go LD/Ref?

Not really. Things very different now.

Could probably survive if it knew what it was for and was confident that that would be needed again one day even if not popular now. But neither of those things are looking v plausible at the moment.

Oh no, not the Portuguese villa!

Corbyn could if he could be bothered.

Miss Piggy Piggy Piggy Piggy Piggy Piggy Piggy

That is someone else’s problem though. Obviously if you can show your policy is not only good in itself but also would be popular (or at least not unpopular enough to stop its sponsors losing) and capable of implementation that would be ideal to make a sale.

Though I always wonder at how so many people who spend their lives on politics so often have so few ideas about what they’d actually like to do if given the chance after all their hard work in getting elected.

Whenever I see the words “in the right places” I know I can completely disregard everything else said as it means “nowhere”.

Balanced out by wfh. But obviously that’s wrong and bad too.

It’s more complex because we’ve also massively grown the childcare sector and pumped a huge amount of subsidy into it.

Maybe being able to afford a home without saving for a decade and borrowing 5x income might go towards helping there.

In the context of wages and productivity it is. Obviously in terms of stuff generally falling apart and the Police and schools having turned into the main providers of much social support as the only bits nobody is shutting down, no.

While also eschewing the sweaty man jobs of actually building stuff rather than writing reports about why stuff ought not to be built anywhere.

Driven by having an ageing population. Who refuse to pay for that growth in demand.

The only impact of austerity in this is that it helped keep non-minimum wages from rising and so added to the compression of the differentials (old fashioned lefties used to care a lot about these) while minimum wages rose. Severely cutting tax by increasing the personal allowance the cherry on that

It may be that we’re not far off having achieved what is currently possible with automation so are left with mainly things that are, pending cheap sentient androids, unavoidably human.

If you have done that while raising the income of the entirely unproductive have a golf clap.

If you rejoice in the wages of the least skilled, least productive having over 25 years risen by >£9k a year more than general wage inflation as all the parties have, you should be unsurprised at there having been no growth in productivity.

We’re pretty much there. There was a Guardian piece earlier in the year about how awful it was a guy with a 1st and a MSc was working in a bar for £24k. It didn’t bother to note that a funded science PhD, if he could find one, paid £19k.

Also the major economic problem is that wages above the bottom are too close to the minimum wage and that doesn’t get fixed by any of this.

Hurrah for the new chocolate ration!

There’s no point in suspending the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act if you don’t take advantage of it!