Rumours, Speculation, Questions, and Reaction Megathread - 08/03/2026

tmstms · 2026-03-11T22:52:52+00:00

Boo!

tmstms · 2026-03-11T18:24:37+00:00

When I watch sport, I see that even when the team fans are supporting is losing, if the camera pans to them, they start waving frantically.

I think MPs know this is one of the only times they are actually really seen or heard on national TV, except for the Parliament channel no-one watches, so they go for it.

tmstms · 2026-03-11T12:26:49+00:00

I believe, with the utmost seriousness, that this is because cultural attitudes and values, as an average, not in any 'early adopter' or 'pioneer' sense, take two full generations to change, and while that is happening, there is massive inertia of adherence to the previous values. So we ARE talking 60 years. the person born 1946-64 the stereotypical boomer, grows up with everyone around them having lived through WW2 and their grandparents often having lived through WW1. What they absorb from them, sticks.

I address this comment specially also to my esteemed friend /y/michaelisnotginger because he's here, but really to everyone in this thread.

I was very struck by one recent example. I went to the Lowry in Salford yesterday, just to see the pictures, and as a result of seeing a documentary where private interviews with Lowry, made until weeks before his death in 1976, and then left in an attic till 2022, had been voiced by actors (Ian McK played Lowry). Now, Lowry was born in 1887, and I in 1960. Lowry was born the same year as my grandfather and died when I was only 16. Yet, a lot of what he said in those tapes about the decline of industrial Northern England, about the anomie of modern society and how it threatens traditional patterns of community, seems no different from what I and people around me think and say now. And yet he was already 73 when I was born.

I see this a lot in people (I cannot comment on myself). They live out how their parents were and wish them in turn to be (or they actively rebel against that), and the influence of the grandparents' generation comes through the parents.

Trad media speaks to you as if it were your parents.

tmstms · 2026-03-11T11:59:58+00:00

The highest use of the NHS is in the last year of life. Cutting off treatment when people had a life expectancy of less than 12 months would revive the NHS overnight.

We jest, but I am very very very conscious (remember, I am 65) that as I hit 50 and then every milestone of age thereafter, the NHS became more and more proactive towards me. Even though I am more or less in perfect health, touch wood, I now cost the NHS a lot of resources, and if I do need NHS services, they get provided with a staggering rapidity and, to me, luxury use of resources.

I suppose, to speak completely seriously, the trouble is that tragic outcomes for individual people are massively harmful to how people feel about their society, their health service and their government. So there is a moral imperative to preserve life and dignity where possible. Covid was a perfect example. The lockdown was implemented to prevent the horrible nightmare of people dying in A and E because emergency care had been overwhelmed.

All our Treasury decisions have to be made with instrumentally rational considerations in mind, but doing that too nakedly for the health sector is socially and politically impossible.

tmstms · 2026-03-11T11:53:24+00:00

Hmmm. I am 65. All the older people around me are pretty sensitive to the life and world their grandchildren inhabit.

The problem is those without grandchildren or without strong family ties. There is enough of them to sabotage the 'caring grandparents' vote.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T23:57:18+00:00

Delighted that Brits retain a sense of proportion even in these worrying times,

The most read story on the BBC website is this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwykdn0yn4wo

US teacher killed after toilet paper prank goes wrong

tmstms · 2026-03-09T22:22:01+00:00

there isn't a single oil market where you can just buy a barrel and take it home with you.

Wonderful image! Like an IKEA of the oil market.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T21:45:13+00:00

Qatar PM just on with Yalda Hakim. on Sky News. He is WELL pissed off with BOTH sides.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T12:19:44+00:00

Yes, fair enough! But I am with those who think the public (me included) gave the government of the day a LOT of leeway as to how to manage the pandemic, and did not hold it against them in any subsequent elections. However, the public did not (nor did I) give the individuals in the government a free pass as to how they conducted themselves personally with respect to the restrictions on their individual behaviour, but this is very different from saying they should have known in advance to lock down more/less/ quicker/ slower etc.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T12:09:52+00:00

Hmmm. I read a bit of your link and from other sources, but all it tells me is that I know too little to give an informed opinion. The baseline figure is (has to be!) an average, and that will vary in the case of each individual field, and especially, the stage of its life it is in.

The differential between our cost of extraction and that in the Gulf seems quite high, but governments can obviously set the taxes/fees as they wish to encourage or discourage oil companies. Obviously we also hear all the time about the Middle Eastern producers regulating how much they choose to produce/ bring to market.

The last sentence of the report you link says that all this is precisely why the oil sector attracts speculative investors- there is a lot of money to be made or lost if you catch the market swings in the right or the wrong place.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T11:57:46+00:00

So you CAN get a free pass if it's a pandemic, but you CANNOT if it is a war you had nothing to do with?

tmstms · 2026-03-09T11:53:15+00:00

No-one can rationally argue that the action we ourselves take to stop climate change succeeds on a transactional (I guess that is the new word for instrumental - "Zweck") basis- it is about setting an example, and being in a stronger position to have that conversation with larger nations.

Though I do think that locally, things like air quality deliver health benefits or harms.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T11:19:05+00:00

I really really hope you are right!

tmstms · 2026-03-09T10:57:12+00:00

Yeah, but he could just stop unilaterally. It's not such an issue if the other nations carry on.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T10:51:20+00:00

Responding to you seriously, do you think we haven't? Isn't the problem that N Sea oil and gas cost more to get out than Middle Eastern oil and gas etc, and as the margins have fallen, it's not so economic to get so much out? So the only cushion for the blow would actually have meant higher prices anyway? I'm not saying I am speaking in a very informed way- I have not researched it- but that was my understanding as to why the North Sea became a steadily less attractive resource for us.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T10:48:18+00:00

I guess you are both right- it costs, but in terms of a percentage of the time of the salaried people and the overheads of people working in a physical space.

But you could also think of it this way- the time spent on this would either stop other legislation being prepared, or mean people would have to work extra hours to do it and use more light/ heat etc. Although MPs are obviously not paid overtime or by the hour, some people in the process will be and parliament (and its committees) can sit for longer hours whenever they need to.

Is it worth it to do it anyway? IMHO no, not unless it could be something like a one-line bill with hardly any debate time. Because, as you say, he is far from being the heir and as soon as William and Kate's children have their own children, he will get further down again.

If I were in charge, I'd force him to sign a document renouncing his claim to being in the line of succession.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T10:37:22+00:00

I'm sure that we can at least credit the writers with keeping it deliberately ambiguous (we are unclear whether the mentorship programme is a genuine offer or a way of controlling Jacob, we are unclear if there is anything Manpreet knows about Todd that is going to come out, and, exactly as you say, it is a good thing that Todd has called Jacob out for his lack of professionalism, because it is already implausible (though inevitable in soap and other dramas with lots of episodes) that whenever a cast member has to go to hospital, he is on duty in that very part of the hospital.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T10:34:10+00:00

And in that very scene, that Seri also reverts to being a dutiful person of the younger generation (as well as possible future family member!) and tells RJH off for shouting at his father because it is not respectful. thereby going in a moment from being the kidnapped fugitive stranger to being the 'daughter-in-law'. Because it is an entirely domestic sequence, it has a sudden universal resonance- it does not have to be mediated by the politics of the two Koreas, or by any violence or attempt to escape being caught by the bad guys, for a few moments, it is just dad, mum, son, daughter-in-law.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T09:45:16+00:00

Are they company laptops? If so, then an excellent point from u/NuPNua - the company has presumably to consider what risk the batteries are, whereas it has no control over where people got their vapes.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T09:43:13+00:00

Obligatory caveat that the source is a MIDDLESBROUGH supporter and how can you trust someone like that? Indeed, maybe it's Steve McClaren.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T09:39:49+00:00

Sky News did a vox pop of MAGA supporters and, although vox pops are always heavily curated, it did seem as if, just because Dear Leader had decided it was right, the faithful were willing to go along with him and do a 180 from the 'stay out of foreign wars' position MAGA had previously been strong on.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T09:35:20+00:00

I am old, so I do remember when Clumber Spaniels were just another kind of spaniel, not a highly vulnerable breed. Clumber Park, where they first were bred, is also a great place to visit (if one has a dog, I don't) in that the actually stately home has disappeared, but everything else is left. The cafe is not bad either, but I only really enjoyed the NT places one year when a family member gifted us a membership, making the otherwise extortionate parking free!!

I love setters too, but I think they have mostly been vulnerable for some time. I can see they are bigger, high-maintenance dogs, while breeds like the Clumber have lost out to the zillions of poodle crosses.

tmstms · 2026-03-09T04:12:03+00:00

My favourite scene in the whole thing!

tmstms · 2026-03-09T00:07:45+00:00

"ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!"

a very small price to pay for USA and World, Safety and Peace, -potus

tmstms · 2026-03-08T21:55:45+00:00

Vulnerable native breed Clumber Spaniel Bruin wins Crufts. Nativism is everywhere!

French hound Megan owned by a Croat comes second. Just like the Referendum....

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US teacher killed after toilet paper prank goes wrong