Peter Birks @peterjbirks

Newsletter editor, company director, online poker player, macro-economist, marine insurance writer, aggro-centrist, Gladstonian, South Londoner, francophile. insurancemarinenews.com London Joined April 2010

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

a hour ago

There is little more heartening and reflective of traditional English values than seeing three blokes get out of an unmarked small van of a morning, two of the men carrying half-full tins of paint, and heading into a neighbour's house to start a hard day's work.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

14 hours ago

Wes Streeting takes stand against Reform and reportedly says in fringe meeting: "A bunch of tossers, the lot of them, and i'm up for it if any one of them wants to be outside the Star and Garter at 10 o'clock tonight to find out if I'm messing about or not".

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

16 hours ago

Burnham reportedly furious that not once in Starmer's speech does he say what the government plans to do about the poor performance of Manchester United this season.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

2 days ago

If Columbus had reached the East Indies by sailing west he would have sent shockwaves around the globe.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

4 days ago

I can't see why Labour is panicking so much. They remain several points in front of the Conservatives. It's an unusual situation for the party in power to be ahead of the main opposition more than a year after an election. What's that Sooty? Reform? Ooooh.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

4 days ago

Labour leaders: "We need to get our message across more efficiently" . One week later. Spads: "OK, we got our message across". "Great!" "Not really. We're down two more points in the polls as a result."

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

4 days ago

It remains one of the most perpetually unsettling thoughts in cinematic history that Marlon Brando was only 48 years old when he starred in The Godfather.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

5 days ago

I had thought that in the 1950s the idea was that the developing world would learn liberal democracy from the West. With an ex president of France going to jail and an ex head of the FBI on a charge, the west instead seems to be learning from the developing world.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

5 days ago

I am not bad at obscure quiz questions, but I admit that if in a past quiz I had been asked "who held the UK 100m sprint record from 1967 to 1974?", the name Menzies Campbell would not have been one of my first guesses.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

5 days ago

There surely has to be a job market for people capable at work of translating to people at senior level what anyone (employee or external) born after the year 2000 is trying to say to you.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

6 days ago

It struck me today that, while a number of women who were brought up in Thurrock are named Chelsea, I don't think that I know or know of any women brought up in Chelsea whose first name is Thurrock.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

6 days ago

I think it was M&B in an RNS notice this morning that said its cost base would rise by 6% this year. It's existentially necessary for some in the Labour Party to talk about all price rises being a "rip-off" of consumers, while backing stuff that increases company costs.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

6 days ago

I think it's important that Sir Keir Starmer at the conference says that the government will focus on "real, workable solutions" that benefit "ordinary working people". That should keep "Che" Burnham at bay for, oooh, three weeks or so.

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Peter Birks @peterjbirks

6 days ago

Centaur sells Marketing Week, Festival of Marketing, and Creative Review to Haymarket for £3.9m as part of ongoing downsizing. The continuing group will be just Econsultancy and The Influencer Group. IT, HR, will be downsized accordingly.