872 on 15 boats, cumulative for 2023 20,973, to save you a click.

Well, yeah. That’s also why there was a curious shortage of white men in the last round of leadership elections (was it just Tugendhat?). Glass cliff phenomenon.

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

Fly agaric is positively benign compared to its close relative Amanita phalloides, the Death Cap.

This is an awesome photo, but I wish there was something in it for scale to show how giant it really is.

And being heavily criticised for it.

Also by this author:

• Planet Normal: Ulez expansion feels like lockdown all over again
• First it was Covid – now we’re being scared into submission over the weather
• The NHS is on life support – it’s time to switch it off and start again
• The BBC’s liberal bubble has finally burst
• I’m sick of people with an ounce of common sense being labelled ‘far-Right’
• Britain is becoming too woke to defend itself
• Over-50s are being driven out of work by wokery

Ministers aren’t supposed to have experience, they’re there to make decisions. All the expertise is held in the Civil Service, and they don’t get shuffled around.

They just get occasionally fired by vandals.

The decision of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwaerteng to instantly sack two top civil servants damaged the running of government and seemed intended to give the message that they valued political alignment above competence, former senior officials have said.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/26/liz-truss-kwasi-kwarteng-sacking-top-two-civil-servants-damaged-government

The watchdog said that in previous winters some electricity generators had deliberately stopped generating power early in the afternoon, meaning plants were switched off during the crucial evening spike in demand. They would then offer to resume generating power later in the day, cashing in on the greatly increased prices on offer via the balancing mechanism.

Sounds rather similar to the behaviour of a little energy company based in the USA called Enron:

After the passage of the deregulation law, California had a total of 38 Stage 3 rolling blackouts declared, until federal regulators intervened in June 2001. […] Subsequently, Enron traders were revealed as intentionally encouraging the removal of power from the market during California’s energy crisis by encouraging suppliers to shut down plants to perform unnecessary maintenance, as documented in recordings made at the time. These acts contributed to the need for rolling blackouts, which adversely affected many businesses dependent upon a reliable supply of electricity, and inconvenienced a large number of retail customers. This scattered supply increased the price, and Enron traders were thus able to sell power at premium prices, sometimes up to a factor of 20 × its normal peak value. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

If you can imagine those, I’m sure you can imagine steak flavour. That’s all it is.

These steak-flavoured “bubbled chips” are suitable for vegetarians, which raises some additional questions.

No problem. There’s a lot of confusing stuff surrounding homebuying.

What? There is no limit on the size of funds that can be gifted to help buy a house in the UK. If your family wants to bung you £500k of their own money there’s nothing stopping them.

The requirement to demonstrate proof of funds for that money is to prevent money laundering.

Meat-flavoured crisps are common in the UK. Roast chicken, smoky bacon, and BBQ beef are routine for flavours.

Prawn cocktail crisps taste of prawn cocktail sauce… not of prawns.

Roysters are the UK’s only, original, American-style bubble chips!

Best to stick to actual crisps.

https://www.kpsnacks.com/our-brands/#:~:text=Roysters are the UK's only,classic T-Bone Steak flavour.

Up until 1889, city status was granted on the basis of the existence of having an Anglican cathedral.

It’s only been arbitrary since they tore up the rulebook and gave Birmingham city status.

Widening the Overton Window. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

In terms of European nuclear weapons, the UK and France already have their own nuclear arsenals. But the broader content of your comment is bang on.

In an earlier interview this month with Fox News, Ramaswamy said of the layoffs: “What [Musk] did at Twitter is a good example of what I want to do with the administrative state … Take out the 75% of the dead weight cost, improve the actual experience of what it’s supposed to do.”

Unrelated:

Elon Musk admits X (Twitter) ‘may fail’ after sacking more than 80% of staff, charging for verification and rebranding https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12432129/amp/Elon-Musk-admits-X-Twitter-fail-sacking-80-staff-charging-verification-rebranding.html

“The outgoing MP, a staunch ally of Sunak’s predecessor Boris Johnson, last spoke in the Commons more than 400 days ago and has voted only six times so far this year.”

It seemed quite clear at the time that the decision to force (untested) people out of hospitals and into care homes was a decision made because the government wanted hospital capacity freed up, & considered the lives of care home residents a reasonable price to pay for genpop capacity.

Not a nice decision. And one that could have been avoided entirely if the gov hadn’t botched pandemic preparedness, and then prevaricated to the point of disaster when a pandemic actually arrived.

When the people who claimed “masks don’t work” convince the Royal Society to publish an 80 page report similarly supported by academics at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial, St Andrews, UCL, and Edinburgh (among others) then they will definitely deserve to be equally confident.