Best Of

The big news of the day is that last night ONE classic dry martini in my Culver City hotel bar, here in the heart of movie land, LA, California, cost me $36

One!

Hospitality prices in the US are out of control. We talked last week about the Ryder cup, a shitty beer was $20.

Eating out and drinking out on a regular basis is becoming an activity for the rich, where as when I started going to the US it was so cheap it was stupid not to.

It’s ridiculous. If this was a majorly famous 5 star hotel with a world class bar you could, perhaps, understand

It’s a pretty hotel bar in a nicely refurbed historic art deco 4 star….

$36 for one drink

😶

At the same time a whisky at the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow costs £6, and that included two shortbread biscuits.

It's the Spoons beer festival at the moment. £2.15 for any pint of ale in our branch. Pick the strong ones and you can be sozzled for £6.45.

It works better for my arthritis than codeine. That's my excuse anyway.

Conservatives will be BANNED from standing as Tory candidates at the next general election unless they sign up to leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, Kemi Badenoch tells @CamillaTominey

This is clever and exactly what she should be doing. It's a great way to unify the PCP.

Er, in all seriousness, don't the Tories differ on other matters as well?

Of course, but this is a great proxy issue for everything. A hardcore lib dem will not commit to leaving the ECHR.

And so the Tory party moves from a large base of differing views but with a common aim to a limited set of people.

Bozo removed all the people who thought the EU wasn’t awful, now Kemi is removing anyone who thinks simply fixes don’t work.

She’s shifting the party even further into irrelevance - while targeting Reform voters that will never vote Tory anyway

We saw in the welfare bill the futility of having a large cohort of MPs but without any unified agenda. The Tory Party has been utterly crippled as a parliamentary force by what are essentially entryists. I suspect the vast, vast majority will tow the line. Those that do not, can try their luck with the Lib Dems, and good luck to them.

The Toriesand Labour both decided that rather than debate or compromise with their internal critics that they should tell them to piss off and join other parties. So they did and both parties are facing electoral oblivion.

If Thatcher could tolerate Heath and Heseltine and Blair could tolerate Corbyn, why be so authoritarian?

Morning all! Reform Cosplay Convention opens in Manchester. Previously there would have been protests

Reform Cosplay Convention part 2 opens in Manchester. Reform Cosplay Convention part 1 closed in Liverpool last week.

Starmer unlike Farage and Badenoch still wants to stay in the ECHR

He wants to exempt us from some of its clauses, wants to change the idefient right to

...remain, wants to ban protests against Gaza, wants to close hotels housing immigrants get brown Drs working in the NHS to do additional voluntary work to prove they are worthy citizens and has given in to the immigration is terrible narrative.
Both Tory teams are Reform Cosplay.




The most amusing thing is that it will win no votes back from
Reform and will lose traditional voters so it's a totally inept strategy as well as being morally bankrupt.

BBC News - Police to get broader powers to restrict repeated protests
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c24rmdngrrjo

Labour in government habit of going all authorian showing through again. It's only 2 mins since the Tories attempt to curtail JSO blocking all the roads on a daily basis was met with outrage by Labour.

Also whatever happened to the tradition of not announcing things during party conferences. They are all at these these days shouting over on another when each other conferences are on.

I can see the need; if you lived somewhere that these anti-Jewish shits turned out every other week, you might be more than a little peeved. They don't care anything about the fear they cause in the Jewish community, or the disruption they cause to the lives of their fellow citizens.

It is, however, a law change that could easily be exploited by bad regimes.

As for your last paragraph: remember how Starmer and Labour lambasted Conservative governments for announcing things outside parliament? Now they're in power, they're doing exactly the same thing.

Your language doesn't help you or your cause, or would you like it if I called you a pro genocide/pro Tommy Robinson shill.

The vast majority at these protests aren't anti Jewish, they are anti genocide, my friend's mother was arrested yesterday for the first time in her life at 80, which amused her son, given she's over the last 40 years protested against inter alia South Africa/apartheid, China/Tibet, Sudan, Russia, and Yugoslavia.

From what I gather her crime, holding a Palestine flag, which according to others, will see no further action in a few weeks time.

My apologies for my anger on this topic.

I would not like it if you called me a "pro genocide/pro Tommy Robinson shill". I would also be rather confused and amused, as I'm uncertain *how* you would make that connection. Especially as I was criticising Netanyahu *before* October 3rd, and you will not find me sharing anything other than contempt for Tommeh.

However, here's why I call those who protested last night "anti-Jewish". Three days ago, there was a terrorist attack on a synagogue. These protests have been spreading fear in the Jewish community. At a time they are grieving, at a time they are fearful, these lovely people protest and spread more fear. And, in my view, hatred.

It's similar to what I said about Tommeh's protest: if you attended you were amplifying his voice, not yours if you disagreed with him. In this case, the attendees amplified the fear many Jews in this country feel.

And I find that appalling.

Can we all please refer to the artist formerly known as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon as Stephen Yaxley-Lennon please?

No chummy nom de plumes please. He is not our friend.

Just to understand, if a trans person wants to change their name it’s their right to do so and we should respect that? But if someone that you dislike want to we should ignore that?

Are you one of those people who wanted to call George Osborne “Gideon”? Or Boris Johnson Al?

Because, as far as I know, Stephen Yaxley-Lennon is his actual name and the one he is repeatedly convicted under.

And Gideon George Osborne and Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson are their legal names too.

His family and close friends still call him Al.

He only became Boris after he was sacked for lying at The Times.

A bit more complicated than that, aiui. Boris was Boris at Eton and Oxford, Alexander at the Times, then Boris again at the Telegraph.

As the naval review goes, "this officer is both frank and earnest with women. In Plymouth, he is Frank, and in Portsmouth, he is Ernest."

Good grief not this GFA stops us exercising democracy bullshit again.

I'm on the fence as to whether we should leave the ECHR or not. On the one hand I don't see any reason to be members, plenty of democracies around the world aren't members. On the other I don’t especially care.

However what is absolutely true is that no Parliament can bind its successors and all agreements are subject to change.

Democracy is more important than the GFA. If we vote to leave the ECHR, or if Ireland did, the GFA would just have to change like it or lump it. It does not end our democracy.

The GFA might be embarrassing as an example of how to end decades-long violent insurrections without flattening every single building and killing tens of thousands, but it has worked and to cast it lightly aside risks alienating the governments of Ireland and the United States, which was involved in reaching agreement and in canvassing support in the referendum. It will also not do much for Britain's soft power if it becomes known that any agreement signed with the British government is term-limited.