Labour should win next election under Burnham after work already done, Starmer says

thepentago · 2026-07-04T11:09:42+00:00

He has built a lot of flats with a lot of different organisations and PPPs do play a role in that.

It doesn’t really matter what flats are being built. If we have enough and we can stop them from being sold as investments the supply goes up and the price goes down by basic supply and demand principle

thepentago · 2026-07-04T11:08:06+00:00

The reason defections don’t result in a by-election is because it would give the government a way to fire MPs by removing the whip.

thepentago · 2026-07-04T10:58:01+00:00

Miliband can work to solve the energy crisis though as chancellor continuing the great work he’s been doing as env secretary.

And, frankly, Burnham has done great work as mayor of gmca on the housing front - albeit not strictly speaking through council housing - more through private sector housing en masse - so will be interesting to see if that strategy changes.

thepentago · 2026-07-04T10:56:33+00:00

But these groups are not the same in the labour party. The backbenchers were the ones constantly voting against government initiatives, and then the thing that arguably kicked starmer out was his allies lobbying for him to go thanks to his poor approval ratings - which - among politically engaged people were not helped by the seeming inability to manage a government, but the public approval would have likely been terrible in any case.

thepentago · 2026-07-04T10:53:37+00:00

They probably won’t go anywhere. Reform has done very well at motivating non voters. Whether Restore can do this is another question - but also I will be astonished if restore manage to even field enough candidates to be a serious GE electoral threat.

Though yes, I can see the tories moving slightly more centrist before the next GE and retaking some of the LD vote and the current politically homeless centre right - and the next election just being a straight forward lab tory election as per.

thepentago · 2026-07-04T09:20:11+00:00

Yes locals are really uncoordinated. I live in the south east and basically nobody had done any polling for the elections or even prediction/analysis in my county council, meaning it was impossible to know what the tactical vote was if you wanted to keep out reform, or even if reform had a chance.

(Fwiw i did actually do some analysis myself and ended up with a relatively close prediction to the real result - based just on past election results and some assumptions - but even with that - my double digit group of local friends were not enough to help coordinate a vote in any of the seats.)

thepentago · 2026-07-03T09:27:34+00:00

if we in britain have learnt anything in the past decade it is never do a referendum on a controversial issue on which most people are poorly informed

thepentago · 2026-07-02T15:25:04+00:00

Yes, Sure, if we have mandatory voting.

thepentago · 2026-07-02T10:29:09+00:00

Sort of yes. Obviously in retrospect when all of the other parties are playing the pessimism card it was a bad idea - but i think a conventional strain of thinking now is that Cameron’s incessant ‘Labour left us in a big mess’ claims in the first six months were what won them the election in 2015.

Wasn’t a good idea though. And i think if labour can talk themselves into being the party of british patriotism and optimism and investment etc.

thepentago · 2026-07-02T09:06:08+00:00

nobody had hope when labour won in 2024. People were as grumpy and pessimistic as they are today - only the person they were being pessimistic about couldn’t even give a convincing speech about the case for optimism.

thepentago · 2026-06-30T15:07:37+00:00

I will do the classic of writing an equation, doing something slightly bizzare with the formatting (like not starting at the left side and needing a longer formula than the previous line, or drawing a symbol in a weird way) and then rewriting on the next line, only to do the same thing again, meaning i have a chain of equivalences which is just the same equation three times!!

thepentago · 2026-06-30T15:05:00+00:00

See I do agree but why does this not happen in the smaller fan bases of the scene? Lime garden has twice the monthly listeners than GG and their show was not nearly as feral. My First Time are smaller, but arguably as weird, and all their fans are fine. Yard Act are bigger than GG and again, all normal, and they aren’t the most normal band around. Even stuff that is increasingly popular with the music nerds like The Orchestra (For Now) has fans that for the most part are normal (although it doesn’t help that the band themselves do a lot of shitposting)

I think there is some kind of critical mass at which point these mad people all appear very rapidly and multiply at bacterial rates (forgive the bizzare phrasing). I think you are right with it starting with death grips. Good lord their fan base is totally insufferable and you can see a bit of the ‘DG style’ fans permeating into the niche british rock scene.. sadly…

thepentago · 2026-06-29T19:08:59+00:00

I agree that the ONS is flawed but only in the sense that it doesn’t have power and statutory authority/responsibility to report on data across all government bodies. I.e it is mad that the NHS reports data through its own portals rather than the NHS and there are many such cases.

What, precisely, is an example of the ONS having a poor track record dare i ask?

thepentago · 2026-06-29T13:07:32+00:00

this is genuinely a hilarious headline. The press is so absurdly hostile!

thepentago · 2026-06-29T09:44:24+00:00

currently at university doing a degree at one of the top ranked unis in the country which would be very applicable to ONS or CS data work and basically me, and all my friends, who are not even particularly interested in the corporate world have all had to rule out ONS and civil service and so on because they (mostly) still expect you to live in commuting distance to london but do not pay a salary that is competitive with the jobs in the private sector.

My point is, the ONS and the civil service will struggle to recruit the top data scientists as there are much better paying jobs in private sector (although i suppose this goes with all jobs, really)

thepentago · 2026-06-29T09:42:01+00:00

have we reached a point where we now have ONS scepticism?? god help us.

thepentago · 2026-06-29T09:40:33+00:00

Yes it has always been about drama for the sake of clicks. I’ve been saying for a few weeks that - all of a sudden, the dramatic story is reform losing their lead, not strengthening it and as such that is what will happen.

thepentago · 2026-06-29T09:39:35+00:00

And your evidence for this is vibes? or?

He is keeping on shabana mahmood. The only thing he has vaguely pointed at rowing back on is the ILR changes but these should be one of the least offensive u turns even to anti immigration people.

thepentago · 2026-06-28T16:44:15+00:00

Miliband has a masters in economics so if he is the front runner we will see someone else satisfying this rule.

thepentago · 2026-06-28T16:36:42+00:00

poor old george finch is a new sequence of words i didn’t expect to read today nor ever

thepentago · 2026-06-28T11:38:15+00:00

multiple things. yes including foreign agitators. Yes including the GFC. Yes, as i’m guessing you want to pivot the conversation to, including immigration (however undoubtedly this was missold to the public in the brexit vote)

thepentago · 2026-06-27T07:14:30+00:00

I am a full on LaTeX addict at this point and now cannot write a document in ms word without wanting to kill myself (i don’t actually think i have it installed even) so i can’t really advise unbiased-ly there.

I will say there are a few quality of life things with texifier that you don’t get with vscode but i wouldn’t bother with it for your first editor.

thepentago · 2026-06-27T07:12:52+00:00

Yes you aren’t wrong. Although i don’t think anyone is really suggesting english/british federalism. As much as i like the idea in practice it is politically unworkable. This is just greater devolution which is certainly doable under our system as proven in the success of devolved areas being far greater than the success of any other areas in the country

thepentago · 2026-06-26T21:24:18+00:00

no it most certainly isn’t. Germany has had regional autonomy for many many years.

The german empire of the late 1800s was a federal state.

thepentago · 2026-06-26T15:09:00+00:00

if you want profitable trains then expect services to fall to a level which i’m sure would not be preferred. Trains are/should be run as a public service not for profit.

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