He can’t push through his reforms without support from parliament and the people, this his cack handed way of trying to get that. The president is not a god who can just do whatever he wants here, the french have repeatedly shown what will happen if he does try.

He’s trying to get the people to fall in line behind him using the boogyman of Le Penn’s mob so he can finish his reforms, it’s way he’s still doing regular press about this election despite him not being directly involved and him actually having a negative drag on the perception of the centre.

Nazis at the gates is the perfect excuse for him to do so, but irrelevant as he’d never get in even with a rule change as he’s that detested

By voting for a centrist government around him you are renewing his mandate to reform France. The french don’t fuck around with protests and he’s had no end of riots and strikes over his reforms so far. The president is not God, he needs parliament to back him against this.

This is about strengthening his hold to force these reforms through. Hence why he called an election now, that he personally is not at risk from, it’s low risk gamble for him personally.

Couple that with him having close to zero chance of getting back in 27 as he’s an unpopular cunt as there ever was, this is his last roll of the dice to enact the widespread change he wants.

He believes that the majority hate racism more than him, it’s a close run thing as he’s been a right cunt as far as the far left and anybody fucked over by his reforms has been concerned.

He wants a fresh mandate to continue fucking over the electorate, that’s his goal here and he thinks he can play chicken with fascists to get it, especially when fascists will promise any old shit that they have no intention of delivering.

They do far too much of it’s their turn in the big chair and not enough who is the best candidate. They cannot see past Trump as an absolutely terrible choice and think anyone else would be the automatic winner like 2016 didn’t just happen because of that shit.

Macron is going through the same bullshit, thinking that the electorate would rather support him than literal racists. Guess what fuck nuts, the electorate is about to call you on that, as dumb a decision as it is.

So big vacations we typically plan two to three years in advance and book as soon as the booking opens for the parts of that holiday. Usually means flights about 12 months before, accommodation usually a bit before then. Something like Disney or a sailing holiday we can book two years in advance as an entire package, which in the EU means we ATOL protected, far safer that far out than booking separate. I have terrible anxiety when booking lots of individual components like a backpacking holiday in Japan that had us staying in half a dozen hotels/apartments, hiring a couple of cars, getting internal flights, prebooking tickets to Sumo and Ghibli and so on, but its essential to get the best prices.

We are still paying for a family holiday in a cottage or villa as our kids are still starting their careers. This I book a year in advance, but we plan the locations far in advance of that and scope out where we want to stay.

As we work from home we can work from our van a fair bit. Earlier in the year we did a tour of wales over three weeks while working part time, later this year we are doing a three week tour of Cornwall/Devon/Somerset. We also get away a few long weekends around the bank holidays. As we stay at adult only sites that are very popular and will sell out quickly around the dates we want to go, these are booked as soon as booking opens for them, usually October the year before.

Booking early gets us far better pricing and we get to go where we want, stay where we want. Plus the planning and research is a big part of the enjoyment for us, its also essential if you want to make the most of a planning heavy holiday like Japan or Disney and not pay through the nose to use a quality planning service.

Then the Winter games would get all huffy and not speak to them anymore, that’s probably the only reason.

Pretty sure he pays cash or close to it rather than a traditional leveraged buy out. He normally only buys struggling or collapsed brands he can get cheap like Wiggle.

Greece is too warm now for summer games, it’s significantly hotter than Paris right now and can hit a sustained over 40c without much problem. Paris isn’t great in the summer but it’s better than Greece. If we want one location to host the games during the summer then I pick Bergen, significantly cooler than Paris.

Ashley wants two main things out of his purchases, the brand name to slap on a web store with any head start it can give into running a business in that sector, and the retail space. Any decent retail space he wants to flip into residential property while stripping any fixtures and fittings of any value, anything else will be gone or rebooted into the lowest common denominator for that area.

Cost is high due to the high cost to FOM to be on the calendar and a lack of government subsidies, lots of other races get a big hand out. Its rare for this race to do much more than break even. Silverstone relies on the halo effect of the F1 race to improve sales of track days and other events so this is tolerated.

Ticket prices could come down if they could dramatically increase capacity, but that requires a lot more casual fans wanting to go, which requires a British driver directly challenging for the title and the circuit with its surrounding roads/parking being enlarged. Parking is better than the bad old days but its still not suitable for double the current capacity.

Lowering prices for anything other than seat fillers means operating at a loss, they cannot afford to do so for more than a handful of seasons.

Horner would love to sell them a power unit, would be sweet karma

They already tried that, they kept the park reservation system in place that they put in during Covid for a period of time post Covid to limit the number of people in the park far in advance of the actual day. This was done because they let go a whole bunch of staff because of Covid then couldn’t get them back so had reduced ability to soak up visitors pre Covid.

It was an incredibly contentious choice as it meant to had to plan the exact park you wanted to go to up to 12 months in advance of the date you going. Disney has become a planning nightmare, its a hobby in its own right to manage properly and if you don’t do it then you have an objectively worse experience than those who do during any remotely busy time.

UK you have the concept of black box car insurance that offered a substantial discount for having either a dedicated device installed into the car or an app on your phone that tracks a bunch of stats as you drive. It’s as shit as it sounds as it marks you down for every little infringement such as driving at peak times because that’s more dangerous. Get enough points and you can have your policy cancelled. In the UK there are knock on effects for ever having an insurance policy cancelled and you have to legally declare you did when asked.

While you can uninstall the app good luck making a claim if you don’t have it installed with data for that journey. They’d also be pretty suss with no data over an extended period of a few months.

Worst part of these is that it’s expensive to switch to a non black box policy when you can afford to as you get older and more experienced.

I would guess that their reasoning is that the increased area allows for more/better sculpted ground effect.

Has this been independently verified as bullet proof by a reputable company? As I have zero trust in any assertions from Tesla based on their previous demos of this.

Its bound by Solas regulations that are legally enforceable. Ships must have two way AIS and its logged, so they know if you were in range similar to the tracking for planes. Boats under a certain size do not need AIS and often only have one way AIS, but I expect thats not the case with DiCaprios boat.

Solas was bought in because of the Titanic sinking as other boats declined the help due to the risk of Icebergs, so thats a further link to DiCaprio.