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A spokesperson said there was "already support and interest from the private sector", adding that ministers had held discussions with key partners since the announcement.

Kickbacks, kickbacks, come and get yer kickbacks here

This is an embarrassing tragedy.

Get rich quick by hacking Whatsapp for the Russians https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/05/zero-days-for-hacking-whatsapp-are-now-worth-millions-of-dollars/

Embarrassing for Andy Street who was saying he wouldn't resign yesterday as his lobbying to secure Euston had been so successful

Fuck Andy Street.

It’s embarrassing for the industry. Honestly, in relative terms, Crossrail - although late - was and is a huge success.

And at the other end of the scale there’s HS2 … where we’ve dug some holes and built a few bridges to nowhere. Too many fingers in the pie, too much private money involved.

And no direction.

It got me wondering why more people don't grow their own?

My grandad used grow his own tobacco and then send it off to get dried and he’d get it back in the post.

It gets grown in research a lot as it’s a model organism so you can change the genetics comparatively easily.

How would you solve the other points in your post? Genuine question.

I think it's the wrong thread for me to rant much more, but car dependence and ownership can be gradually reduced through simple changes to infrastructure and making it safer and more convenient to walk short local journeys and harder to drive. Carrot and stick.

I agree with all of this (most car journeys in London are selfish acts), I just don’t think I’m so vehemently opposed as you are.

Ultimately the same outcome though, so happy to pool resources! 😂

Mine use to grow his own as well and pack it into blocks, then shave it off with his pen knife - but this was for a pipe.

My grandma stopped him doing it as she read in Reader's Digest that smoking your own tobacco could make you blind.

Reading that back I feel like I probably could have written a blog in the 2010s on things my grandpa used to do.

My grandad washed his hair with Daz laundry detergent his whole life and smoked like an absolute bastard.
He also got done for gbh in his late 70s for hospitalising two lads that tried to mug him on his way back from the chippy.

Good old fashioned scary WW2-vet grandpa. These boomer grandads nowadays aren’t fit to roll a fag for his generation 😅😅

Mainly because it's against the law.

It's legal to grow it at home, either for your own consumption or for sale to others. But even if it's just for your own use you still have to pay the duty and your premises must meet the same standards as a cigarette manufacturer. Section 2.10 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/excise-notice-476-tobacco-products-duty/excise-notice-476-tobacco-products-duty#liability-to-or-payment-of-duty

Nothing to stop you from starting a farm and setting yourself up as a fag company. The UK climate is suitable almost everywhere, so long as you harvest before the first frost. One frost will destroy the crop. This happened on the farm I worked on in Canada years ago, near Lake Erie. There were a few counties full of farms, with a few hundred farmers. We were six weeks into the harvest with another six weeks to go. (The plants mature from the bottom up, so you start by picking all the leaves at the bottom and come back a week later for the higher ones, and so on.) One night there was a frost. It was so unexpected that most farmers weren't insured against it. A few hired blowers and helicopters to shift the cold air. It didn't work. The farmer I worked for had no insurance so he threw us off the farm. (We were living in his barn.)

I doubt a UK farm could compete with countries where labour is cheap. Maybe you could invest squillions in robotic harvesting machinery. It's a very difficult plant for a machine to harvest because you mustn't touch the leaves which aren't ripe yet. The stems snap because they're very brittle. Picking by hand avoids wastage but it's so unpleasant that nobody wants the job. That's why I was there - European students were suckered into it on an exchange scheme. It was the worst job I ever had. A tractor on stilts drags you past the plants and you try to grab the ripe leaves and stack them in a bin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L77jnl6xC20

My grandad used to grow his own as well, he was a poor as poor could be subsistence farmer in rural mid-c20th Spain. They made their own wine and firewater too, customs and excise didn't bother them. No roads, it was still mediaeval times for Spain in those days.

Fat Shaming Bears in Alaska

https://www.nps.gov/katm/learn/fat-bear-week-2023.htm

They're celebrating BBBs - it's all very body-positive.

It gets grown in research a lot as it’s a model organism so you can change the genetics comparatively easily.

Friends PHD involved splicing gloworm genes into tobacco so you could find your fags in the dark.(as an easy to find marker identify GM tobacco)

Good old fashioned scary WW2-vet grandpa.

My mum found this about mine the other day, what a fucking guy, shame I only met him for a year.

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Wow. I bet that’s just the tip of the iceberg too. War is just horrible.
Was he from Farley hill Berkshire? I ride through there occasionally.

Yup, him and my Grandma bought this house on Greensward lane in Arborfield (where I first rode as bike), it's where my mum and uncle grew up and I spent a lot of time as a kid, and rode past on my way from Manchester to Brighton (shitty cars not ours).

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I noticed quite a few tabac fields in France which I haven't seen for a long time.

Maybe it's booming again. I doubt they feed it to the cattle. Are you sure it's not sugar beets?
I spent a few summers when I was a teenager picking up leaves in tobacco fields. Back-breaking, low-paying (obvs undeclared by the local slavedriver of a farmer) tough job.
The dark nicotine residue on your finger nails after a week's work is enough to get anyone never to take up smoking.

(hourly rate paid to us at the end of the season was something like £1.35 c. 1987-88)

Definitely.

The crop it by regularly trimming the tops with a machine.

Crazy smell when it was going on.

More than 100,000 children have a parent in prison for the first time since records began, according to analysis of government figures.

The figures have been released as Estonia’s justice minister confirmed that his officials were in talks with the UK government over plans to accept UK prisoners amid an overcrowding crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/oct/06/over-100000-children-in-england-and-wales-have-parent-in-prison-analysis-shows?

This is a similar tale for my gramps, ended up in Yugoslavia (according to family mythology).

‘Suicide drone’ attack in Syria during a military academy graduation ceremony kills nearly 100 including 31 women and 5 kids. Apparently the Syrian SecDef was there only minutes before the strike, so he could’ve been the main target rather than the cadre of new officers and their families. Madness.

My Grandma's brother survived (until a few years ago) getting shot in Italy, and getting run over by a tractor and having to put his guts back in, not war related, I never met a couple of her other brothers as they didn't survive.