All quango/NED heads being appointed by committee is, after all, the most British of approaches.

I look forward to it, could be a very insightful avenue of inquiry!

*Norms. I do not want to break nana Norma.

QMV would be an institutional safeguard though. We've seen enough norma broken to know these things need to be as watertight as possible.

Rn that'd mean a majority of committee members as long as either the Tories or Lib Dems are part of that majority.

I think that's right. Risk with a simple majority vote is that the govt can still essentially make the pick (7 of 11 CMS members are Labour).

So maybe a form of qualified majority voting. 50%+1 *and* from at least 50% of the parties on the committee.

Prescott's 19 page memo criticising specific programmes in 6 different areas. It is much more subjective - coming from his own perspective across issues - than the thematic reviews conducted by the BBC with a clear methodology & engagement with all perspectives

www.bbc.co.uk/aboutthebbc/...

Years ago, when we bought our first flat, I posted something about how much we had spent on rent that could've gone towards a mortgage or deposit. I should update that with a side-by-side comparison of our housing costs since moving v. the places we'd lived in before.

It's mad. It's more than we paid for a newish flat in Greenwich, London when we lived there (£1350pcm or thereabouts, god knows how expensive that is now).

When looking at ‘AI productivity savings’ in government they’d better also count having to revisit everything in a project, rather than filing this bit under some other ‘misc’ heading
www.bbc.com/news/article...

Now, "abolish landlords" is a bit on the Maoist side of the spectrum as a tagline, but Labour also aren't in favour of any kinds of reform that would tackle modern landlordism, e.g. taxing land rents, which is from an older socialist tradition that is to the right of where Labour ostensibly are.

I'm considering buying a new bike. I have a range of suppliers, versions of the product, and price points with which to gauge what product I'm happy to pay for, or, *crucially*, opt out of doing so entirely. That's a functioning market.

The renting (and wider housing market) is nothing like that.