Best Of

Book banning in Manchester: https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2026/03/school-book-banning-escalates-in-the-uk-as-greater-manchester-secondary-school-censors-scores-of-books/

That story is insane.
Sounds like something out of Trump's America.

Truer than (perhaps) you think

In the story, “AI” was used to create the list of books to ban.

Probably ChatGPT.

“AI” is actually just a really fancy way of guessing an output, based on the input. The guess is based on a vast amount of examples, which are used to create the model.

The vast majority of reports of “problematic books” and sites about problematic books, in English, are from Christian Right types on the US.

The training data for most AIs consists of scraping the internet.

So if you give a list of books to an “AI”, it will list as “problematic” those that offended MAGA type Americans.

A very good clue is that the list of banned stuff included Terry Pratchett and various Goth Vampire juvenile books - both are disliked, by such people, for writing about magic and monsters as if they aren’t super evil.

Have we done the Tories in fourth place with YouGov?

Ref 23 (-2)

Lab 19 (+2)

GRN 18 (-1)

Con 17 (=)

LD 13 (-1)

I reckon it is the war that is behind a lot of this.

Hearing the focus groups are sympathetic to Starmer re Trump & the war.

Albeit Tories only 1% behind the Greens and only 6% separates them from top placed Reform with Yougov now.

If those are the voteshares in the NEV after the local and devolved elections in May and the Tories are 4th behind Reform, Labour and even the Greens though Kemi will be gone, there will be a VONC in her leadership from Tory MPs and she will then be replaced by Cleverly. So Kemi needs to get a better result than that, on the plus side for her Yougov have the Greens higher than most pollsters do

A £50 charity bet that Kemi either does not face a VONC by 1st September - or if she does, she survives it.

Interested?

Yes, if the Tories are 4th in May Kemi will certainly face a VONC in my view, so I will take a bet on those terms, the Tories coming third or worse in May will have a VONC. If the Tories are second or better she won't so the bet is then void

You're in the party am I'm not. But I would have thought the pressure on her was past:
Tories have cleared out the mad, insane and stupid to Reform. You are a Better Party without those morons.
Reform are on the slide. Plot the trendline, look at the hurdles they face.
Kemi has found her rhythm - previous government a bit crap, I'm new, I'm punchy, life vs Starmer's inertia

And you want to replace her with Shithole Cleverley?

He is never wrong you know !!!!!

There’s a few like that here (not you I hasten to add), just avoid !!

Have we done the Tories in fourth place with YouGov?

Ref 23 (-2)

Lab 19 (+2)

GRN 18 (-1)

Con 17 (=)

LD 13 (-1)

I reckon it is the war that is behind a lot of this.

Hearing the focus groups are sympathetic to Starmer re Trump & the war.

Albeit Tories only 1% behind the Greens and only 6% separates them from top placed Reform with Yougov now.

If those are the voteshares in the NEV after the local and devolved elections in May and the Tories are 4th behind Reform, Labour and even the Greens though Kemi will be gone, there will be a VONC in her leadership from Tory MPs and she will then be replaced by Cleverly. So Kemi needs to get a better result than that, on the plus side for her Yougov have the Greens higher than most pollsters do

The Greens will likely be running far fewer candidates in May and therefore will be well down on NEV compared to a GE situation.

Yes the Polanski Greens are basically Corbyn lite attracting the same type of voters, mainly under 40 burdened by student debt and not owning a house and feeling capitalism does not work for them and willing to give tax and spend socialism a go. They are no longer the party of posh middle class environmentalists like Jonathan Porritt.

Green voters do though have some similarity with Reform voters though in that they are less likely to be financially comfortable than average

Isn't the reason that Green voters don't feel like capitalism is working for them that, in many cases, it isn't particularly? Not exclusively because it's so hard to escape the rental trap, but that being a very large factor. And that, in turn being linked to a change in small-c-conservatism from "pass a better life on to the next generation/enough evolution to prevent revolution" to "après moi le déluge".

And that's just another form of nihlism- that of the powerful, rather than the powerless.

Have we done the Tories in fourth place with YouGov?

Ref 23 (-2)

Lab 19 (+2)

GRN 18 (-1)

Con 17 (=)

LD 13 (-1)

I reckon it is the war that is behind a lot of this.

Hearing the focus groups are sympathetic to Starmer re Trump & the war.

Albeit Tories only 1% behind the Greens and only 6% separates them from top placed Reform with Yougov now.

If those are the voteshares in the NEV after the local and devolved elections in May and the Tories are 4th behind Reform, Labour and even the Greens though Kemi will be gone, there will be a VONC in her leadership from Tory MPs and she will then be replaced by Cleverly. So Kemi needs to get a better result than that, on the plus side for her Yougov have the Greens higher than most pollsters do

A £50 charity bet that Kemi either does not face a VONC by 1st September - or if she does, she survives it.

Interested?

Yes, if the Tories are 4th in May Kemi will certainly face a VONC in my view, so I will take a bet on those terms, the Tories coming third or worse in May will have a VONC. If the Tories are second or better she won't so the bet is then void

You're in the party am I'm not. But I would have thought the pressure on her was past:
Tories have cleared out the mad, insane and stupid to Reform. You are a Better Party without those morons.
Reform are on the slide. Plot the trendline, look at the hurdles they face.
Kemi has found her rhythm - previous government a bit crap, I'm new, I'm punchy, life vs Starmer's inertia

And you want to replace her with Shithole Cleverley?

Have we done the Tories in fourth place with YouGov?

Ref 23 (-2)

Lab 19 (+2)

GRN 18 (-1)

Con 17 (=)

LD 13 (-1)

I reckon it is the war that is behind a lot of this.

Hearing the focus groups are sympathetic to Starmer re Trump & the war.

Behind a lot of what?
Labour aren't up across the board. Its a MoE movement with one pollster

Reform are down across the board, Starmer's ratings are improving.

Reform were sliding well before the war.
Starmers personal ratings, yep, maybe a war handling premium

It's also the focus groups are mortified/scared shitless if Kemi Badenoch or Nigel Farage were PM during this war.

The voters haven't forgotten their pronouncements at the start of the war.