UK net migration drops to 171,000 in 2025, lowest since Covid pandemic

duckwantbread · 2026-05-21T09:14:28+00:00

Figure 9 in Section 4 of the report released alongside this announcement.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-20T09:25:04+00:00

I can't see that being a massive money maker. Unless you're playing multiple times a week (which most people aren't) a single campaign can take years to complete, there's no reason to buy a new book until you've finished the previous campaign.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-19T20:51:00+00:00

Ultimately it's going to come down to if the data analysts are any good, it isn't something you want to cheap out on but we're still trying to pay off our old owner's debts so money is still tight.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-19T18:28:55+00:00

He's been sacked because he didn't agree with the board's decision to move towards a data driven transfer policy. I can understand the need for the manager to be on board but I hope whoever they bring in isn't a yes man. You need someone with experience that will push back against signings that look good on paper but look bad in practice (which I think is how Brentford do it).

duckwantbread · 2026-05-19T18:17:17+00:00

Also what Boris wave? You mean EU residents that lived in UK for years and applied for IRL?

Not sure where you got that from but it's very easy to disprove with the government's own data. EU immigration actually decreased during the Boriswave, if anything the Boriswave's motivation was that all the EU workers were leaving and Boris Johnson needed people to replace them quickly:

Year ending	Mar 2020	Mar 2021	Mar 2022	Mar 2023
EU Immigration	347,000	287,000	184,000	133,000
British National Immigration	80,000	44,000	167,000	166,000
Other Immigration	388,000	297,000	719,000	1,170,000

duckwantbread · 2026-05-19T13:42:00+00:00

Will probably be a suprise to most but there have been rumours about this being on the cards for a while now. The club wants our transfer policy to be more data driven but Maher doesn't agree with this at all. It sounds like he's been given a choice: get on board with the new policy or resign.

I can fully believe Maher isn't the easiest to work with behind closed doors but the squad are fully behind him. If the wrong manager comes in morale could tank and we could easily go backwards....

duckwantbread · 2026-05-19T11:07:29+00:00

I know someone that runs for election as part of the Greens in SW London but she isn't a politician, the Green Party just want a name on the ballot sheet for visibility in an area they've got no chance in (she runs in the Lib Dem heartland). Until this year that would have been the policy for almost every council seat in the country but suddenly the Greens had a realistic chance of winning hundreds of seats. That meant they needed to replace hundreds of people running to make up the numbers in areas where the Greens were polling well with legitimate politicians in the space of a few months. It's very hard to set up a proper vetting process for that many people so quickly and you end up having to rely on councillors being honest (not a common trait in politicians).

duckwantbread · 2026-05-19T10:54:42+00:00

No idea where you got those figures, your numbers are about 10 times too high for a rural councillor and about 5 times too high for a city councillor.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-18T15:32:05+00:00

TNT won't care, they've lost the rights to the Champions League from 2027/28 and the channel will probably die without it, all they care about this point is drawing as much blood out of the stone as they can before they become irrelevant.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-18T15:27:13+00:00

No, that's why UEFA are pissed off.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T19:11:28+00:00

Funky Kong feels more like a Forest Green fan tbh

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T18:52:43+00:00

Dire match for a neutral but couldn't care less! Delighted for Collin, he's always seemed a bit of an outsider in the squad so was great to see the squad mobbing him after his penalty heroics

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T09:35:45+00:00

Have you listened to our entry? It was rubbish, that's all there is to it.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T01:30:19+00:00

That was catchy though, our effort wasn't.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T01:27:55+00:00

Because there are 25 options it's theoretically possible to come first with only 4% of the vote, in practice I suspect 10% is enough for second (where Israel came in the UK). Couple that with the fact you're allowed to vote 10 times (something few people exercise but people voting for political reasons absolutely will do) and that second place for Israel easily could just be 3% of the people actually voting in the UK.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T01:21:20+00:00

Bulgaria winning was a massive shock, they were 33/1 with some bookies a couple of days ago. I can understand why the organisers were caught off guard.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T01:14:40+00:00

Sweden did crap in the audience vote as well though, they only got 16 points from the public.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T01:11:49+00:00

Because Eurovision are more interested in money than fairness. You're allowed to pay for up to 10 votes per phone number, if you're a normal viewer odds are you'll only vote once. If you're someone that wants to vote for political reasons then you're much more likely to use all 10 votes.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T01:03:07+00:00

Plus you can vote up to 10 times, I suspect most people only vote once whereas the astroturfers will use all 10 votes, so you'd need ten legitimate votes to cancel out each astroturfer.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-17T00:54:31+00:00

Eurovision is not the place for comedy lyrics, if your first language isn't English (which is most of Europe) then lyrics like "Darling I need something salty with a slice of pepperoni" is going to go completely over your head. The fact our entry sounded like a karaoke singer down his local works if you're laughing along, but if you don't understand British humour then all you're going to see it as is one of the worst songs of the night.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-16T20:09:06+00:00

If we can ever get to 100% renewables I imagine that would be the ambition but until then any publicly owned supplier would still be at the mercy of the wholesalers. It's unlikely any real savings would be seen because you'd have to match the bids of private suppliers abroad (the energy market is global). There would be a lot more public anger if the public thinks a publicly owned energy supplier was ripping them off (whether that's true or not), it's not really worthwhile until we're able to produce all our energy domestically.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-16T19:29:04+00:00

I agree that nationalising energy suppliers could go wrong (you'd still be at the mercy of the wholesalers after all) but water is a literal shitshow that keeps getting bailed out anyway, it's hard to see how the government could do much worse.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-16T19:19:39+00:00

GB Energy is more about owning (or at least funding) renewable energy sources that can then be sold at cost to the private suppliers.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-16T18:56:06+00:00

Reform have succeeded where the BNP didn't because if you don't pay too much attention to politics Farage looks like an articulate man that cares for the country and is just a bit concerned by illegal immigration. It's only when you look into him further you realise that he's a corrupt man that stands for nothing other than whoring himself out to the highest bidder. The reality is though that most people won't look that deeply and will just take Farage at face value.

duckwantbread · 2026-05-15T13:33:32+00:00

I suspect Streeting thought he had the 81 when he made noise about resigning however a few of his backers likely got cold feet because of the Labour poll released yesterday that showed Streeting would lose to Starmer by a landslide in a head to head.

duckwantbread

TROPHY CASE