UK Local Elections 2026
There are local elections being held across the UK today. Voters in Scotland and Wales will elect representatives to their respective national parliaments, while in England the voting is for local councils and regional mayors. These are the first major elections to be held in the UK since the 2024 General Election which saw the Conservative government of fourteen years, fall to the Labour Party. Midterm elections are often a litmus test for how the electorate think the national government are performing although local issues are also a major factor. The consensus among political journalists and commentators is that the incumbent government is polling extremely poorly and will subsequently face a backlash. In recent years the UK has seen a decline in traditional two party voting with Reform UK and the Greens gaining significant traction among the electorate. Hence today’s elections may well see both these parties make significant gains.
There are local elections being held across the UK today. Voters in Scotland and Wales will elect representatives to their respective national parliaments, while in England the voting is for local councils and regional mayors. These are the first major elections to be held in the UK since the 2024 General Election which saw the Conservative government of fourteen years, fall to the Labour Party. Midterm elections are often a litmus test for how the electorate think the national government are performing although local issues are also a major factor. The consensus among political journalists and commentators is that the incumbent government is polling extremely poorly and will subsequently face a backlash. In recent years the UK has seen a decline in traditional two party voting with Reform UK and the Greens gaining significant traction among the electorate. Hence today’s elections may well see both these parties make significant gains.
Bexley Borough, of which I am a resident, has been a Conservative stronghold for decades. It has always returned a Conservative MP in General Elections and the local council has been Conservative controlled for the last twenty years. However, it has been targetted by Reform UK who see it as a potential beachhead into Greater London. Hence they have been actively campaigning on such issues as road maintenance, protecting the Greenbelt and addressing the existing council budget gap which is forecast to reach £17.8m by 2029/30. Houses in Multiple Occupation have also become a political football, in which residential properties are converted into individual rentable rooms with shared kitchen and bathroom faculties. These can and have been on occasion rented by the Home Office and used to house asylum seekers and refugees, although the “official” argument is made that these take local property out of the housing market.
Due to the potential for immediate gain and long term political capital, 192 candidates are standing in the Bexley Borough this year, meaning many wards are now in a three-way battle between the Conservatives, Labour and Reform UK. The latter is projected to gain 20 council seats, potentially becoming the largest party. This would leave Bexley Council with no party in overall control, leading to all the associated “horse trading” that comes with no definitive “winner”. Despite the political stakes, Local Elections seldom see a large voter turnout and there are concerns that substantial political changes could be made across the UK on very small shares of votes cast. Then there are the wider ramifications of such a political sea change and the immediate consequences they could have on the incumbent Labour government.
Bexley Council Offices
Many among the political commentariat see today’s elections as the moment Britain broke with the traditional two party system of past century (although it has not always been that way). Where the focus in Bexley Borough is on the performance of Reform UK, nationally there is a great deal of interest in the performance of the Green Party. Especially with regard to their popularity with younger voters and ethnic minorities. However, the biggest story could be Labour’s worst ever local election performance, as voters give their verdict on two years of Keir Starmer’s premiership. If such results come to pass, then there is strong chance of a leadership challenge within the Labour Party. Such a possibility would not be well received by the electorate, as the continuous infighting and changes of leadership within the last government was one of the reasons cited for them being voted out of office.
I completed my postal ballot two weeks ago. I am a floating voter with no affiliation with any of the parties, seeing none of them as fit for purpose. I am not alone in my current exhaustion with politics, the way it is conducted and reported. Both the political class and the legacy media inhabit a curious societal adjacent bubble where they assume that the public are equally as engrossed and enthralled by their esoteric machinations. Sadly the opposite is true. Both groups are blissfully unaware of the contempt in which they are held by the public, who find their indulgences tedious and exhausting. The electorate are desperate for some old school, “bread and butter” politics in which essential issues such as the economy, the funding of public services and law and order are addressed. Sadly all parties seem more concerned about “the optics”, rather than offering tangible plans and policies. I await today’s election result with a sense of resigned disappointment.
The Cost of Blogging in 2026
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
I was speaking to someone recently about hobbies (fortunately it wasn’t Simon Quinlank) and I mentioned that I have maintained a blog for over a 19 years. When I talked about the ongoing cost they were most surprised, as they had assumed that blogging was something that could be done for free. I guess we’ve become so accustomed to the provision of free online services such as email, that this a reasonable assumption. I pointed out that although it is indeed possible to blog for free using Blogger, it was not the optimal approach, especially if you want to maintain some degree of control over your writing. Naturally, the next question they asked was how much do I spend and I gave them a ballpark figure. All of which reminded me that I wrote a post on this very subject a few years ago. So I’ve decided to revisit the subject and see how much it currently costs to maintain Contains Moderate Peril.
At the time of writing, I have just renewed my yearly domain name registration as well as ownership privacy protection. If anyone conducts a WHOIS search regarding my domain, it shows the address of the domain host, in this case GoDaddy, instead of my own personal details. The yearly cost of these two services is currently £45.58 which is a far cry from the days of $10.00 domain registrations which were the norm when I started blogging. The other cost associated with the running of Contains Moderate Peril is the subscription to the hosting company, Squarespace. This billed in dollars and works out at £11.79 per month when converted into pounds. Through the miracle of mathematics these services add up to a total cost of £187.06 for the year. This breaks down to £15.59 per month for the pleasure of writing and sharing my thoughts online, so I can add to the ongoing white noise of the internet.
When I last wrote about the cost of content creation, I was still producing a podcast so included those costs in my formula. I also added the cost of subscribing to Office 365 and maintaining to hosted email accounts into my calculations as they were part of the production process. However, as this post is specifically about blogging, I’ve just focused on those costs. Whether they’re expensive is ultimately subjective. For me, the cost is comparable to that of a streaming service or an MMORPG subscription. However, I do worry about the ongoing issue of digital poverty. The internet has become a predominantly a commercial entity over the last 25 years. If you can’t pay, you’re effectively excluded and that doesn’t seem right to me. One can argue that Facebook is an alternative but that comes with its own cost. It’s all food for thought and possibly another blog post. Should everyone have the opportunity to express themselves online?
Star Trek Online in 2026
This year is the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. The original TV show was first broadcast in the US on September 8th 1966. If you search online you’ll find details of lots of related events. There are documentaries, conventions, new TV shows and even some video games in development. However, what you won’t find are any details regarding what will be happening with the MMORPG Star Trek Online. So far no road map for 2026 has been posted online by the developers but it is still quite early in the New Year. That being the case, I am not especially optimistic about there being any major plans waiting to be revealed. It is not as if DECA Games have demonstrated or stated any major ambitions for STO beyond keeping the endless events treadmill going and regularly adding content to the in-game store, during their development tenure. The ongoing story arc drags on inexorably and is as dull as ditchwater.
This year is the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. The original TV show was first broadcast in the US on September 8th 1966. If you search online you’ll find details of lots of related events. There are documentaries, conventions, new TV shows and even some video games in development. However, what you won’t find are any details regarding what will be happening with the MMORPG Star Trek Online. So far no road map for 2026 has been posted online by the developers but it is still quite early in the New Year. That being the case, I am not especially optimistic about there being any major plans waiting to be revealed. It is not as if DECA Games have demonstrated or stated any major ambitions for STO beyond keeping the endless events treadmill going and regularly adding content to the in-game store, during their development tenure. The ongoing story arc drags on inexorably and is as dull as ditchwater.
In recent years Star Trek as a franchise has seen a resurgence in public interest, due to some good TV shows. Sadly, absolutely nothing has been done by DECA Games to capitalise upon this, apart from adding themed, purchasable items from the new shows, into the in-game store. It all seems a somewhat wasted opportunity and a little sad, as this MMORPG has always had a great deal of potential. The change of developers from Cryptic to DECA Games in 2024 was a good opportunity to start improving the quality of story content and to address the huge amount of bugs and “jank” that have been inherent in STO since its launch in 2010. Sadly, the recent transition away from DECA Games back to the residual Cryptic Studios and wider ownership and publishing issues in late 2025 have stalled any major changes. The game has ticked over with a minimal amount of new content, which tends to be just more of the same. I wouldn’t say that STO is in maintenance mode but it’s not far from it.
I did some searching online to see what things had been discussed over the course of 2025 as potential projects, or areas of improvement. I only found two. The first being a feasibility study to see if the game engine could be upgraded or replaced. At present the game runs on the proprietary Cryptic engine, made by the original developers. This dates back to 2000 and although it has been updated over the years, it is still essentially running on two decade old code. Naturally, I would love to see STO running on something more robust and contemporary, such as Unreal Engine but I suspect the cost of porting the game to this would be unfeasible. Especially in light of the fact that the current publishers, Project Golden Arc, were formed after a management buyout from the Embracer Group. It will take a while for these business changes to take effect and no doubt finances may be scarce.
Another proposal that has been discussed in forums is a continued focus on character customisation, specifically race and gender changes, along with improvements to core gameplay systems. All of which sounds broadly positive but is also vague with respect to detail. Hence this doesn’t really sound like anything more than bug fixing. Which when added to the vague and let us be realistic, unlikely change of game engine, means that there isn’t much that we know about what is coming to STO this year. At this point in such a post, I’d usually say something conciliatory. Especially in light of the game effectively returning into the hands of some of the original developers. But frankly I am beyond that. There are other enjoyable franchise based MMORPGs that already have regular content updates and a coherent road map for the immediate future. I’ll be focusing on those games for the foreseeable future. Which is something I shouldn’t be saying in the year Star Trek celebrates its 60th anniversary.
