BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[briantrumpet]

I see even better.

Cos your eyes have been optomised.

 

[briantrumpet]

Lib Dems proposing a 10p cut in fuel duty doesn't suggest that they want to appeal to the Green vote.

And not too keen on actually agreeing with an actual fact about asylum seekers. What's going on here? What are they afraid of? I genuinely don't understand.

 

[Pblakeney]

And not too keen on actually agreeing with an actual fact about asylum seekers. What's going on here? What are they afraid of? I genuinely don't understand.

View attachment 17379

The answer is simple, if unpleasant.
The only reason can be that he doesn’t want to upset a sizable proportion of the electorate.
By definition that means a sizable proportion of the electorate want to accuse asylum seekers of posing a threat. Contrary to all evidence, but not social media.

 

[briantrumpet]

Looks like the Far Right AfD won't be able to form any state government, despite winning a majority of the vote in the contested eastern state, but the battering of the centre right of Merz might lead to his toppling at national level, given the left did well in Berlin.

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/20/g-s1...-reforms-after-historic-state-election-defeat

 

[briantrumpet]

Not that it affects me in the least, but as an indicator of how modern businesses fleece their customers:

1) Disney sells premium cable subscriptions so you don't get adverts.

2) Disney alters end-user agreements to include adverts for premium cable subscriptions.

I bet they'd stop the sale of DVDs if they could.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Not that it affects me in the least, but as an indicator of how modern businesses fleece their customers:

1) Disney sells premium cable subscriptions so you don't get adverts.

2) Disney alters end-user agreements to include adverts for premium cable subscriptions.

I bet they'd stop the sale of DVDs if they could.

3) People cancel premium cable subscriptions.

4) Disney reverses changes to end-user agreements.



Simples!

 

[C R]

3) People cancel premium cable subscriptions.

4) Disney reverses changes to end-user agreements.



Simples!

Your faith in markets sorting themselves out is touching.

 

[briantrumpet]

This does seem to be on the nose. It's almost as if *all* political parties are shying away from leading the political conversation towards the areas that would really make a difference, preferring to pander to polling data that tells them to focus on the areas the populists are leading on.

 

[All uphill]

We're cat sitting in the Netherlands at the moment and can't believe my son's TV arrangements. Subscriptions galore, YouTube, Disney, Netflix and more.aa

Clearly the age of making an annual payment and then watching whatever is on is only for dinosaurs like us. We've given up and are enjoying our books

 

[All uphill]

This does seem to be on the nose. It's almost as if *all* political parties are shying away from leading the political conversation towards the areas that would really make a difference, preferring to pander to polling data that tells them to focus on the areas the populists are leading on.

View attachment 17389

It's difficult in a democracy when a significant proportion of the electorate will support simple, commonsense arguments that can foreseeably harm the population.

Where is the politician who can lead and explain?

 

[briantrumpet]

It's difficult in a democracy when a significant proportion of the electorate will support simple, commonsense arguments that can foreseeably harm the population.

Where is the politician who can lead and explain?

Starmer wouldn't, and I'm coming to the conclusion that Burnham won't either, as he seems to go into media hiding the moment something contentious crops up.

To be slightly less damning to them, at least they didn't cause the problems caused by Johnson, Truss, Sunak & Brexit, but they are shying away from dealing with them in a meaningful way, at best, tinkering round the edges and flirting with populism.

 

[briantrumpet]

At Prime Minister’s Questions on 9 September, Kemi Badenoch accused the government of having lost £330m a year in tax revenue by driving the hedge-fund billionaire Chris Rokos, whom she described as “Britain’s third biggest taxpayer” to leave the country. “That is £330 million of taxes walking out the door because of this Labour government”, Badenoch claimed, before repeating: “Every year, £330 million”. The £330m-a-year claim was repeated across the media. The Sun claimed that Rokos’s departure meant the Treasury had lost enough to pay the salaries of 9,400 nurses.

The problem with this claim is that it is, in the technical sense, bullshit. As defined by the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt in his 1986 essay On Bullshit, this means a statement made without any interest in validation. A liar knows the truth, or at least knows that what they are saying is untrue. The bullshitter doesn’t care; they just say something confidently without caring if it’s true or not. This is what Kemi Badenoch was doing.

https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2026/09/kemi-badenochs-billionaire-baloney

I'd assume that if a billionaire is paying that much tax, they are doing something either really altruistic (unlikely), or missing most of the things that billionaires do to get that rich.

 

[PurplePenguin]

This does seem to be on the nose. It's almost as if *all* political parties are shying away from leading the political conversation towards the areas that would really make a difference, preferring to pander to polling data that tells them to focus on the areas the populists are leading on.

View attachment 17389

Not sure these are great points. Do you expect the Tories to campaign on the basis that political stability is the most important thing so Labour should stay in power? Plus every one since the dawn of time thinks they can simplify taxes - all the opposition parties will believe that. So that leaves Europe (something the UK is still part of), immigration which may not raise GDP/capita and higher education which seems to be in negative light due to the glut of unemployed grads.

 

[PurplePenguin]

Canada wants to be friends again. They could start by agreeing the trade deal they walked away from (unlike every other country), but that doesn't seem to be mentioned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmed7p06epxjo

 

[briantrumpet]

Canada wants to be friends again. They could start by agreeing the trade deal they walked away from (unlike every other country), but that doesn't seem to be mentioned.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cmed7p06epxjo

Maybe because they can see a bigger advantage in a wider CAN-UK-EU arrangement than they could see in a CAN-UK one?