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Reply | Film 2026; don't think we have such a thread yet
at 11:31 18 May 2026
I've been really busy and not had the chance to see as many films as I'd like - working on that now.
Obsession
Excellent comic horror with a Barbarian sensibility and mood. Loved it.
The Drama – Robert Pattinson seems to pick great roles. I wasn't sure if that had coloured my view, but this was really fun. Zendaya is excellent too, and the tension - again with comic effect - was nicely handled.
On the agenda this week are the Christophers, Normal and Woken. |
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Reply | Cargiant site
at 10:34 18 May 2026
Outside of central London, there are some awful examples of office space converted to living accommodation.
Look up 3 Church Road in Croydon for example. An early-mid 80s office block which has been turned into flats. The basement is flats with no natural light and accommodation below the minimum size, but it's been allowed and has tenants there, with rent being paid by housing benefit.
PDR needs review but - like on the Labour thread - who's going to stop it when we need more housing?
The basement - you can see here - has the windows boarded because of privacy.
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 02:04 18 May 2026
Streeting was unequivocal about where he thinks the fault lies, and that's Brexit. I criticised him earlier in the thread, but he's nailed his colours to the mast. That will be problematic for Burnham; if he pushes back, he'll lose the majority opinion now that, if the referendum were run now, the majority would have voted to Remain.
Makerfield - his potential constituency - voted 75% in favour of Brexit at the time. I haven't seen polling figures that reflect the current opinion in the area - might be a toiugh one for Burnham to explain. |
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 19:37 17 May 2026
The triple lock is a material part of the pressure, but not the whole story. The OBR says the triple lock is now expected to cost about £15.5 billion a year by 2029-30, roughly three times the original expectation, and the IFS estimates the full new state pension is already around £30 a week higher than it would have been under earnings uprating alone.
That doesn’t mean pensions are “the” problem, but it does mean the system is moving in a direction that is hard to sustain alongside an ageing population and slower tax growth. The more serious point is that you cannot keep promising higher pension spending, lower taxes for workers, and no trade-offs elsewhere at the same time.
Well you can, but you're in LaLa Land and conning voters. [Post edited 17 May 19:38]
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 16:25 16 May 2026
4.5 million overstates the scale of net immigration over the last 10 years; the ONS‑aligned figures are much lower and do not come close to that number. perhaps half.
Migration does affect housing demand, but the evidence does not support treating it as the dominant cause of UK housing unaffordability. The real drivers are planning constraints, chronically low supply, changes in credit and mortgage conditions, and labour‑market dynamics, alongside the growth of the private‑rental sector where many households now spend well over 30% of their income on rent.
That means the problem is not just how many people are arriving, but how few homes are being built, how much people can afford to pay, and how the private‑rental market is structured to absorb that pressure.
Again, whose choice is for a massive programme of capital social housebuilding, reducing rental income and the cost of private accomodation against an economic forecast that makes it unaffordable.
Pressures...I wouldn't want to be PM. |
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 13:52 16 May 2026
It's one reason why immigration is so high - people coming here on work visas are net contributors to the tax pot; they pay income tax, VAT, etc but aren't going to be a pension drain. |
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Reply | Saints charged with spying
at 13:49 16 May 2026
Boro have never nicked a few yards at a throw in to protect the integrity of the game.
Boro have never had a player go down easy to earn a free kick or a penalty to protect the integrity of the game
Boro have never had a keeper sit down so they can get a tactical conversation going to protect the integrity of the game.
Boro have never had a suspended fine for failing to control their players in a match against Man City to protect the integrity of the game. |
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 13:41 16 May 2026
It’s about pressures that are getting tighter, harder to manage, and more future-facing than most political arguments allow. I don’t think many governments in living memory have faced the level of restriction and constraint that the 2024 government did: ageing, pensions, weak productivity, tax pressure and AI all point to the same underlying problem, and the state is being asked to do more while the labour force and tax base are not expanding fast enough.
That is why so many debates end up sounding repetitive. People argue about this policy or that leader, but the deeper issue is structural: what the state can promise, what it can fund, and what the economy can actually absorb are moving out of alignment. Once that happens, every option becomes a trade-off.
The hardest part is that this is not a problem with a single fix. You can try to raise productivity, increase labour supply, reform pensions, change the tax mix, or use AI to improve public-sector capacity. But none of those are quick, and none work well in isolation. They need time, consistency and credibility, which is exactly what politics makes hardest. Particularly as we are now in a reality show era of expecting to be able to vote off the people we like less.
That is why the conversation keeps coming back to trust, sequencing and delay. A government can promise a lot, but unless it can show where the money, labour and capacity come from, the promises eventually run into arithmetic. The real question is not whether change is needed. It is whether it is managed early and deliberately or later and under pressure. |
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 18:53 15 May 2026
Add in the costs of the pandemic and furlough, and any new government will struggle. 2008, Brexit, and then Covid left the state with less room for manoeuvre, more debt, and a more fragile economy. That doesn’t excuse poor choices, but it does mean the current mess isn’t just about personalities at the top. |
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 18:05 15 May 2026
You're right that not all capital is mobile but enough is to matter. Post-Brexit is a great test case. No factories relocated immediately, but financial capital fled instantly. Equity flows declined, short-term debt dried up, the pound depreciated 15%.
That's the constraint, not conspiracy, but mechanical: investors price risk and move capital before policy hits. So, you can either tax wealth or implement capital controls, but the moment you announce it, capital flows respond.
That doesn't make it impossible but it requires either accepting short-term disruption, or moving gradually while maintaining credibility. The former is unpopular...as is the latter to people wanting change.
A successor would need to either restore credibility (hard) or accept markets will punish rapid radical change initially. [Post edited 15 May 18:13]
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 13:40 15 May 2026
So, a tight fiscal position and high gilt yields mean any government faces real limits. All fair enough, but the markets aren't actually spooked by Labour. Gilt rates are high, but stable. Starmer is, by most measures, a safe pair of hands on the economy. So that doesn't actually explain why he's lost both the left and the centre simultaneously. Plenty of governments operate under tight constraints without collapsing like this.
When a government becomes so cautious about constraint that it stops being willing to choose. Starmer committed to fiscal rules. That was honest - the constraints are real – but the question then was, within those constraints, what do you actually do, where do you prioritise, and what do you ask people to accept, and why?
He never answered that. Instead, when the first difficult choice arrived (winter fuel payments and disability benefits), he reversed course under backbench pressure. Not because the constraint forced him to (he had fiscal room), because he couldn't hold a line politically.
That single moment did more damage than any policy because it signalled this government will make whatever commitment suits the occasion, then abandon it when it gets difficult.
The left saw it and thought, "He was never serious about using constraint to build something and was just using it as a cover for inaction." The centre saw it and thought: "He can't even hold the safe position he set for himself."
Now look at what's happening with candidates. Burnham keeps saying he'd "do Manchester at a national level". Streeting keeps saying different things to different audiences. Nobody's actually naming which choices they'd make within the constraint and sticking to it.
That's the problem - not the constraint itself, but the refusal to choose within it. This government (and potentially any successor) has become so focused on acknowledging the constraint that it's forgotten you still have to choose within it. And when you refuse to choose, or you make a choice and then reverse it, you lose everyone.
The markets aren't the problem - paralysis is. |
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Reply | The Labour Party
at 22:31 14 May 2026
The thread keeps circling around personalities and factions, but there's an actual structural problem nobody's naming clearly.
Look at what LazyFan proposes: renationalise energy, take on big business, and fund the green economy through North Sea oil profits split 50/50. It's coherent, but it requires one thing to work: that markets will accept a major redistribution of wealth and state ownership without immediate capital discipline.
That's the unstated assumption in the left-wing argument, and I don't think it holds. Not because "the rich secretly control everything", but because capital is mobile.
A government announcing large-scale nationalisation, wealth redistribution, or aggressive business taxation faces immediate pressure: bond yields spike, currency weakens, and investment capital relocates. That's not a conspiracy but finance working as it actually works.
The evidence is there: Corbyn's polling collapsed the moment markets priced in his policies. Every developed economy attempting large-scale redistribution in the past 30 years has either accepted working within market constraints (Denmark, Germany) or faced economic instability. There's no recent example of successfully breaking the constraint without severe cost.
If the constraint is real, then the choice isn't between "principled left-wing policies" and "sell-out centrism". It's between:
Option A: Be honest about the constraint. Say what you can actually do within it. Build trust through measured delivery. It's slower and less exciting, but it's sustainable.
Option B: Promise to break the constraint. Face immediate market pressure. Either break your promises (the Corbyn problem) or destabilise the economy trying to keep them.
Starmer chose A implicitly, but he didn't communicate it - or communicate it well enough. He tried to look left while acting centrist, and that's why he's lost both audiences.
The "unity" argument is also a distraction because you can't unite around a false promise. If the left demands policies that the fiscal position won't support, and the centre says "that will destabilise us," you can't compromise. One of them is wrong about the constraint.
Either (a) the constraint is real, in which case the left's approach won't work, or (b) it isn't, in which case we should be implementing the left's policies now.
That's not factionalism. but a genuine disagreement about what's possible.
Starmer failed not by choosing A over B but by not being honest that he was choosing. He should have said, "Here's the fiscal reality. Here's what we can do. Here's why it matters." Instead, he looked like he was choosing between two poor options rather than explaining why one was necessary.
HAYESBOY's right that childcare, rents reform, and minimum wage increases matter. But they matter more if you explain why they're what's possible, not if you present them as a consolation prize for the transformation you promised but couldn't deliver.
Re VAT on private schools and NI increases, LazyFan's analysis of their distributional effects has merit. But the alternative (higher income tax, wealth tax, wealth redistribution via capital controls) faces the same market constraint. These aren't "Tory policies"; they're the least bad options given what markets will tolerate.
Labour need a leader who can do three things:
Be explicit about fiscal constraints rather than pretend they don't exist.
Show what can be done within those constraints and why it matters.
Actually deliver it, so trust rebuilds.
That's not "centrism" as a label. It's just honesty about the world we're actually operating in.
The left will argue those constraints are politically illegitimate and that we should reject them, even at economic cost. That reflects a lot of the Green's position, but it requires saying that clearly, not pretending the constraint doesn't exist while promising to break it.
Of the candidates being discussed, what matters isn't their previous positions but whether they can do three things immediately:
First: Make a clear public case about fiscal constraints. Not in technical jargon but in language that working people understand. 'Here's what the bond markets will do if we promise X. Here's why that matters. Here's what we can do instead.'
Second: Reconnect the policies they can deliver to people's actual lives. Childcare, rents, wages, and NHS waiting lists aren't consolation prizes. They're material improvements. But only if you explain them as the result of honest choices, not failures of ambition.
Third: Show willingness to make hard trade-offs publicly and not hide them. When the left says 'renationalise energy', the answer should be 'We've looked at the fiscal cost and the market risk and recognise they're real.' Here's what we're doing instead and why it matters more.' That's leadership. The current approach, trying to look left while acting centre, just looks dishonest.
Any candidate who can do that gets a chance. Any candidate who tries the Starmer approach again deserves to lose. |
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Reply | Charlton crowd issues
at 12:53 12 May 2026
Like I said before - don't píss me off with things like this.😁 |
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Reply | Charlton crowd issues
at 12:52 12 May 2026
Update: RBG have now confirmed that the matter was reviewed in full by the Safety Advisory Group on 9 April, alongside the Club’s internal investigation, the Met debrief and the SGSA ground assessment.ir The email also makes clear that the SAG’s view was that the incident did not amount to a safety concern and that there was no breach of the Safety Certificate.
That said, the same response still confirms a set of learning points for the Club: updated late-ingress risk assessments, better external queue management, improved steward briefing and supporter communication, and CCTV retention for any future complaint. So while the formal finding is “no breach”, the practical outcome is still that the issues raised have been recognised and actioned.
CAFC said those changes tested at the Ipswich evening kick-off - the question now is whether that improvement is sustained next season, rather than simply tied to a live complaint being under scrutiny.
I’ve also replied to RBG to ask what evidence the SAG relied on, how they distinguished an operational learning point from a safety concern, and how they will satisfy themselves that the agreed changes are actually embedded. I’ve asked them to confirm what oversight the certifying authority will keep in place for any repeat late-ingress issues, since the point of the exercise is not just a neat conclusion on one fixture, but a proper record and a proper standard for the future.
For me, that leaves the position pretty clear: the formal complaint may be closed out, but the underlying issue has at least forced some useful operational changes and put the question of future oversight firmly on record. Next season will show whether that was a genuine fix or just a more polished explanation. |
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Reply | Saints charged with spying
at 15:08 11 May 2026
With players needing to report for World Cup duty, delaying them would have been impossible. |
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Reply | Charlton crowd issues
at 16:49 9 May 2026
Last update:
Charlton have now replied to say the complaint was shared in full with the Safety Advisory Group, including the photos and email chain, and that the SAG discussed it on 9 April. They also say it was reviewed alongside the Met debrief and SGSA ground assessment.
The immediate learning points have already been implemented and tested at a recent evening kick-off against Ipswich Town, where they had a bigger away allocation and plenty of late arrivals. Conveniently, that was all dealt with “without issue”, and the SGSA was there to watch. Whether they would have been there if the complaint weren't live is another matter. It does mean it was safer for away fans, which is was the aim.
The SAG’s conclusion was that, on the evidence presented, the incident did not amount to a safety concern, and there was no breach of the Safety Certificate. That said, they still managed to identify a neat little list of action points anyway: updated late-ingress risk assessments, better queueing and crowd-flow management, improved steward briefing and communication, and CCTV retention for any future complaint that looks too familiar.
So, in summary, pretty much complete except the learning points, the changes, the testing, and the promise that everything will be sorted by the start of the 2026/27 campaign.
Next season will tell us whether this was genuinely fixed or just reworded more neatly. I'm keeping it open with RBG, as the certifying authority, whether they’re content with the SAG’s no-breach conclusion and what oversight they’ll keep in place for any future late-ingress issues. The aim is to get it on record in case a similar incident happens again. |
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Reply | Podcasts, Fanzines and Matchday Programmes
at 14:22 7 May 2026
Podcasts were the new fanzines until video became more accessible.
The relatively low barrier to entry means anyone can create media. The unfortunate thing is that anyone can create media, but only a few can create good media.
I do a range of things, but podcast production is one of them, and most podcasts I hear should have been an episode. Having a good idea for an episode isn't the same as putting the work in to create something people want to see or hear. I often get people sending me recorded Zoom calls and ask me to make it a podcast.
The lack of narrative, sound design, focus, or production scares me most days. For example, I've done an 18 minute podcast for an organisation. The timing:
30 mins - recording the main guest
1 hour - editing the main guest, drafting a revised script, drafting revised pickups
30 mins - pick ups with the interviewers to rerecord the revised questions
1 hour - re-editing the pickups, adding music, stabs and imagery.
30 mins - final sound design - compression, tone, noise reduction etc and delivery to the client
That was over a week and meant a half day of paid activity for 18 minutes output. Most people who are doing content like this AREN'T getting paid and doing it for the love of QPR and the medium. Pretty much the same as fanzines. |
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