The government could offer its own low-cost baby formula under a brand such as the NHS to combat the high prices and lack of choice in the market, the UK competition watchdog has suggested.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said another “backstop” measure could be for the government to regulate and set a price or profit-margin cap on retailers as a way to bring prices down for parents more quickly.

The potential measures formed part of the CMA’s interim report on the infant formula market after the watchdog identified that a lack of competition in the market had led to soaring prices, taking advantage of an ingrained belief among parents that higher cost equates to better quality for their children.

The CMA report set out a number of potential recommendations including extending the ban on the advertising of infant formula to follow-on formula, or going as far as “prohibiting all brand-related advertising”.
[…]
The provisional findings, which will feed into a final report to be published early next year, include some backstop measures that the CMA said were not actively recommended but that the government could make “with the aim of bringing prices down directly”.

One option was for the government to procure its own infant formula from a third-party manufacturer at a competitive price and sell it under an established name, such as the NHS, or invest in creating a new brand for the market.
[…]
Another option is to introduce regulations to place a maximum price cap on baby and infant formula, or establish a profit-margin cap, which the Greek government did earlier this year with the aim of making products more affordable.

I would like to use Bluesky. They've done a bunch of seriously interesting technical work on moderation and ranking that I truly admire, and I've got lots of friends there who really enjoy it.

But I'm not on Bluesky and I don't have any plans to join it anytime soon. I wrote about this in 2023: I will never again devote my energies to building up an audience on a platform whose management can sever my relationship to that audience at will.
[…]
Enshittification can be thought of as the result of a lack of consequences. Whether you are tempted by greed or pressured by people who have lower ethics than you, the more it costs to compromise, the fewer compromises you'll make.

In other words, to resist enshittification, you have to impose switching costs on yourself.

That's where federation comes in. On Mastodon (and other services based on Activitypub), you can easily leave one server and go to another, and everyone you follow and everyone who follows you will move over to the new server. If the person who runs your server turns out to be imperfect in a way that you can't endure, you can find another server, spend five minutes moving your account over, and you're back up and running on the new server.

Any system where users can leave without pain is a system whose owners have high switching costs and whose users have none. An owner who makes a bad call – like removing the block function say, or opting every user into AI training – will lose a lot of users. Not just those users who price these downgrades highly enough that they outweigh the costs of leaving the service. If leaving the service is free, then tormenting your users in this way will visit in swift and devastating pain upon you.
[…]
Bluesky lacks the one federated feature that is absolutely necessary for me to trust it: the ability to leave Bluesky and go to another host and continue to talk to the people I've entered into community with there. While there are many independently maintained servers that provide services to Bluesky and its users, there is only one Bluesky server. A federation of multiple servers, each a peer to the other, has been on Bluesky's roadmap for as long as I've been following it, but they haven't (yet) delivered it.

That was worrying when Bluesky was a scrappy, bootstrapped startup with a few million users. Now it has grown to over 13 million users, and it has taken on a large tranche of outside capital.

Plenty of people have commented that now that a VC is holding Bluesky's purse-strings, enshittification will surely follow (doubly so because the VC is called "Blockchain Capital," which, at this point, might as well be "Grifty Scam Caveat Emptor Capital"). But I don't agree with this at all. It's not outside capital that leads to enshittification, it's leverage that enshittifies a service.

A VC that understands that they can force you to wreck your users' lives is always in danger of doing so. A VC who understands that doing this will make your service into an empty – and thus worthless – server is far less likely to do so (and if they do, at least your users can escape).

Original

Source: Love Bullet

More than 10,500 requests have been received by Welsh councils from residents to reassess roads that saw their limit lowered when the policy was introduced in September last year.

Police point to a drop in road causalities and crashes to suggest Wales' flagship policy is working, although a recent poll said seven in 10 people still oppose the new limit.

One motoring organisation has said traffic calming measures like speed bumps should be installed to force drivers to do 20mph.

Welsh ministers said a 20mph limit would reduce deaths and noise and encourage people to walk or cycle when it was implemented in September 2023 - but it caused controversy with some drivers.

The limit changed on about 35% of Welsh roads - about 22,000 miles (35,171 km) in total - last year where lamp-posts are no more than 200 yards (183m) apart.
[…]
Statistics show a drop in casualties on 20mph and 30mph roads in Wales in the first three months of 2024, after the default built-up area limit was reduced.

The number of serious casualties or fatalities has dropped 23%, and Wales' largest police force says there have been at least 11 less deaths on the roads in their area.

The chances of Northern Ireland hosting matches at the Euro 2028 football tournament appear to have gone.

The UK government announced on Friday night that the estimated cost of rebuilding Casement Park stadium in Belfast has "risen dramatically" to more than £400m.

The government said it will not be providing funding to redevelop the stadium in time for the tournament.

It said there was a "significant risk" that the stadium would not be built in time.
[…]
In order to be ready for the 2028 tournament, Casement Park needs to be rebuilt by the summer of 2027.

Northern Ireland could have a role as a training base or host warm-up matches at the existing Windsor Park stadium, but hosting tournament fixtures appears to be over.

Plans have been in place to build a new stadium at Casement Park since 2011.

The initial estimated cost of rebuilding Casement was £77.5m, with £62.5m coming from the Stormont executive and £15m from the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA).

That was more than a decade ago, and since then costs have risen dramatically.

To try to cater for soccer as well as GAA matches increased the cost further, as UEFA requires a higher specification of stadium.

Although hopes of being part of the Euro 2028 tournament may be over, it does not mean the stadium cannot be rebuilt for the GAA, which was the original purpose.

However, that will not be cheap either, and the GAA will be hoping that even though the UK government has said it will not be funding a Euro 2028 compliant stadium, it may still contribute to the redevelopment whenever it happens.

The Irish government has already pledged more than £40m.