The Lib-Lab pact that isn’t but could still hurt the Tories – politicalbetting.com
The Lib-Lab pact that isn’t but could still hurt the Tories – politicalbetting.com
Veteran coverer of Westminster by-elections, Michael Crick, has an interesting piece out on Mail+ observing the remarkable degree of collaboration that seems to be going on between LAB and the LDs over by-elections.
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You aren't even any good at your own specialised subject, are you? which is that the human race should jolly well die out to give Mother Nature a chance. People who like hunting foxes like there to be an ecosystem in which foxes exist in reasonable numbers and are huntable, which is surely what you are meant to want too? But it turns out that though you're an 'ard man when it comes to humanity, you live in a kind of Disney world in whgich foxy-woxy lives a long and satisfying life and dies of old age in bed surrounded by generations of descendant foxy-woxies. Not what happens.
The tide might, perhaps, be turning
A NYTimes article arguing against Wokeness
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/opinion/social-justice-america.html?smid=tw-share
Now, the fact the NYT runs this is, in itself, quite notable. But even more interesting is the comment section (and they've had nearly 2000 comments). The NYT has selected several comments as particularly helpful - they are all quite Woke. But they aren't the most popular comments by any means. Many of the "readers' picks" of comments are seriously anti-Woke
If the NYT readership is turning against this egregious and pernicious shit, then maybe there is hope for America, and thusly the West
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And then there were problems with the “mutant algorithm” which dictated significant new building targets across leafy shires.
This is a densely populated, but not densely *built* country, and there is some evidence that it hampers productivity.
Over the top of the planning system, the govt needs to incentivise denser, higher rise in London and the South East.
I have posted several times that I live in Zone 1 borders and it is very mostly two or three story Victorian terraces. And to the east, there is a vast waste of former dock and warehouse lands, all the way to the Southend one bank and the Isle of Grain on another.
We don’t need to concrete over Amersham, nor should we - it and places like it are what make England special.
I am very happy for nature to take its course. Red in tooth and claw, and all that.
What I object to is humankind fecking up the while ecological balance.
Providing dens and food for foxes to breed so that humans can then slaughter them for some kind of sick pleasure is part of that.
Look, we are diametrically opposed on this. I'm sure there are other issues on which we agree.
If we ever meet at a PB social, I won't be so harsh as to be so insulting. On reflection, I should not have been so direct in my earlier post.
I agree, the way ahead is tacit electoral pacts rather than explicit ones. People don't like not being given the option of their favourite party and do generally get tactical voting, at least in target seats.
It was quite a big part of the 1997 landslide, which wasn't just a New Labour landslide, but a Lib Dem one too.
If this is correct, the opposition parties might finally be learning something from the masters of realpolitik.
Though I think both will be Tory holds, not that the odds are particularly attractive.
Just for the record: the main effect of the hunting ban from the fox perspective has been an increase in the dominance of commercial pheasant shooting. People who hunt foxes are happy with a day in which two foxes are killed, or one, or none at all. The best day hunting I have ever had involved one fox being run to ground, and left there.
Pheasant shooters judge the success of the day by the number of birds killed, generally 100-200, and birds are not notably less animate/intelligent/sensitive to pain than mammals.
To protect their investment in purpose-bred pheasants, pheasant shoots pay people to kill foxes with rifles and night vision tech. It is not unusual to kill 20 odd foxes in a night with these methods.
Why on earth is the Govt wasting time mucking around trying to appoint Dacre when what they should be doing is focussing on implementing a tough BBC Licence Fee settlement.
Whereas all the signs are that they are going to cave in to the BBC, just like they are going to cave in on C4 privatisation.
It's the same story in both cases - they start out threatening to be tough - then they face strong lobbying - then they lose their nerve and cave in.
The starting point for the BBC is that back in 2015 a licence fee settlement was done on the basis that the BBC would fund all over 75s licence fees. Now they are actually charging all over 75s - except those on pension credit.
Result: BBC income is £450m per year higher than it otherwise would be.
So with approx 23.5 million licences now in force the licence fee could actually be cut by £19 per year just to get back to where the BBC should be.
Instead we have leaks that the Govt is likely to freeze the fee for one or two years at the current level before then reverting back to CPI increases. And given the direction of travel it's almost certain it'll just end up with a one year freeze then CPI.
Boris needs to toughen up, face people down and carry things through. Rather than starting off tough, getting a few tabloid headlines and then caving in when the final decision is actually made.
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/10/1054313132/kyle-rittenhouse-testimony-kenosha
One of the things that turned 2019 into a rout was how unrealistic the anti-BoJo politics was. Partly in calling the election in the first place, but also the degree to which Lab and Lib tore lumps out of each other, rather than the actual enemy.
you know exactly how a hound kills a fox
you know exactly how foxes die when they are not killed by hounds
you know exactly what happens in an abattoir to the pigs, lambs and bullocks you are happy to consume
OR
you thought you'd indulge in a bit of disneyfied ill-informed class-based prejudice
Which can it possibly be?
If Starmer does get in in 2023/24 it will almost certainly need LD support as well, much as Cameron needed LD support for a majority in 2010.
Even Labour and SNP support alone is unlikely to be enough, on current polls getting to about 300-310 seats combined max
A few drives and half a dozen birds each makes for a lovely day out
For many years the Right has been looking for a decent insult to hurl at its opponents, as good as Fascist, or Trumpite or, yes, "racist"
Until now none has quite hit the mark. "Political correctness" is far too long and clumsy. "Liberal" might work for a few American Fox-watchers, but liberal has a tinge of goodness whoever you are. Liberal. Liberty, Libertarian!
"Marxist" is as extreme as Fascist but without the bite. "Commie" sounds antique. And so on
Suddenly there is a word which completely summarises all these annoying wanky people, and it is suitably venomous and monosyllabic
"Fuck off you Woke C*nt" has real bite. It just does: as an English language sentence
It is a true four letter word and insult, perhaps the first new one in English for 1500 years?
This might explain the astounding differences in political attotudes on such matters etc that we were discussing a few weeks ago.
One Labour MP was said to have been so “incapacitated through drink” that she had to be placed in a wheelchair https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dressing-down-for-mps-who-got-drunk-on-flight-to-visit-troops-xzkf98fmr?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1636578420
The MP, whom The Times is not naming, was taken to her hotel and was unable to attend a “welcome event” put on for the MPs by the military
It is understood that she was returning to the UK today — two days early — after speaking to Labour whips
The report said that the female MP was with two SNP MPs, David Linden and Drew Hendry, who were “difficult” with customs and testing staff at the airport on Tuesday night
It's a dead argument, like banning gay marriage, to bring back fox hunting and hare coursing. Times have moved on.
For a measure of how deep Woke cuts, here's a Woke person trying to claim its use is intrinsically..... racist. Yes.
"If you’re not black and started using “woke” pejoratively sometime post-2018 or so (or worse, don’t know anything about the earlier iteration of the term), I think it’s fair to consider it a racial slur."
https://twitter.com/byjoelanderson/status/1457512199488901122?s=20
The woke are trying to get "Woke" cancelled
Also, it's only an insult to those who think it's a bad thing. If you called me a "woke c*nt" I wouldn't be especially insulted, as a lover of both wokeness and c*nts.
Plus, we've all been that drunk in university days, but most people have learned to control/moderate/disguise it by their mid twenties.
Not really a good week for those who govern us, on any front.
I’m not sure exactly what the barrier is to a more varied housing infrastructure, but difficult planning departments making developers lives hell is probably a significant issue. Extend that hell to individual house-building projects & the overheads of getting a project through planning become overwhelming for smaller developers.
What I do think would help would be council planning cttees taking a more active role in ”pre-approving” plans for a portion of sites within their local plan, on a “we do enough of the legal prep-work so that if you rock up with something within scope, you’ll know that you’ll get permission” basis. But it looks like unless we force councils to build or perish, that isn’t going to happen.
You lack the depth and warmth.
(Is that my coat?)
A.wheelchair? To Gibraltar?
Must have been some epic pre-loading gone on there.
Plenty of salient Woke people on Twitter are suddenly finding the word "Woke" objectionable, even trying to get it cancelled
Which clearly shows it touches a deep nerve with THEM
It's an overused, over vague term, which has to an extent lost its meaning in some quarters, and acting like its initial use is the only way it is intended would be like pretending gay no longer has any other meaning that its initial meaning.
Ms Nichols said she had experienced a “bit of a mental health episode” and “had not been feeling well today”.
“I got diagnosed with PTSD back in June and got a bit freaked out by my hotel room last night.
“On ill health grounds, I said I wasn’t going to take part in today and did need to come back to the UK,” she said.
An SNP spokesperson said: "These suggestions are inaccurate. Drew Hendry MP and David Linden MP were honoured to be invited to this important event and attended all engagements, including the welcome meeting and dinner shortly after landing.
"Instead of trying to divert attention from the Tory corruption scandal engulfing Westminster, Ben Wallace should be apologising for his role in it, including voting to get Owen Paterson off the hook."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/10/labour-snp-mps-criticised-drinking-heavily-official-flight-gibraltar/
If so, we are all sorted. You get your fun, no foxes are harmed
Somehow I think the extremes on both sides would not be happy with this. There are hunters who like and want actual blood, there are puritan anti-hunters who disapprove of all human pleasure associated with animal pain, even if no actual pain occurs
for a warning about how you can't get away with calling Labour politicians drunk just because they are.
What’s not to like?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/11/10/labour-snp-mps-criticised-drinking-heavily-official-flight-gibraltar/
But he went there, with a rifle, into a riot to (in his own words) “protect property”. And now people are dead & he’s in court hoping to avoid a life sentence.
What he actually did was make a bad situation worse.
Disappointed but unsurprised to see we lost to New Zealand. Especially considering we didn't lose many wickets for so long, the batting just wasn't aggressive enough. To only get four sixes and only lose four wickets simply isn't good enough when we bat so deep there was no reason to be so placid. Can't understand why the bat wasn't swung more in the final overs, or even sooner.
Which is why, to out-Charles Charles, I only shoot grouse these days.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/geoffrey-cox-casts-commons-votes-25429408
@AllieHBNews
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Thursday’s FINANCIAL TIMES: “US consumer prices increase at fastest pace in three decades” #TomorrowsPapersToday
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Biden looking more one term by the day sadly.