Best Of

I am admittedly in a white, middle class, boris-biking, isn't it all lovely what did you see at the theatre last week bubble, but do we really think sensible people are going to go out and vote for Reform in big numbers.

NOTA? Maybe. Shire folk wanting to head back to the 1950s? Possibly. Urban agitators railing against "immigrants" (ie everyone non-white)? Okay.

But in size?

I also used to live in a bubble. And then my daughter started playing football. I very much like the kids there, and the other parents - but it is very much not in the bubble. And you hear views expressed that you simply don't in the bubble.
I'm not trying to oversimplify. Quite the opposite: there are a LOT of views expressed (some quite astute, some absolutely insane). It is us in the bubble who are simple in our views.
But I no longer find it surprising that Reform are polling 25%.

Very interesting. I skew posho for my extra-bubbular interactions and many of those look down on Reform as Hyacinth Bouquet-type oiks. But I suppose there is a large number of such folk. Still seems a stretch.

Not long to wait now, that said.

Congratulations on the word 'extra-bubbular'. I enjoyed that.

It's refreshing to go extra-bubbular. It's not that suddenly everyone is a Reform voter. But views which would simply Not Be Expressed in your own bubble are not only expressed but - when they are countered - are countered with reasons, rather than simply because you Can't Say That.

I've gone extra-bubbular the other way on occasion, too - I have distant family who move in vaguely posh rural circles and it's just as surprising when you get views expressed which also wouldn't get an airing in my middle class public sector big city milieu.

WRT extra-bubbularness and Reform, the most recent YouGov sub-sample figures are ABC1: 15; C2DE 24 - that's looking at the figures including the DKs and WNVs.

So in a particular class based bubble about a quarter are for Reform, and there is also a strongly male aspect to Reform vote. and also the north, and England.

So if, like me, you live and move in a mostly C2DE area, in the north of England where the males are a good deal noisier than the females absolutely nothing is taking you by surprise.

It's a repeat of how Brexit worked out. Lawyer friends in the south would tell me they knew no-one apart from Remainers, but when you dug down a bit they remembered that their offices and homes had cleaners and lowly clerical staff and people who fixed the coffee machine and perhaps some of them were, irrationally, Brexiteers.

I went to a garden party at Radcliffe
Chambers, the week after the result, and admitted I voted Leave, expecting some hostility, only to discover about 40% of the lawyers present had done so.

Second rate ones i'd expect. There are many parochial lawyers around

10 great Beatles songs

Please Please Me
She Loves You
And I Love Her
Help
You’ve Got to hide your Love away
In my Life
Polythene Pam
I Want You
Something
Across the Universe

Quite a John skew there.

Yes I seem to like his songs better than McCartney’s. Just listening to a few more favs and I think they’d be Lennon too; She Said She Said, You Really Got a hold on me, and I should have known Better

Yep, sounds right (although I've stopped marking up each song quoted by people).

I like lots of John's too. It's just the notion he had all the 'edge' and Paul was a great big soppy centrist dad of a songwriter that I don't hold with. The facts, ie the catalogue, do not support that.

To a much, much lesser degree, but the songs, and lives, of Kurt Cobain & Dave Grohl strike me as similar to JL & PMc. One is more hero worshipped than the other and his songs were edgier, but ultimately the one who lived to tell the tale was more accessible and probably a nicer guy (if we forget the recent adultery)

I'm on slightly firmer ground here than I was with the Beatles.
I think Kurt Cobain was meant to be a nice guy. Pleasant and gentle and personable. But also a massive addict and wracked with his own demons.

Dave Grohl's back catalogue is now gargantuan, and dwarves Kurt's. And it's mostly excellent. And there is almost nothing of Kurt's which wasn't also Dave's. Nirvana basically did three albums, one of which was almost unlistenable and one of which was no better than quite good. But then there's Nevermind, and the beautiful, haunted look of the man most associated with it...

You can still get Lab at 3.75 on Skybet, if you fancy it.

Congratulations by the way to pb (and indeed the Beatles) for reaching a happy consensus on the previous thread that the Beatles were good at pop music. For a site which can figuratively come to blows over how good packet rice is or the desirability of sunny weather, this is no mean feat.

I’ve heard contradictory things from two different sources.

1) The Labour support is splintering in several directions

And

2) Canvassing isn’t anywhere near where Reform want it to be.

Cui bono?

Reform are expected to win this. The problem for Reform is their voters taking this for granted and not showing up

For Labour the problem is different but similar, they run the risk of Labour voters thinking What's the point, and not showing up

Reform benefit from the voters being told it's close, as do Labour, for opposite reasons

In short: mistrust the rumours

IF REFORM voters are angry (and I expect they are) it doesn’t matter how close or not it is, they will turn out.