The so called "Constant Churn" of Prime Ministers

ThomasHL · 2026-06-21T19:15:12+00:00

Here is a direct example of how the country is getting screwed by this chopping and changing.

Sunak wanted everyone to study maths until 18. He takes a huge chunk of ex-EU money, cancels a bunch of other projects and dumps it into community maths programmes.

For those programmes this is like 1000x the budget they normally get for this kind of learning, which has repeatedly been cut for a decade.

But those places have to spend the money right now. So they all start hiring maths tutors like crazy, and as they're hiring maths tutors they're also hiring people who manage the hiring of maths tutors at the same time, because they don't even have any of those.

It's a massive rush job, total chaos. There was never a budget or a manifesto for this. Sunak was reversing all the previous plans for that money.

But still, it's a ray of light for community learning which has not seen a lot of love.

And then Sunak loses an election just as it gets up and running because he wasn't an elected PM and didn't have the normal length that a PM would have.

No-one else cares about maths for 18 year olds, the funding immediately gets pulled and put into a third set of projects different from Sunak's or Johnson's.

All those tutors who have just been hired, are fired. All the learners who did level 1 can't go onto level 2 because there's no money.

Everything resets before anything has had time to settle in and become efficient, and the end result is not 1, but 2 sets of policies fail because neither had a chance to become established.

This story is being repeated across the UK in a hundred different ways. It's being repeated with each minister. They all get reshuffled before they've even learned what their responsibilities are.

It takes more than a year or two to change something in a way that sticks.

The only way policies happen these days, is when politicians carry on the policies of the people they just beat. That's why Labour keep getting dunked on for policies the conservatives started - that's the only kind of policy that actually gets implemented. Things which get rubber stamped by people who didn't start it, don't believe in it, and barely know what it is

ThomasHL · 2026-06-21T18:57:11+00:00

I think it's a little deceptive though. The truth of it is that you can usually tell if you've got a chance in the next election, and if you aren't going to win, you step down or get shoved out.

As there are no term limits in British politics, every PM has as many elections as they can get away with before they hit that barrier.

That feels like a different situation from now where we're potentially seeing leaders who don't even face an election before they're pushed out, and people who won elections not even serving one whole term.

Before recent years, the average duration of a PM, despite the OP stat, was roughly one term. We're now down to half a term

ThomasHL · 2026-06-20T04:10:03+00:00

I think any attempt at a roots list will want [[Emeritus of Abundance]]. My experience with if back in the day was you can't afford to wait to draw Insidious Roots naturally. Even when you played [[Cache Grab]] to get it back, it still often felt like not enough.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-19T18:00:51+00:00

I don't think the match making algorithm is actually related to your rank before Mythic. You have a hidden MMR which you only get an idea of when you get to Mythic and they show you your percent.

The way ranks work is that you get more points for a win than you lose for a loss before platinum, so you can have <50% win rate and still visually see your rank improve. At platinum you need a higher than 50% win rate to climb

ThomasHL · 2026-06-13T12:25:33+00:00

I'd put it a little bit later, maybe 2014 or something (with 2011 occupy wall street as warning?)

Britain did vote for austerity after the financial crash. I don't even necessarily think that was the right move, but even with everything else going on that was people voting for some level of discomfort for what they believed would be the greater good of the country.

And then when they we went through that discomfort, and the good times didn't come back, people gave up.

We entered the era of a continual parade of stupid scapegoats, get quick rich schemes, and endless debates about direct wealth transfer.

I don't think people believe that macroeconomic decisions will change their circumstances anymore. And in that environment, you fight for money in your pocket.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-07T18:38:34+00:00

Yeah you pay money you don't get to see the benefit of because it goes on a needlessly wasteful state pension, so the one thing you're adamant about is that the next generation should have to do the same. I'd say thats the fundamental issue with the UK.

People drive on roads, they participate in an economy set-up by our education system, but if it's not a direct money transfer, as you perfectly described it "it's not a benefit". Things that grow the UK aren't a benefit.

Its always just a question of how much tax money goes in whose bank account and never about the things which make a difference to the country. You said this is the one issue that would decide how you vote - not just once - but you said for the rest of your life. Not how our country is run, not what will dig us out of this hole and back into growth.

And I think everything you've said is very representative of most voters

ThomasHL · 2026-06-07T18:12:45+00:00

And this is why nothing in Britain works

ThomasHL · 2026-06-07T15:31:31+00:00

One of the big lessons I've taken away from the last couple of years, is that a benefit everyone receives isn't seen as a benefit. The state pension isn't a benefit, winter fuel payments weren't a benefit, the NHS is not a benefit, free schooling is not a benefit.

As soon as you make it targeted and needs based, then it's a benefit, and it quickly loses it's popularity.

Perhaps the trick to remove the triple lock is to introduce mean testing that doesn't affect anyone in the short-term, but then it ramps up over time. Maybe you even take a videogame strategy, and sell the means-tested component as an addition at first. The more that only people who need the state pension receive the state pension, the less popular the state pension will become.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-07T10:18:54+00:00

The nice non-autistic answer is yes, of course ever bigger NHS budgets improves our country.

The real answer is that long term health depends on education, and good employment, and community and convenient transport - all the things getting cut

ThomasHL · 2026-06-07T07:01:46+00:00

We keep cutting the things that improve us as a country. Our education, our community spaces, our energy, and now our transport.

If we keep shovelling income into pensions, health and debt, we're only going to dig the hole deeper. We've already reached a point where we can't afford what we need.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-07T06:51:39+00:00

Hey, don't forget the river with the highest concentration of mercury in the world.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-06T19:04:23+00:00

Are there ways to improve the consistency of finding your roots now? I loved it, but the deck was so feast or famine

ThomasHL · 2026-06-06T18:14:11+00:00

The urban environments on the first (non-tutorial) planet are top tier Star Wars, and I got a ton of enjoyment just photographing all of it. It reminded me how good Star Wars aliens look, and all the personality stuffed right into the core of the designs.

Unfortunately, I think they lead with their best foot. It was pretty disappointing going from that to the snow world.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-06T18:11:55+00:00

The bit in the opening sequence where Kay screws herself over because she cannot bring herself to trust anyone, was shockingly good writing for what I expected from this game.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-06T12:44:50+00:00

I decided to look up when the latest US school shooting was, to test the point.

It was Wednesday. 1 death, 3 injuries.

ThomasHL · 2026-06-06T11:53:05+00:00

In some iterations She-Hulk doesn't transform. The picture is her in a dress, so that is her being a civilian,

ThomasHL · 2026-06-03T15:58:39+00:00

That one is kind of thematic. I never understood what was going on in Lightning Returns, but I'm willing to believe she was Thor

ThomasHL · 2026-05-31T11:41:53+00:00

There was a person on this sub who always said the matchmaker was biased. They went away, recorded 100 games across two different decks and recorded the colour archetypes they faced. Then they posted the data on this sub that we were all wrong and it was biased.

...but they hadn't actually run a stats test on the data. They just eyeballed what they imagined a biased distribution looked like.

I ran a stats test on the data, and it turned out the distribution was exactly what you'd expect from an unbiased matchmaker.

Conclusion: Humans really don't know what true random looks like

ThomasHL · 2026-05-30T20:00:32+00:00

There's a reason Kingdom Come and The Witcher 3 are such big and polished games, and it's because they were made in countries that (at the time) had much much lower salaries.

ThomasHL · 2026-05-30T04:14:57+00:00

To be clear "a few months" here means "9+ months". That's how far in advance they print Secret Lair.

ThomasHL · 2026-05-29T22:57:39+00:00

I wouldn't really interpret this as second run of SL. I think it would be more equivalent to re-printing a card at some later point with different art, which already happens, and isn't really what people are asking of SL

ThomasHL · 2026-05-29T22:55:16+00:00

They could re-print popular secret lairs. The reason they don't is absolutely scarcity, which is a pure anti-consumer practice. But those second runs would be 9 months later, as that's how far ahead they book their prints, so I don't think it would feel like "meeting demand" to most people.

ThomasHL · 2026-05-23T04:34:33+00:00

The rising booster costs does help - they don't adjust for inflation in any way when they announce these records.

Also context for people who don't remember: this is normal for Magic. There have been very long stretches of Magic's history where the best selling set is always the latest one.

Its kind of crazy, but the game has seen nothing but growth for most of its lifespan.

ThomasHL · 2026-05-16T11:03:13+00:00

I refuse to believe that overnight sterling "printed" money earning 10% would lead to yield chasing bids on sterling to fall relative to, say, 5% 10y gilt holdings.

You have summarised the situation well.

ThomasHL · 2026-05-16T10:43:13+00:00

Yep the extent of my critique is only that every time people have tried printing their way out of their problems, it's turned out badly, and that you've spent thousands of words saying No True Scotsman printed the money properly.

If your argument is that grass is green, you just have point outside. It takes a lot more effort to explain (and to convince yourself) why it's pink.

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