Best Of

Morning all

Whatever the fate of polls and petrol prices, it was a wonderful opening day to the Cheltenham Festival yesterday and for a change I managed to find a couple of winners - obviously, @MoonRabbit found all seven, I imagine, or that's what I was led to believe.

Day Two beckons and another stellar card and if you want to read my innermost cerebral musings, I post a more detailed summation of the main races on racecafe.co.nz

I won't post all that here cos it's boring for those strange people who aren't horse racing fans and cut to the chase (or hurdle or indeed bumper) with today's selections:

Turners Novices Hurdle: BALLYFAD

Brown Advisory Chase: THE BIG WESTERNER (win), OSCAR'S BROTHER (each way)

Queen Mother Champion Chase: QUILIXIOS (each way)

Champion Bumper: KEEP HIM COMPANY

Personally, I would say that Starmer has proven to be closer to my position on this than any of the leaders. If he wasn't so woolly, incoherent and inconsistent he might be doing even better.

He should take the flack from Trump and wear it with pride, it will do him more political good than anything else he or his government has done, well, ever actually.

My critique of Starmer and indeed the other European nations is that they have not gone far enough. They should have made it clear that there was no legal basis for this war, that it was and is a criminal act and that they disapprove of what both the US and Israel have done. After the Greenland fiasco Europe needs to stop aligning with the US by default. If they want a rules based system to survive they need to speak up for it. And that includes calling out your erstwhile friends when they act badly.

In an ideal world that would happen , sadly there are some in Europe who maintain the delusion that if they try and maintain good relations with Trump he won’t throw Ukraine under a bus or throw further as the case maybe now .

Over and above that, and whatever misgivings they might have, most European governments are likely not displeased to see the US and Israel sticking it to Iran.

Huzzah.

Hereditary peers to be removed from the House of Lords after deal struck

Agreement broke a months-long impasse over

Sir Keir Starmer has cleared the way for removing hereditary peerages from the House of Lords after a deal was struck to offer extra spots to some of those who will lose their seats within months.

A compromise was reached that The Times has been told will see 15 Conservative Party members of the House of Lords, whose positions were passed down by bloodline, continue as life peers.

The agreement broke a months-long impasse over one of the biggest constitutional reforms in decades, as peers agreed to let the legislation pass its final stage without a vote on Tuesday night.

The Lords agreed with the Commons on a final draft of the House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) bill.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/keir-starmer-hereditary-peerages-deal-house-of-lords-mxnf60hl0

Surely that would have been the quickest possible solution - here you go but your son is no longer a member...

Edit - clearly as I've got older I've reached the point where - this is what I want, what compromises do I need to give to achieve that.

The LDs have already slid a couple of their more active/useful hereditaries into some of the few slots for new peers they've been granted recently. The Tories seem to have struck a separate deal for more slots, provided they retire the same number of their non-attending dead wood. Finding those shouldn't be that difficult.

It was a far bigger problem for the Tories, of course. Amongst the hereditaries:

As of late 2024, there are 92 "excepted" hereditary peers sitting in the House of Lords, with affiliation:

Conservative Party (approx. 45)
Crossbenchers (approx. 30–33)
Labour (3-4)
Liberal Democrat (3-4) peers
along with a few non-affiliated members.

Chris Murphy Senator for Connecticut

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.

I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.

Here's what I can share. Maybe the lead is that the war goals DO NOT involve destroying Iran's nuclear weapons program. This is, uh...surprising...since Trump says over and over this is a key goal.

But then of course we already know air strikes can't wipe out their nuclear material.

Second, they confirmed "regime change" is also NOT on the list. So, they are going to spend hundreds of billions of your taxpayer dollars, get a whole bunch of Americans killed, and a hardline regime - probably a MORE anti-American hardline regime - will still be in charge.

Ok, so what ARE the goals? It seems, primarily, destroying lots of missiles and boats and drone factories.

But the question that stumped them: what happens when you stop bombing and they restart production?

They hinted at more bombing. Which is, of course, endless war.

And on the Strait of Hormuz, they had NO PLAN. I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the Strait, but suffice it say, right now, they don't know how to get it safely back open.

Which is unforgiveable, because this part of the disaster was 100% foreseeable

There's been an 'endless war' with Iran since 1979.

Until now Iran has been allowed to make all the moves.

Israel and the US have bombed Iran before, so that’s clearly not true.