A recent migrant, identifying himself as ‘Nigel F from Clacton’, told reporters he was thrilled by his new life in Russia and the prospect of not having to see brown people at the shops or gay people on TV anymore.

It does seem extraordinarily naive.

But the tribunal heard neither Ms Jones nor the customer was interviewed, no notes were produced by Mrs Smith and no written account of the decision was made.

[…]

The judge said: "The disciplinary process and the dismissal were a sham designed to placate the customer.

What I know about HR is that the employer actually has a tonne of leeway to get rid of people as long as they can demonstrate they have followed a proper process with an audit trail.

The reason this person was fired that’s mentioned in the headline (which I think isn’t unreasonable - of course you can’t call the customer a twat!) is kind of irrelevant here, it’s the fact the employer didn’t run a true process to back up the decision that has got them.

The state’s case rested on testimony from Allah’s friend and co-defendant, Steven Golden, who was also charged in the robbery and murder. As their joint trial was beginning, Golden pleaded guilty to murder, armed robbery and criminal conspiracy and agreed to testify against Allah. Golden, who was 18 at the time of the robbery, said Allah shot Graves.

But on Wednesday, two days before the scheduled execution, Golden signed a bombshell affidavit recanting his testimony, saying Allah “is not the person who shot Irene Graves” and “was not present” during the robbery. Golden’s declaration said he was high when police questioned him days after the robbery, and that he was pressured into writing a statement blaming Allah.

“I substituted [Allah] for the person who was really with me,” he wrote, saying he concealed the identity of the “real shooter” out of fear that “his associates might kill me”. He did not identify this person.

Golden said he agreed to plead guilty and testify when prosecutors assured him he would not face the death penalty or a life sentence if he cooperated – a deal that was not disclosed to the jury.

I feel sick reading this.

Wait, how many 25 year olds in 2024 do you think remember the Mighty Boosh (2003-07), or Chicken Run (2000), or Who Shot Phil Mitchell (2001), or Caroline Quentin-era Jonathan Creek (1997-2000), or know people who were extras in the Harry Potter films (2001-11), or remember the Animals of Farthing Wood TV programme (1993-97), or spilled their drink on Miquita Oliver at a squat party in 2007 (2007)?

but leaving them anywhere helps everyone

Leaving them anywhere is the whole problem. My neighbour is in his 70s and uses a mobility scooter. I see parents having to detour their pushchairs onto the road to get around them. People are literally leaving these bikes lying horizontal across the pavement!

This isn’t a problem with bikes that individuals own. This isn’t a problem with the Santander bikes either. This is a specific problem with Lime bikes and the likes, because the Lime bike system is set up to encourage people to dump their bikes anywhere and Lime does nothing to discourage this. Lime is a multi-million pound private enterprise that is profiting on what is effectively the littering of our public spaces.

Personally I’d favour using punitive market-based mechanisms to solve this - fine Lime £100 or £200 for every mis-parked bike, which would align their incentives with society’s and quickly lead them to being a lot more discerning about who they rent their bikes out to and how they enforce against misuse of the bikes. But I suspect this would destroy their business model anyway - the overwhelming majority of Lime bikes I see out and about are not parked in an orderly way, so what you’re calling a public disorder problem must account for the vast majority of their customer base - it’s a business model set up to cater to hooligans. So maybe just banning the product outright is the better option. The Santander bikes are very widely available for anyone who needs them and they operate with a system that overwhelmingly enforces orderly parking.

🥳

This is exactly my issue. I’m not against 20mph in urban areas, but 20mph limits on roads that are clearly designed for 30mph (or more) are a lazy solution. Every subconscious instinct of an experienced driver on these roads will be telling them to drive at 30 so they have to consciously focus on the speedometer to stay within the lower limit for prolonged periods, particularly with the proliferation of speed cameras we have in the UK - my fear in a 20 zone is often now that I’m going to cause an accident because I’m so focused on the speedometer and not the road.

The right solution is to actually turn these roads into 20mph roads (not 30mph with 20mph limits) through simple road design measures that will align drivers’ subconscious perception of the road with the speed the government wants them to drive at. I recognise that this can’t happen overnight but I see no effort by local or national government to even start investing in the set of changes needed to make 20mph sustainable. If these roads just felt like 20mph roads then people would be a lot less annoyed at driving within the speed limit and the government wouldn’t just be stoking up a massive political backlash that will end up returning them all to 30mph and abandoning all the road safety and air quality benefits that these policies are supposed to deliver for us.

‘Ah, Kamala, my old friend. Do you know the MAGA proverb that tells us cats and dogs are a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in space.’

Ed maxed out on ‘centrist fun uncle’ energy. Genuinely one of the most effective 3rd party campaigns I’ve seen in British politics - hence resulting in the largest number of 3rd party MPs in a century.

They can clearly enforce that more

Or, you know, at all…

I see far more Lime bikes sitting in the middle of the pavement than I do parked appropriately. Lime clearly has no incentive to punish bad parkers as all it does is lose them business for zero benefit.

The way to make the cost-benefit analysis work - and therefore to make Lime enforce against bad parkers - is for Lime to face a cost when their riders park badly. Local councils should just drive a van round and impound any Lime bikes thrown in the middle of the pavement and charge Lime £200 a pop to recover them - that would quickly get them to stop renting bikes out to hooligans.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proper_noun

Health Secretary Wes Streeting responded to her post: "No, I do not think the post-war confessional of Martin Niemöller about the silent complicity of the German intelligentsia and clergy in the Nazi rise to power is pertinent to a Smoking Bill that was in your manifesto and ours to tackle one of the biggest killers.

“Get a grip.”

Imagine the queue to see Larry lying in state.

Yes - that was the next sentence I wrote?

In 2017 his name was mentioned as a visionary comparable to the Wright Brothers and Zefram Cochrane (inventor of the warp drive) on a Star Trek episode set in the 2250s. It felt at the time that this line risked dating the episode but I don’t think anyone could have expected just how much he would go on trash his own reputation.

The only thing that saves this line is that we found out a few episodes later that the character who spoke it secretly came from the Mirror Universe - where he grew up Musk’s embrace of Nazism was probably seen as a virtue.

Non-paywall link: https://archive.ph/Gt4z1

Having watched Joe Biden retain most of the tariffs he inherited, America’s trading partners have been fond of complaining the US president is “continuity Trump” and wondering whether Kamala Harris will be continuity Biden. The first epithet was never entirely fair: Trump’s focus was on closing trade deficits and gaining negotiating leverage, Biden’s mainly about industrial policy. Now Trump is threatening a massive and damaging escalation of trade protection, Harris only has to keep Biden’s policies in place, as she probably will, and she will look positively free-trade Clintonesque (Bill not Hillary) in comparison.

[…]

At any rate, her launch of the price control plan last week was accompanied by an explicit repudiation of Trump’s new tariffs: “These actions stand in stark contrast to Trump, who would increase costs for families by at least $3,900 with what is, in effect, a new national sales tax on imported everyday goods.”

The consumer-focused critique is not new from this administration — Biden made similar comments about Trump’s 10 per cent across-the-board proposal — but it does illustrate the gulf in policy and messaging opening up with the Republicans.

[…]

Let’s be clear: Harris hasn’t repudiated the trade and industrial policy elements of Bidenomics, and is unlikely to. But the Democrats are at least charting a steady course that balances their desire to protect industries they deem strategic with the need to hold down economy-wide inflation. Meanwhile, Trump is sailing off towards areas of the trade policy map marked “Here Be Dragons”. Clear blue water is emerging between the Republicans and Democrats, and the idea that second-term Trump trade policy would resemble that of a Harris administration is rapidly receding.

NIMBYs’ excuses are becoming more and more elaborate.

When asked about Trump’s attitudes to climate change and the environment, literal tumbleweed emerged from the mouth of famed environmental lawyer and lifelong environmentalist RFK Jr.