leicsmac

Needless to say, Miliband is right to stick to his guns. Either the UK helps lead the way towards a future with less carbon emissions, or the UK will need a vastly larger military budget when even the most vital resources (such as potable water) become scarce and the fighting really starts.

https://theconversation.com/how-silicon-valley-misreads-the-lord-of-the-rings-282862 @Trav Le Bleu you might find this of particular interest. The appropriation of Tolkiens work by people who would be servants of Sauron (or Morgoth) in his legendarium has always made me pretty angry. This is a really good breakdown of exactly why.

Expect a few "worsts" in that regard.

Depends on who you talk to, but this is something that perhaps might be looked into more.

Agree with the bolded here, but as per above that's what the SLBMs are for, not much else.

Additionally, I'm curious as to who exactly the UK would war with or need a highly expensive conventional deterrent from that could have a positive and not catastrophic outcome. Most of the big names mentioned have nuclear weapons, so does the UK, and any conventional conflict with them would inevitably escalate to that, so...

Yep. A point that needs to be made and repeated for emphasis for everyone here, is that no matter where you siphon from the budget, it will result in unnecessary suffering and harm to people who in no way deserve it. Either now or in the very near future. There is no ideal solution besides doing something to increase the overall budget to be utilised, but that's hardly ideal in actually making it work.

Absolutely, though people's definition of "political display" on this one may be pretty varied, sadly.

Possibly by marginalising, in every possible way, the movements and organisations that are using it maliciously. That's the way it was reclaimed in the late 80s/early 90's.

It's always been about the extremes (plural) rather than the extreme (singular) as a consequence anyway. Anyone thinking otherwise is either misinformed or trying for some kind of daft or flat out maliciously misinformed gotcha.

I think @LCFCJohn made a pretty decent summation above.

Social media and rumour has a lot to answer for.

Sounds like a principled resignation from a principled man. It seems that pretty much every government area (other than the subsidy for the bar in the HoP) is strapped for cash right now. Goodness only knows how that gets solved without a struggle.

Looks like I missed a pretty thrilling denouement there. Damn shame.

And this is what cooler heads prevailing looks like. Bravo. If only there was more of that out in the wider world right now.

I mean that this crime is apparently being viewed as more grotesque than various other assaults resulting in grievous injury because of the way it was carried out, and, dare I say it, the demographic of the perpetrator. People are, of course, welcome to hold that viewpoint. A further point is that all these inflamed tensions and driven anger is just going to result in a lot more innocent people being harmed for no reason at all - before cooler heads prevail, as they should do from the start.

The point still stands in terms of overall risk, which is a point a lot of people appear to be missing giving both the coverage and anger-inducing nature of the incident. Which is understandable in its own way. Dead is dead, harmed is harmed.

Not sure how legit this is, but got a laugh out of me nevertheless:

Without effective regulation, yes. Perhaps it's a little too rose-tinted a look; goodness knows there were some horrible places in the early days of the Net. But the idea of spouting lies and slop hadn't been monetised, and so was far less prevalent.

It's not even funny anymore imo. In fact it wasn't really even funny at the start, but now all the death and suffering has started piling up, it's even less so.

Maybe so. Perhaps as a people we might expect a bit more honesty of purpose from the holder of the highest political office on Earth, though. Just a thought.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce371kw2ex2o President Donald Trump has said the US will hit Iran "hard" on Wednesday, after the two sides exchanged strikes overnight. "We hit them hard yesterday and we're going to hit them hard again today," he said, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office. He also reiterated a call for Iran to "sign a deal". Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian said in a post on X following Trump's briefing that Iran "will stand firm against any pressure or threat". For a "no wars" President, he certainly seems to be fond of this one.

https://phys.org/news/2026-06-odds-climb-el-nio-25c.html https://phys.org/news/2026-06-freshwater-boundary-breach-deepens-climate.html The latest. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fragmented-environmental-policies-failures-experts.html https://phys.org/news/2026-06-greater-international-cooperation-global-forest.html A reminder of just how few favours being tribal and divided does our species or its future.

Are you suggesting that the US State Department at the present time are somehow dishonest? How shocking!