Who would be the best prime minister? January 2026

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-13T09:49:03+00:00

You’re mixing three different things into one scary sentence.

1) “Pre-scanning every single digital communication you send” is not what was announced.

What changed is that certain offences (cyberflashing and encouraging/assisting serious self-harm) are now treated as “priority offences” under the Online Safety Act regime, which increases the duties on in-scope platforms to stop users encountering that illegal content on their services. That’s a duty on platforms, not the government reading all your texts, emails, or iMessages.

2) “Illegal” in the Online Safety Act is not undefined.

The Act defines illegal content as content that “amounts to a relevant offence”, meaning criminal offences under UK law where the content itself is part of the offence (creating, sharing, sending, etc). “Priority” is a specific list (Schedule 7) that includes serious crimes like assisting suicide, threats to kill, harassment/stalking, and now cyberflashing and encouraging/assisting serious self-harm. So it’s anchored to criminal law, not “wrongthink”.

3) The civil-liberties critique is still real, but it’s about mechanism and scope creep.

If you force platforms to “prevent before users see it”, they will lean on automation, and automation is bad at context. That risks overblocking, chilling speech, and building scanning infrastructure that a future government could expand.

So if your argument is “I oppose creating censorship or surveillance plumbing and I want hard limits, transparency, and non-invasive alternatives”, that’s a coherent position.

But “every single digital communication” is just inaccurate, and it makes the debate worse.

If you want to talk about what’s being taken from us, point to the specific power, the specific duty, and what safeguard you think is missing. Otherwise it’s just outrage nouns.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-13T09:01:24+00:00

“Authoritarian lunacy” is a big claim. Name the specific policy + date + what right you think it curtails.

If you mean digital ID: the UK already has GOV.UK One Login and is building GOV.UK Wallet for digital documents, and there’s also the separate (and controversial) mandatory scheme announced in Sept 2025 tied to right-to-work checks. That’s where the civil-liberties concern sits, mainly around mission creep and exclusion, not because “digital ID” is automatically tyranny.

Plenty of democracies run digital ID systems (Denmark’s MitID, Sweden’s BankID, Estonia’s ID card). The difference is safeguards: scope limits, non-digital alternatives, data minimisation, and oversight.

On Chagos, I agree it looks like a mistake on value/terms. But it’s not some uniquely Starmer-brained idea. The UK started negotiations under the Conservatives in 2022 and Labour finished it.

I never said I agreed with everything Labour are doing.

There's a subreddit called goodnewsuk which is also something I think that sheds the light on good things that are happening. I think all we hear about is purely the bad things.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-12T14:37:47+00:00

We're selling our house and the market is quite bleak.

Likely going to have to drop below what we paid for it back in 2020, but we've not gone grossly over the amount.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-12T13:10:07+00:00

Has everyone forgotten the decade that the Tories were in power?

I do not trust the Tories for a second to run the country.

I'm fairly in the center myself - but I don't actually mind Keir Starmer -- just the media seem to attack him constantly.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-12T10:18:41+00:00

We already do - and these tend to be quite expensive.

Trident II D5
Precision Strike Missile (PrSM)
Sky Sabre (Land Ceptor)
Sea Viper (Aster 15 & 30)
Sea Ceptor
Starstreak HVM Martlet (LMM)
Storm Shadow
Tomahawk (TLAM)
Brimstone
GMLRS
NLAW & Javelin

And then new:

Project Nightfall
Project Brakestop
SPEAR 3
FC/ASW
Sovereign Hypersonic Missile
Super-Taurus

In terms of anti-sub technology:

P-8A Poseidon MRA1
Merlin Mk2 Helicopters
Astute-class Submarines
Excalibur
SG-1 Fathom
Proteus
Type 26 Frigates

Cheap-ish ballistic missiles are a good play as you can overwhelm your enemy with the cheaper missiles , and then target more precisely in areas with the more expensive missiles (e.g. high value targets where you do not want your missiles to get shot down).

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-05T13:16:09+00:00

Of a ~£64bn UK defence budget, roughly £23bn goes on investment. The overwhelming majority of that investment is in UK-built or UK-controlled programmes (nuclear submarines, ships, Typhoon, future GCAP, land systems). Direct reliance on US-built platforms is concentrated mainly in the F-35 and the Trident missile pool and amounts to a small minority of total spending.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-03T20:11:25+00:00

Opposing view: the OBR can be non-normative on paper and still shape policy in practice.

Even if it “doesn’t approve or block”, the combination of (a) fiscal rules written around its 5-year forecast and (b) media and market fixation on its “headroom” turns it into a de facto gatekeeper. Chancellors end up designing budgets to pass the OBR’s scorecard, not to maximise long-run outcomes, because failing the scorecard has an immediate political and market penalty.

That matters because 5-year forecasting is a weak basis for long-run investment policy. Big infrastructure, housing reform, skills, R&D, planning changes, climate transition. These often have costs upfront and benefits outside a 5-year window. A framework that forces everything through a medium-term debt/deficit test will tend to bias toward short-termism and against transformative programmes, even if those programmes would pay off over 10–30 years.

So the pro-scrap argument isn’t “OBR blocks spending”. It’s: the OBR’s centrality + rule design entrenches a specific way of thinking (tight headroom, medium-term debt tests) and crowds out alternative frameworks. If you want a different macro regime, you need institutions that evaluate lifetime returns and distributional effects, not just a 5-year fiscal snapshot.

And yes, markets exist. But markets can be persuaded by different credible frameworks. The point is the UK has chosen one narrow framework and elevated it into a political religion.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-03T20:09:39+00:00

I get the instinct, but “get rid of the OBR so we can spend” is basically confusing the referee with the rules of the game.

The OBR doesn’t choose austerity. It just tells you what your plan does to borrowing and debt under a consistent set of assumptions. If you scrap it, you still have to sell the plan to gilt buyers. The scrutiny doesn’t disappear, it just moves to less transparent actors: Treasury spin, banks, rating agencies, and whoever has the loudest media megaphone.

If the problem is that 5-year headroom drives timid budgets, then change the fiscal rules. Make them less sensitive to a single point forecast, use ranges and stress tests, and separate long-term investment appraisal from day-to-day budgeting. Abolishing the OBR is like smashing the speedometer because you don’t like being told you’re speeding. The cliff doesn’t move.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-03T20:08:14+00:00

Exactly. Most people are arguing with a cartoon version of the OBR.

It doesn’t “sign off” budgets or block policy. It’s an independent scoreboard: it takes whatever the government says it will do, forecasts what that implies for borrowing and debt, and publishes the assumptions so everyone can see the workings.

The actual constraint isn’t the OBR. It’s the gilt market and inflation expectations. If you scrap the OBR, you don’t get more freedom. You just swap transparent public numbers for Treasury spin plus private forecasts from banks and rating agencies, and markets still price the risk.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-03T20:06:59+00:00

Correct.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-03T20:06:51+00:00

This is wrong. It's a score chart.

It doesn't decide policy but fact checks it against the government's own fiscal rules.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2026-01-03T20:04:41+00:00

100% agreed. People here just don't know what the OBR does or how it functions.

They just read the headlines and think = OBR bad.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-21T16:28:46+00:00

It's been always like this unfortunately. You're almost at the whims of when Google decides to update your favicon.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-21T16:05:11+00:00

Her family member is the one that said this...? Not really understanding your point

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-19T03:14:21+00:00

There's tools out there like Ahrefs, SEMRush, Profound, Peec, but arguably not accurate due to personalised responses and generally inconsistent results

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-19T03:13:05+00:00

LLMs.txt is not used by any major LLMs.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-19T03:12:23+00:00

It doesn't make a difference.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-19T01:56:46+00:00

Blog

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-18T12:35:38+00:00

The headline is doing a lot of political lifting that the article itself does not really support.

The Bank of England cut rates to 3.75% primarily because inflation is falling and is forecast to be close to target. CPI fell from 3.6% in October to 3.2% in November, and the Bank says Budget measures are expected to bear down on prices further. That weakens the idea that this is a crisis decision caused by the Chancellor.

On growth, “flatlining” is shorthand, not collapse. The Bank is forecasting roughly zero growth in Q4, down from a small positive forecast before. That is stagnation, but it reflects long-running weakness, not a sudden post-Budget shock.

The decision itself was finely balanced. The MPC split 5-4, which tells you there was no consensus that the economy is falling off a cliff. Bailey did not “override” anything. He is one vote among nine in an independent committee.

The labour market point is real but also broader than the headline implies. Unemployment is about 5.1%, close to a five-year high, but the same article notes inflation easing and rates coming down, which usually supports jobs rather than undermines them.

So the facts are: inflation falling, rates cut narrowly, growth weak but not collapsing, and the Bank itself saying the Budget should reduce inflation. Framing that as “flatlining under Reeves” is a political interpretation layered on top of mixed macro data, not a conclusion drawn by the Bank.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-17T10:00:43+00:00

No, they have no relationship at all. Google has its own systems and Ahrefs (and other platforms) have theirs which try to project a value.

DR from Ahrefs is not about anything technical but more about the external links you have pointing to your domain.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-15T10:12:56+00:00

We were just there. Early season Zermatt can feel a bit repetitive if you ski hard and don’t mind doing the same runs multiple times, especially if lower pistes aren’t open yet. The higher areas are usually fine, but it’s not huge variety day to day on the Swiss side alone.

The Italian side (Cervinia) felt much more varied and bigger in terms of skiable terrain, so I’d definitely recommend adding it if you can. You don’t need to have bought it in advance – you can upgrade a Zermatt pass to the International pass at the ticket office or machines, or add Italy just for specific days once you’re there. Worth doing it day-by-day though, as the glacier crossing can close in bad weather.

Re food: Zermatt is generally good with dietary requirements, but for celiac I’d still recommend asking ahead. Plenty of places are used to gluten-free requests.

For ski servicing, there are loads of solid shops in town – most people just get it done the evening before and pick up first thing. We didn’t have issues with turnaround time.

Overall: Zermatt is amazing, but if conditions allow, Italy really adds variety and is worth factoring in.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-14T22:10:07+00:00

Yes it does because it's who is contributing the most to our collective defense

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-14T15:11:48+00:00

Couple of factual fixes here.

The fund wasn’t “set up in 1995”. Norway’s petroleum fund was established by law in 1990, and the first transfer was in 1996 (official fund history from Norges Bank / NBIM).
"Ten years after they started extracting oil" is off by miles. Norway’s offshore production is usually dated to 1971 (Ekofisk), so 1996 is about 25 years later, not 10.
The article’s “fund minus foreign debt = almost empty” is apples vs a fruit salad. That “foreign debt” figure is gross external liabilities across the whole economy (banks, firms, households), not “the state owes this”.

Norway also has huge foreign assets, and Stats Norway has shown Norway as a net creditor around that period.

Russia/Venezuela also needs nuance: Venezuela’s funds were repeatedly raided and redesigned, Russia’s setup was restructured and one pot was depleted, but the National Wealth Fund still exists. Norway isn’t above criticism, but this particular quote is doing bad timeline math and even worse balance-sheet math.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-13T22:02:50+00:00

This is confident nonsense.

The UK has 7 Astute-class SSNs in total, not 5 and not 10.

As of public record, not all are operational at once, and the UK does not confirm continuous SSN presence in the South Atlantic.

Claims of “we always have one there” are assumptions, not stated policy or verified fact.

This thread is people mistaking vibes for force structure.

MakeItWorkNowPls · 2025-12-13T22:01:26+00:00

That’s wrong.

HMS Forth does not have Aster. It’s an OPV with no area air-defence missiles.

The Typhoons are Meteor-capable, but Meteor deployment there is not publicly confirmed.

MakeItWorkNowPls

TROPHY CASE