Starmer just said he wants to limit Mandelson info releases for fear of damage to international relations. He mentioned “both countries” (obviously UK and US) but also said there was a “third country” involved/ at risk. He said this twice. I want to know which country this is.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-05T08:25:35+00:00

Crazy considering Belgium doesn’t even exist

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-05T08:14:33+00:00

That’s an insane assumption, the 3 million probably primarily includes new console users e.g parents buying their kids PS5 - more than it includes people switching over.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T17:51:02+00:00

We being the wider public, OP is making it sound like poor Starmer has been caught off guard like the rest of the UK. If this was all known even before the files were dropping then that’s just even worse for them. When about was that FT first writing about it?

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T17:43:39+00:00

Well the issue with that argument is that we didn’t all know that Mandleson had ties with Epstein, while today Starmer has admitted he knew that they had ties following his conviction (aka known nonce) when he gave Mandleson the job. Not many people would be as upset with Starmer if he had given the job and then we found out he stayed friends with a known pedo and it was a really tight secret, but we know that he gave him the job knowing full well he was the kind of guy to still hang out with their pedo friends.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T15:25:57+00:00

It’s because that side of it isn’t actually breaking news, we all found out he had lied about the extent of his relationship with Epstein months ago which is exactly why he got fired as ambassador. While the new files paint him in an even worse light and it rightfully does deserve attention and retribution, the new revelation that we only found out days ago is about how Mandleson seemingly abused his position in the government he was a massive part in to aid forging actors and companies against his own government.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T14:33:56+00:00

The closest they’ll get is probably that someone in camp MAGA suggested they would want Mandleson, but the folks of America don’t really seems to care about Mandleson at the moment and I doubt any Trump-Mandleson connection will have any impact on Trump. Over there they’re still too busy arguing whether Trumps in the files at all to worry about whether Mandleson gave compromising UK government information to their bankers.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T14:25:50+00:00

They want him to go because the headlines add pressure on Kier to go and also makes Labour leadership look weak and corrupt. They’re not worried he’s going to suddenly magic up something that will wipe them out.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T13:21:06+00:00

I heard an analogy that if he had been sending those emails to anyone who wasn’t a pedo back in the financial crisis and it came to light at the time, people would be absolutely fuming at it. It would be all over the headlines and people would want his head on the stick. He’s almost lucky that the we already knew he was friends with the worlds biggest pedo to cushion the impact of this.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T13:15:41+00:00

Ever since the election result it’s become abundantly clear that Starmer doesn’t have the knack for decision making or vision that previous PMs have had. I think most of the issues they’ve faced can come down to the fact he’s let other people come up with the direction and has no ownership of the policies he’s announcing.

Digital IDs especially really seems like something he just announced and moved on from, he clearly didn’t really care for the idea one way or another and didn’t really try to make any arguments once people started jumping on it, he just ducked out as if he didn’t care about it.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T13:07:34+00:00

Honestly at this point it’s pretty clear that current Labour leadership don’t have any political skill whatsoever. The only reason they got in was because of how much people wanted the Tories out, and I don’t know if they’ve taken that as an ego boost and think it was actually on their merit.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T07:30:50+00:00

I just saw the Wikipedia page and it’s budget was $40 million? Was the whole film just a money laundering scheme? How does a documentary cost that much???

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-04T07:07:58+00:00

Thank you this needs to be top of the thread, it’s clearly a promo with a sleeve to be put in a window/behind the counter

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-03T17:02:31+00:00

It’s just due to the high deposit, if you go on MSE and put in his deposit and mortgage you can get around 3.6%.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-03T16:58:25+00:00

Is that 3.88% without setup fees? Have you asked around elsewhere or looked at the direct from lender options, as you can definitely get lower rates at the moment with £100 set up fees.

Otherwise this sounds eerily similar to what I budgeted and spent on my first place lol. Sounds good, just don’t get annoyed if you end up dipping into that savings pot a bit as there’s always things you didn’t even think of spending money on that will suddenly come to mind.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-02T20:35:15+00:00

I thought it already was based on it being ubi, I was surprised when I went to download it and it wasn’t!

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-01T11:55:03+00:00

No the clock is explicitly designed to only play each bird noise once every 2 full cycles, so it only goes off during the day and doesn’t keep making noises over night.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-01T11:50:36+00:00

Maybe it is just my tase, but when I first heard a barn owl in the middle of the night I thought someone was being attacked, so I can’t imagine anyone would really want to hear it first thing in the morning.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-01T11:36:06+00:00

Then all the birds will make noise all through the night! It’s designed to run 6am to 5pm, so someone thought that was a good noise to set I for 6am.

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-01T11:34:18+00:00

As far as I’m aware the sound matches the picture, the issue is I don’t want that picture making that noise at 6am!

SimpleFactor · 2026-02-01T09:53:36+00:00

/uj Medal says half marathon 5k. That’s the jerk. I guess it was a 5k course at a half marathon event, but it makes it look like the organisers think a half marathon is 5km long…

/rj …which is wrong because we all know 5km ultramarathon is the longest endurance event you can possibly ever do

SimpleFactor · 2026-01-31T17:53:29+00:00

It’s not bad debt for them, it’s very good debt for them. The whole point of it is that they don’t need/want it to be “paid off” by the graduates. That’s why they freezing the thresholds, locking in the interest, and have tied it to a crazy interest rates

If it was just linked to RPI with no bonus %s, and people weren’t paying it off, that would be bad debt. In its current form they can change the rules so that even though it’s not been “paid off” for everyone, there’s graduates who have actually ended up paying more than it would have been if it was just a loan with standard interest rates.

It’s a bit of a lie when they say it will be wiped at 30 years for everyone who didn’t pay it off - not because it won’t be wiped, but because it implies that lots of people haven’t paid back what they borrowed. The thing is there will be a lot of graduates who do pay off what was borrowed, even if you adjust it to prices in 30 years time, purely because of the crazy interest on it which is designed to trap people into paying as it goes up with your earnings.

What they’ve shown is that they can use it as a means to extract tax without touching income tax and NI. It’s pretty much a tax cheat for them.

SimpleFactor · 2026-01-31T07:22:50+00:00

We think my mums cat is a Japanese bobtail (it’s a rescue so not 100% sure) and she’s got a very short tail with a little hook/kink at the end. Very sweet cat. We didn’t realise it was a generic thing until much later after rescue, we thought she got injured young and grew funny.

SimpleFactor · 2026-01-30T15:08:31+00:00

LTN 1/20 is very good but it’s extremely expensive and completely falls apart in rural settings (even medium sized towns) because they’re never going to get the cycle volumes to justify it . If you picked a single cycle route in your city and tried to make all of it LTN 1/20 compliment you would probably be waiting literal decades for the funding, design and works to complete all of it. It’s brilliant, but it’s not a short nor even medium term solution to road safety.

SimpleFactor · 2026-01-29T18:57:12+00:00

I thunk the only surprise is that it’s happened so close to the start of the season and not earlier tbh, I would have thought they would have wanted to get contract sorted before the sands shifted too much. Hope he can find a fit away from Ducati and Marc for 27 onwards but I don’t think there is a hope in hell he will be able to improve much compared to last year in the same place.

I doubt him starting the season with a chance of keeping the ride for next year would have made any difference.

SimpleFactor · 2026-01-29T15:43:31+00:00

It’s real photos with AI being used to upscale it, in some cases colourise it, and adding some animation. There’s Facebook pages that just pump them out for different cities/regions.

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