David Peckham

The Standard are reporting the rental home as being in East Dulwich. I hadn't realised she was that local. "Rachel Reeves apologises for London rental rules breach as Tories demand her sacking | The Standard" https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/rachel-reeves-rental-rules-break-east-dulwich-family-home-southwark-council-b1255584.html

There was quite an old clip on BBC4 recently where they were introducing yoghurt to the British public. They called it a 'Balkan Dairy Preparation', which sounded to me more like something you'd ask to speak to the male member of staff about in the chemist in those days.

I miss milkmen. It was the sign of a good night out if you met one on the way home. But could quality produce, in 100% recyclable packaging and home-delivered by zero emission electric vehicles really catch on these days? They should bring back the Corona pop man, as well.

It was a bit of a jump by me from Cyclemonkey seeing a similar presence at London Bridge. Larnaca wouldn't have brought a huge amount of fans, but it was the first time Palace have hosted a competitive European tie. There's the issue of Northern Cyprus and heightened media interest around footy because of the Villa Maccabi game at the moment, so that may have had a bearing on the scale of the operation. It does seem unlikely if it was at four o'clock, though.

My apologies. The timing of your original post suggested it was after 6pm, which would fit with them herding away supporters onto the train at London Bridge and trying to get to Selhurst station to escort them to the ground.

Palace were at home last night, kicked off at 19.45. The timing sounds about right.

That sounds like a very short pub crawl.

The drivers generally have the same set area to cover every day, so they're fairly easy to follow - quite often on bike. They organise their drops to maximise how many they can do within a given time - there's actually software at the depot to do this before they set off - so they tend to follow the same route. Certain addresses are delivery hotspots, some have two or three drops a day from the various couriers. It all adds up doorstep deliveries being incredibly easy to target. I suspect Vladi's neighbour hasn't had their fake parcel nicked, not because of their security, but because the thief simply wouldn't have seen the driver stop there, so there's nothing to steal. The losses are factored in, driving prices up for everyone, and the drivers are treated abysmally. It's a dreadful business. It needs regulating. Sorry, cross post with Angelina and Alec1

Harry's polo ponies will be shitting themselves about whose bed their heads will be found in. I offer my friendship to Don William.

To be fair to Royalists, it didn't work out too well for anyone last time we canned the monarchy. I'd imagine quite a few French, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese and Russians had second thoughts after they' found out what you get in their place - those really didn't work out well. Maybe elected heads of state only work well where there's never been a monarchy. The countries I'd aspire to - the Scandinavian states, The Netherlands - have slimmed down monarchies, and that looks like the way we're moving. I'd take that and abolition of an unelected upper house, most particularly the hereditary element of it, as a decent starting point.

I've never been a big fan of the Royals - I used to think that their severed heads should be hung all along The Mall, but I've softened as I've got older. A slimmed down monarchy would be quite profitable for the UK, and a better option than an elected ceremonial president. Apparently, William has had quite a role in the uncompromising treatment of Andrew & Fergie and Harry & Megan - it reminded me of Michael Corleone's purge of the family's enemies at the end of 'The Godfather'. It was brutal, but at least Michael waited until his father, Don Vito, was dead to secure the future of the family business. William is putting his complications out of the picture now - I'd avoid massages or revolving doors if I was Beatrice or Eugenie. I think I'm developing a sneaking admiration for William.

Are you sure you were, to put it delicately, 100% upright at the time you took the photo? No cartwheels, handstands or anything like that?

Fair point, those do look pretty eye-watering for the average fan. Maybe the first tranche is aimed somewhat at the corporate hospitality market? FIFA did make a huge cock-up with the Club World Cup pricing and had to heavily discount even the semi-final, so there's still hope of some cheap tickets. I can't imagine Cabo Verde vs Uzbekistan on a wet Wednesday night would be a sell-out, unless New York or Los Angeles have a 'Verdeville' or 'Little Tashkent'. Of far greater concern is that Budweiser will be the only beer available in the stadia. That's reason enough to boycott the whole thing. FIFA seem deaf to any concerns about the quantity of football being played. There are going to be more inconsequential games, but for many 'elite' players, like Kane, Mbappe and Bellingham, this will be their third summer tournament on the bounce. They'll be knackered and that's got to affect the quality of the bigger matches.

I'd not really been keeping up on the National Guard situation, but having just had a quick Google, Portland is one of the cities where their use is pending. Obviously, anywhere inland is going to be much hotter than than coasts - even the Great Lakes cities like Chicago and Toronto hit very high temperatures when the Humidex is factored in - so I can't imagine what Kansas City could be like in high summer. Most of Kansas City is actually in Missouri, which is pretty strongly Trump country. The Mid West states tend to have higher gun ownership rates as well. Worth remembering if you're thinking about discussing politics in a bar. In general, if someone's wearing a Stetson and has a pick-up truck outside, they probably won't take well to talk about Democrats. And they probably have a gun. I'd stick to the Pacific coast. It's the most progressive part of the States, so at least you can open your mouth in a bar. The weather won't be as oppressive as the Mid West or the East Coast either. Vancouver, Seattle and Portland all have MLS teams - SF is getting one in the next couple of seasons - so the locals know something about football. It's worth driving the Pacific Coast Highway down from San Francisco towards LA, if you've not done it before. San Jose isn't really worth your time but Big Sur, Monterey, Santa Cruz and the beach towns like Capitola are well worth a visit. The National / State Park networks down the coast all provide decent campsites for next to nothing, and the whole area is really well set up for hiking, mountain-biking, canoeing and fishing.

Fifa are discussing expanding it to 64 teams for the 2030 tournament South America, which would mean 128 games. That's mad. They're aren't enough hours in the day to watch that much football and I'd have to move house to find a place with enough space for my 'Super Sun World Cup Wall Chart'. There are games in Mexico and Canada in 2026, so that's an option. Mexico will be unbearably hot, Toronto will be unbearably dull - Leonard Cohen once described it as 'New York run by the Swiss' and he was spot on - so I'd say Vancouver. Possibly the most beautiful setting for a city outside Sydney and a great food scene. Nick over the border and there are matches in Seattle as well. The Amtrak train down from Seattle to San Francisco, another WC venue, through Oregon is staggering - and they have an observation car with a bar! Portland and Eugene are worth a couple of nights as well. That part of northern California and the Pacific Northwest is the most un-Trumpy part of the US, so I wouldn't worry too much and Vancouver is surprisingly interesting, for Canada at least. You've actually made me think about making the trip again.

I've got to disagree with your numbers there - you're comparing apples and oranges. Support for the scheme has reduced from 53% prior to Starmer's announcement to 35% after it, opposition to it has increased from 19% to 49%, but 35% of the public still support it, not -14%. That is impossible + the lowest it could be is 0%. Net approval has decreased from +34% to -14%. The Guardian story seems like a hatchet job on Starmer's popularity and it makes you wonder what their agenda is, given the rumours around a leadership challenge. Starmer has clearly done a f*cking dreadful job on articulating any benefits of the system - if, indeed, there are any - but he's not helped by unverified social media stories about the involvement of Blair's son, stories which have been denied by all parties involved.

If that £28 billion was spent on, I don't know, Guinness in the EDT, it would raise cash through VAT and alcohol duty. If it was invested, say in Diageo (the parent company of Guinness), those dividends would be subject to CGT. I have no wish to pay more tax, but it seems like a significant loophole, and one that wouldn't affect me, so I'm in favour of it.

But we're double taxed, and more, on pretty much all 'non-essential' spending anyway. As it's clearly 'disposable' income, a decent starting point would be to treat it as such and charge 20% on it, like VAT, then add in a number to factor in the lost multiplier effect from it leaving the UK economy. It could be the only tax which actually has popular support.

That's why I said 'in some form' - that figure increases to 57% when asked if they were in favour of a 'National ID Card', rather than a digital one on their phone. That suggests a couple of things to me: firstly that the majority of people aren't mad enough to rebel over a perceived Orwellian assault on their civil liberties and, secondly, that 20% of people are worried about someone sussing that they've been looking at 'BigTits.Com' or some-such on their mobile.

You, yourself, said that you were 'instinctively' against the idea. I'm just trying to get my head around why some people feel like that, and why they're the loudest voices. The majority of the country in favour of it, in some form.

But also Corbyn and Liberty. It clearly elicits very strong feelings across the board, and I'm at a loss to know why. I'm fairly ambivalent to it, but cynical about its benefits and implementation. I certainly don't subscribe to the idea that it's the tool of a police state, which some seem to think. Oh, give over. The NHS patient data project was a complete Horlicks, and that, at the time, was the world's largest civilian computer system. Surely all similar large public projects are outsourced to some extent? The government simply doesn't have the capacity or expertise to carry out this scale of work in house. And as everyone knows, there's no such thing as bad work, only a bad client brief. There are potentially a lot of benefits to actually sharing more data through the ID scheme, in terms of more efficient budget allocation to services for a start, but I doubt the debate will get that far because of the 'Big Brother' obsession of some people.

It wouldn't be mandatory to carry it and Farage is one of the biggest critics of digital ID cards. Genuinely, and maybe I'm being naive, but what nefarious stuff do you think it could be used for?

It's difficult to keep politics completely out of it, if only to look who its most vehement opponents are; Farage, Corbyn, the Tories, the Lib-Dems, the Unionist parties of Northern Ireland, and civil liberties organisations like Liberty. That's a hell of a broad church - it seems to vex different people for different reasons. I don't really have a problem with ID cards ideologically, but large government organisations don't have a great track record in implementing large scale IT systems,. The Post Office and the NHS stand out - hugely expensive systems which either didn't perform or were written off. Data security is a concern - there seems to be arguments both for & against it making identity fraud both easier and more difficult, but the majority of adults in the UK have given away so much personal data on Facebook etc, that they're pretty wide open to being cloned anyway. Other than Switzerland and Denmark, we're the only country in Europe that doesn't have them. so there should be be enough learnings from other systems to have a reasonable debate about their merits, or otherwise. My major concern is that after politicians debate it ad nauseum, civil servants carry out a tedious tendering process and the Information Architects start arguing amongst themselves, the world will have moved on so much that whatever was originally signed off will be very expensive, anachronistic white elephant.

Vapes aren't big yet - most people still get their Chinese B&H Gold from one of the 'barbers'. The theme park isn't a bad idea - Torbay are using their cash for an 'Agatha Christie Trail' - so it's not so far-fetched. 'One-eyed Cop Killer' Dale Cregan and, most chillingly of all, Simply Red's Mick Hucknall are also from the neck of the woods. Would you believe Hucknall's dad was an actual barber? Brian & Michael (Matchstalk Men & Matchstalk Cats & Dogs) lived at the top of my road, and were abetted by The St.Winifred's School Choir on that aberration. They, of course graduated to the unforgivable 'Theres No-one Quite Like Grandma'. A truly terrifying place.

Looking at the areas which will be receiving funds, there seems to be a couple of pretty fundamental flaws with the scheme. In many of these areas, spend isn't migrating from high streets to online, there simply isn't any disposable income to migrate. No amount of tarting a place up is going to change the fact that these places are the poorest and most deprived in country - people simply have nothing to spend. Secondly, a lot of these areas no longer have an extant retail infrastructure to improve upon - it went donkey's years ago, along with the pubs. My childhood high street is getting a grant. Maybe they'll liven up Market Street by celebrating our notable locals - they could commission a Ricky Hatton mural, a statue of The Moors Murderers or a 'Walk of Shame' pavement for Harold Shipman's victims (it's quite a long street). But, whatever it is, I doubt it's going to show a decent return when the only businesses still trading are 'Bargain Booze' outlets, Bangladeshi takeaways, bookies and barbers.