Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[Rob C]

You talk some nonsense.Except you're eligible for SERPS which can increase your pension to the same or even better than the new one.More rubbish; You get free prescriptions, free bus travel, discounted rail travel, discounts at many places....

SERPS never applied to the self-employed.

Your bus pass isn’t your pension, neither are things like medicine.

Free prescriptions exist here, too, and again, aren't a function of pension but of age. Free bus-travel is available here to residents too, if you get the electronic pass, and just by comparison, the Spanish state pension seems to have a lower rate of around 1,200 euros a month compared with the actual 835 - 850 euros that I get, according to the value of the pound. Frankly, we Brits have become the poor men of Europe; it used to be the Germans laughed at the rest of Europe - even the world, possibly - but now even the Spanish feel sympathy for our plight.

I bet you voted for Brexit. ;-)

I’m surprised you seem okay with the older Brit pensioners getting more than two hundred quid a month less than their younger brothers. That‘s some bloody difference for no explicable reason.

[digitaldog]

I bet you voted for Brexit. ;-)

Bad move!
When Britain voted to leave the EU a decade ago, its leaders envisioned a post-Brexit country that could thrive as a nimble, free-trading “Singapore-on-Thames.”
Why did that dream never work out?
Fareed explained:
https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/when-britain-voted-to-leave-the-eu-a-decade-ago-its-leaders-envisioned-a-post-br/1441860037699560/

[Jeremy Roussak]

Well, back in the lost empire, Starmer has bitten the dust. Poor man, the rewards of falling onto personal swords includes a forever pension of around a hundred thousand pounds per year for having held the position of PM; entrance to the upper, after-dinner talks circuit; probable directorships in private industry and, in his case, accidental advertising for his professional services if he reverts to being a legal eagle.

That's a common fallacy: no, he doesn't. The pension he will receive in due course for having held the office of PM is the usual Civil Service pension, and for two years' service is likely to be very small. He'll be entitled to other pensions as a result of employment as an MP and as DPP, and no doubt will have made private pension provision while he was in practice at the Bar.

He will be entitled to claim an allowance of up to £115k/year for "necessary administrative costs arising from [his] special position in public life", but that's not a pension.

He's most unlikely to return to practice at the Bar: apparently, members of his old, highly politically correct Chambers are sufficiently less than impressed by his performance as PM (in particular, the moves to abolish jury trials for many criminal offences) that they won't have him back.

After-dinner talks? The market for robotic, adenoidal speakers is probably limited to the Insomniacs' Society.

Jeremy

[Rob C]

That's a common fallacy: no, he doesn't. The pension he will receive in due course for having held the office of PM is the usual Civil Service pension, and for two years' service is likely to be very small. He'll be entitled to other pensions as a result of employment as an MP and as DPP, and no doubt will have made private pension provision while he was in practice at the Bar.

He will be entitled to claim an allowance of up to £115k/year for "necessary administrative costs arising from [his] special position in public life", but that's not a pension.

Jeremy

Thanks for the clarification on the one hundred big ones. That said, admin costs etc. appear a delightfully open valve… Private arrangements are something else, and good luck to him, but depending on our career choices, as with mortgages, such private schemes can be very difficult to seal. Artists of all types are branded with a realistic belief that their living/earning system is too precarious for long-term plans. Some years I was a rich man; at other times, far from it. But that wasn’t ever a concern: one did photography because the mindset determined so; it was just another hunger that could not be ignored.

[Rob C]

Bad move!
When Britain voted to leave the EU a decade ago, its leaders envisioned a post-Brexit country that could thrive as a nimble, free-trading “Singapore-on-Thames.”
Why did that dream never work out?
Fareed explained:
https://www.facebook.com/fareedzakaria/videos/when-britain-voted-to-leave-the-eu-a-decade-ago-its-leaders-envisioned-a-post-br/1441860037699560/

Watching Farage made me ask myself a question: what’s the most characteristic, memory-hugging image in my head about that gentleman?

The answer was absolute: the image of a too-well-dressed man in a pub, holding up a glass of the working-man’s elixer: beer.

In a sentence - or in an image? - the salesman pitching it to the intellectually less fortunate in a language he hopes he understands. Thus the genesis of the entire operation, the con of the century.

Singapore, though it was quite some time ago, struck me as a very clean, organised city state; there was no chewing gum effing up every available inch of public pavement, the street food was cleanly prepared and served, delicious and I never felt under any personal threat, quite a relief from some other parts of the world in which I’ve worked. The hotels and their bars actively discouraged tipping, a stance with which I agree, seeing tipping as nothing more than a sign of undervalued staff and miserable management.

Singapore-upon-Thames… within the British civilisation model? Not gonna happen. We would destroy the first green shoots with enough courage to show their heads; tall poppies learned modesty a long time ago. Our problem, if I’m still allowed to wear the mantle, is that there are too many of us - about 66 million, I think, with not all of us capable of holding our own in a rapidly changing world of advanced technologies. Even being suitably literate isn’t going to be enough in the face of advancing AI and what that’s going to imply for employment. How do we support - or do we just cull? - the many millions who won’t be able to hack it?

The Swiss model doesn’t travel to Britain. Switzerland is a centrally situated country at the heart of the European continent, with a population that can, because of geography and parentage, often converse in French, Italian and German. In Britain, we discover difficulties enough with Scottish and Welsh accents - I seem to remember the Irish less difficult, but perhaps it’s just a matter of exposure.

I’m kinda surprised not enough Brits reduced the Brexit question to the personal: was it ever a good thing being the little guy in the school playground? That basic situation tells anyone all they need to know about critical mass.

[Robert Roaldi]

The ex pardon attorney discovers a new DOJ power re moving prisoners to different prisons that has gone unreported up till now, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rcee4f1lN8s. The transformation to Gilead continues apace.

[Robert Roaldi]

Now here's real class https://thehill.com/media/5943483-megyn-kelly-haitian-syrian-protections/.

This is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5942894-fema-official-leave-waffle-house-teleportation-claim/. Just seems like a spectacular lack of ambition. If I could teleport somewhere, I'd like to think I could come up with a better destination than a Waffle House, not that I have anything against a good waffle.

Seems like the latest "peace" deal with Iran isn't holding up. And I saw a headline about an Israel-Jordan "peace" deal. They've been talking about peace in those places since I was at college in the 1970s. Who are they kidding.

[Rob C]

That’s the problem: religion will never allow peace to happen - not in any permanent kind of sense. Don’t anyone of the West think it’s the province of “other” societies, either: the Irish problem never can truly vanish, as with the same situation in Scotland, where it ritually plays itself out during the football season with Rangers and Celtic (or Celtic and Rangers, just to show I bear equal disdain), fans of both kicking the crap out of one another should the colours ever meet. Yep, adults of the human species - and sometimes the young, too. For those outwith that particular knowledge loop: Rangers is nominally representative of Protestant hopes, and Celtic of Roman Catholic aspirations… there are, though, rare and brave crossovers.

That said, there’s a societal change that’s taken place: openly and obviously, lying has become the accepted face of politics and politicians, and it seems to make not an iota of difference to the voter.

Voting used to be somewhat class- and work-biased, but I suspect not so much anymore, with strategic voting taking the place of conviction voting; it becomes as much a matter of keeping someone out of office as getting someone else in.

That we should have come to this.

[Jonathan Cross]

 By September the UK will have had 7 prime ministers in 10 years. 4 of those were replaced not as the result of a general election but because their own party turned against them.

[degrub]

And one cat. Who’s in the office ?
Vote for Larry.
Vote for stability.

https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/3277695/the-lectern-is-never-a-good-sign

[Rob C]

Larry refuses to run for office, he doesn‘t have to.

Did you know his pension is better than mine?

[Rob C]

By September the UK will have had 7 prime ministers in 10 years. 4 of those were replaced not as the result of a general election but because their own party turned against them.

As suggested elsewhere, a tub of snakes, every party. Look at little Scotland with its tragic SNP: the leader’s nominal husband, holding the second-top political job, stole 400,000 pounds from his party. He’s in the public holding pen - supposedly for the next few years - and she, for her part, denies any knowledge of the additional spending power thrust upon her and her other half. She signs a lot of books, though, so idiots still revere.

[Robert Roaldi]

Patrick Boyle talks about effects of Brexit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogiYAtfn7w.

[Robert Roaldi]

The new bridge from Detroit to Windsor is still not open. The chain of events from the owner of the American-owned Ambassador Bridge paying off a Trump PAC to Luttnick to delays in opening of the bridge are very publicly known at this point. https://financialpost.com/news/lutnick-delayed-canada-bridge-debut-toll-revenue

The original contract called for Canada to build it at Canadian cost, then recoup the construction cost by collecting tolls for some period, after which tolls would be shared with Michigan. All clearly laid out, all contracts signed. And ONCE AGAIN, Trumpistan reneged on a contract they way they have done repeatedly since reaching office. I assume the Trump clan were angling for a personal kickback from Canada, something that seems to be ok in the new USA.

First, yet another example why contracts with the US are a farce these days. Second, how come the sequence of events of bribe paying followed by the US federal guvmint not allowing the opening while trying to extort money from Canada has not resulted in criminal sanctions on the part of US officials? Are there no laws left in the US.

The tolls on trucks on the new bridge were going to be about half (or so) compared to the old Ambassador bridge. The tolls on the Rainbow bridge near Niagara are also about half of that of the Detroit Ambassador bridge and its truck traffic has increased recently.  I guess free market competition is a great idea in textbooks but it's a bitch when it interferes with a politically maintained monopoly.


A recent David Frum podcast is not complimentary about the US handling of the Iran war, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSHUc7mKc1U.

In Europe, Trump's buddy Putin is going through a bad patch at the moment.

[Rob C]

Patrick Boyle talks about effects of Brexit, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mogiYAtfn7w.

Thank you, Robert, for an interesting link that certainly manages to illustrate many different points of the British discussion, points that don’t always come immediately to mind when thinking about the topic.

I heard or read that Trump is threatening to hit Europe with 100% tariffs if it dares to apply tax (for profits made in European countries) against the US monopolies in things such as social media and internet services in general. Interesting that the US appears to do nothing about the sackfuls of tax revenue it loses to those same companies with their declared tax base in Ireland. What gives?

[Robert Roaldi]

Thank you, Robert, for an interesting link that certainly manages to illustrate many different points of the British discussion, points that don’t always come immediately to mind when thinking about the topic.

I heard or read that Trump is threatening to hit Europe with 100% tariffs if it dares to apply tax (for profits made in European countries) against the US monopolies in things such as social media and internet services in general. Interesting that the US appears to do nothing about the sackfuls of tax revenue it loses to those same companies with their declared tax base in Ireland. What gives?

What gives, you ask?  The usual bs.

According to Cory Doctorow the US applied pressure for years to Canada, Europe and others to shut up and adopt the various digital desires of big tech so they could run roughshod over our own industries. They threatened tariffs if we didn't go along, and this was pre-Trumpistan. It's typical of them to encourage monopolies, Americans generally don't really like competitive marketplaces.  Remind me, which one are we again, Oceania, Eurasia or Eastasia, I haven't read the book in a while.

[Robert Roaldi]

ICE arrested a nun, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/30/ice-nun-detained-released-texas.

[Rob C]

Now Trump wants to control international football.

Does he ever do any real work? Rather disturbing that the world's most powerful man has time to watch football.

Maybe it shows that he isn't numero uno at all, just a figurehead sent to play the social media game whilst invisible puppeteers do the real stuff: send people to heaven - or hell - as the case may be.

[digitaldog]

When sleepy Don isn't sleeping:

President Trump made two glaring mix-ups Wednesday while speaking to the press at a NATO summit in Turkey.

“We had 111 missiles shot by the Islamic Republic of Japan. They were shot at the aircraft carrier,” Trump said, inventing a new government and confusing Japan with Iran.

A few minutes later, sitting alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and pointing to him directly, Trump asked reporters, “You have a question for President Putin, please?” The assembled press chuckled.

[Rob C]

The Army-and-navy-that-no-longer-exist are both sure doing a cool imitation of ones that do.