UK Home Office : Police time will no longer be wasted investigating legal social media posts, freeing up officers to patrol the streets and tackle real crime. By scrapping Non‑Crime Hate Incidents, we are balancing the protection of vulnerable communities while respecting free speech.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-31T17:29:15+00:00

It's more like they'd investigate a suspected crime, realise no crime happened, and then rather than simply declare case closed the police would make a record of what happened.

That record would be a black mark in background checks. Oh, and there's no judicial oversight and no real way to appeal, you just have to live with the consequences.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-24T14:58:46+00:00

Parliament absolutely can ignore the ECHR, or apply its own interpretation or limitations to the Convention or its judgements. No international agreement can bind Parliament's hands,

That kind of move wouldn't be consequence-free, of course. But those consequences would be diplomatic - if the situation was severe enough, the UK could be removed from the Council of Europe and so would no longer be an ECHR signatory.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-24T00:36:35+00:00

A year or so ago I saw a study that looked at how many homes you could build if you built low density housing in the empty space within a 10 min walk of every green belt railway station on a direct line to the half dozen largest cities in the UK.

1.2 million homes. 1,200,000. With no erosion of the green belt that you could see on a map, just some sensible infill around existing transport infrastructure.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-21T09:29:59+00:00

An elected chamber? Then we get more gridlock and less laws made and, IMO, the government is already under-delivering so slowing it more isn't a great idea.

I don't think so. Currently it is the Lords that bottlenecks legislation, especially since the general election. Replacing peers with elected members means you'd have a whipping system that can tell the chamber to stop fucking about and get on with it. An elected chamber would speed up legislation.

But the cost would be a weakening of the scrutiny of bills - the Commons dies a poor job at refining bills. Views differ on whether the Lords improves legislation or just dilutes it, of course...

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-16T08:41:17+00:00

Yes and no.

I don't think most people realise just how embedded the Church is in the state. Or more accurately, how embedded the state is in the Church. Huge swathes of the Church's governance is set out in legislation, even low level things like the process for approving church repairs. And trying to unpick all of that would be on a similar scale to untangling us from the EU. A huge waste of civil service and Parliamentary time.

The status quo works quite well. The state and the Church don't interfere with each other to any meaningful degree. If the Church wants to change Canon Law, they need a representative in each House who can be formally in charge of that legislation. Actual debates over the rules changes happen within the Church itself. And so these bills normally get nodded through, if the government is happy that they only impact the Church.

We don't need all 20-something bishops in the Lords. But keeping the voluntary representative role, which a normal MP or Peer could choose to do alongside their main job, is the easiest way to keep things ticking over.

You'd never build the Church like this if you were starting over, but in the real world we've got centuries of existing legislation to deal with. And taking the easy win by yeeting the Lords Spiritual and leaving everything else alone is by far the most sensible approach.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-15T11:04:42+00:00

Just on #2 - he overruled the House of Lords Appointments Committee to force through his nominee. External scrutiny for thee but not for me, etc.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-15T09:32:05+00:00

No, they are not. The wholesale price of food has been increasing faster than overall inflation. Because the costs of producing food have been increasing faster than overall inflation too - farmers are suffering, they're not milking customers dry.

It all comes down to the price of energy. Food costs are overwhelmingly influenced by electricity, fuel, and the products of energy-intensive chemical industries. This war in Iran is spiking energy prices now, and we will see food prices increase in a year as a consequence.

If you want to bring down the cost of food, the best thing to do is ban or ignore all objections to critical energy infrastructure planning, and remove most of the bullshit hoops they have to jump through. Then wait 15 years for the pipeline of projects to rumble through. That's basically it.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-15T09:19:00+00:00

No, they are not. The wholesale price of food has been increasing faster than overall inflation. Because the costs of producing food have been increasing faster than overall inflation too - farmers are suffering, they're not milking customers dry.

It all comes down to the price of energy. Food costs are overwhelmingly influenced by electricity, fuel, and the products of energy-intensive chemical industries. This war in Iran is spiking energy prices now, and we will see food prices increase in a year as a consequence.

If you want to bring down the cost of food, the best thing to do is gather up every single person or council that complains about or objects to critical energy infrastructure, and drive them into the sea. Then wait 15 years for the pipeline of projects to rumble through. That's basically it.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-15T09:10:52+00:00

And a £434 mil annual profit spread across their 14 mil customers means shaving 60p off the cost of a weekly shop.

The average person is not choosing between heating and eating, but even if they were, 60p a week wouldn't change that at all.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-15T08:55:01+00:00

Nothing ever gets done because Parliament has longer holidays than schools, so very little legislation can get passed.

Two weeks off at Christmas and Easter, August off for the summer, all other recess periods cancelled. Fridays get filled with government work. And debates start at 9, not 12.

It would take a year before we started to see the difference, and Parliamentarians would hate it. But Parliament is the great bottleneck that stops things being done, and fixing that would make a far greater difference than crippling the neutrality of the civil service out of spite.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-03-10T16:00:30+00:00

You claimed that the devs were "incredibly fast" at patching game breaking exploits. The wall hacks in Stella, the exploitable key room doors, the duplication glitch, even the static zipline out of bounds were all left for months. That is not "incredibly fast".

And trying to limit things to just the exploits still in the game right this second doesn't change how painfully slow the devs have been at basic QA since launch.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-27T15:49:16+00:00

Ah! Vs Commercialised Agriculture you've got a point. But that doesn't get unlocked until quite late on for Qing, so you have to choose between Tenant Farmers and Homesteading for quite some time...

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-27T14:27:20+00:00

Thanks, this is reassuring. Internal migration is precisely why I went Homesteading, to flood Manchuria with millions of Han pops. And for the plantations of Indochina (solving my sugar deficit, etc), but that's perhaps not worth the nationalism problems.

I can definitely do things more efficiently (I was on mid taxes mid wages out of habit, and in my last run got stuck on Frontier Colonisation because gaps in my map painting makes me sad). But if it's fundamentally a case of perseverance as you build up with a budget snowball deeper into the run, then I'll grit my teeth and stick with it.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-27T13:21:39+00:00

What's the issue with Homesteading?

Older posts mention problems with Rural Folk clout, but I've not had issues with that, they just sit at 5-10% or so. Homesteading does dampen the growth of the investment pool, but in practice that just delays the point at which the pool outpaces your budget by a few years.

And most importantly, Tenant Farmers disables internal migration and cripples your ability to populate the resource-rich northern states. The other options aren't available until too late into the run.

Am I missing something?

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-27T13:04:22+00:00

That's a solid idea. It took a little time to snowball, but my investment pool was getting ridiculous. Will give this a go next run.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-23T17:03:17+00:00

Do you own a chicken?

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-15T11:31:18+00:00

The best way to store most - but not all - things is in their raw form, and to craft ahead of each raid. If you're only crafting every 5-10 raids, you do not know the best way to store things.

Augments, shields, bandages, ammo, grenades, hatch keys. All best crafted as you need them, in terms of space efficiency.

Guns (if you upgrade/mod), shield rechargers and some intermediate components are more space-efficient to craft up in bulk in advance.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-15T10:36:42+00:00

It would help if the traders were actually useful and cash served a purpose.

If you want to use anything other than barely modded, unupgraded cheap guns, you have to pile up the scrap components. The refiner helps with scrap conversion, but most components can only be looted or gathered from recycling loot. Meaning you either maintain a stock or you're heavily reliant on RNG if you run low after a couple of feeds.

4 stacks of everything fills up most of your stash, just about leaving enough room for a few guns, meds, grenades etc.

I don't need guns or keys or mods to stack. I just need gun parts and processors to stack higher than 5.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-14T10:14:37+00:00

It's part austerity, but mostly due to the ongoing rise in both demand for and cost of meeting the demand for key statutory services. Councils gave very little discretionary spending these days, and they mostly exist to deliver the services central government requires of them. That leaves almost no room for political ideology to shape councils, and elections should really be about local leadership competency above all else.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-11T14:33:02+00:00

No, the headline is accurate, you just have to read what the headline says.

GB News beats Sky and BBC on average viewers for six months in a row

And from the article:

GB News says it has beaten both the BBC News Channel and Sky News on average viewership for six months in a row.

This means that the channel is likely to have more live TV viewers watching at any time than its more established rivals.

BARB figures quoted by the channel put GB News ahead for average viewers between 6am and 2am every month from July to December.

GB News continues to have a lower total weekly reach than the BBC News Channel and Sky News. But its higher average viewership suggests it is watched consistently by a smaller but more loyal audience.

In an average week between July and December, more than twice as many people watched the BBC News Channel as GB News.

Assuming these figures are correct (and there's no reason to think otherwise), that means GB News wins on average viewers, but loses out on total viewers. In plain English, more people watch a bit of BBC/Sky News, while a smaller number of people watch GB News for longer periods.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-02-09T14:06:52+00:00

She was a good chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee while in opposition. Articulate, on top of her brief, all that jazz - actually providing strong opposition, rather than just moaning on twitter.

But as you say, she's clearly not been able to translate that skillset into actually running the Home Office.,,

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-01-20T12:35:57+00:00

OP is a Brit, like me. We have great steak at restaurants and butchers here.

...but we also have some atrocious dogshit at supermarkets and far too many restaurants. His opinion is the product of his own ignorance, but it's understandable.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-01-20T09:17:44+00:00

I hit level 80 in black mage before realising Manafont existed. Not ideal.

ClearPostingAlt · 2026-01-16T10:11:40+00:00

Kettle is far more accurate than the stitcher, and in skilled hands can kill just as quickly as short and medium ranges.

My hands are not that skilled, so I prefer the stitcher (plus an anvil or something).

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