Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I tend to agree with you on the shorter forms of the game, but I think test cricket hasn't really changed that much, other than batsmen not being able to bat any more (English ones at least). I don't really mind the commentators roster either, I was brought up on Brian Johnson, CMJ, Aggers latterly etc. The newer crop are either ex players (such as Daggers - solid county career), Isa Guha (ex England) or very enthusiastic amateurs who bring a love and extensive knowledge to the table such as Dan Norcross and Henry Moeran.
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Good morning. The news about onshore wind is profoundly depressing. It seems we will wean ourselves off foreign fossil fuels by doing, erm, pretty much the same as we have always done.
We need a mix. Onshore wind is more easily maintained but the powered generation capacity is lower than offshore. We should build the tidal lagoons in South Wales and think about the Solway firth to have a time offset for tidal capacity. We should rapidly develop the micro nuclear capability and build the long term nuclear waste storage repository. Quite a few of these schemes would flow money into the north and help local economies and jobs there. Also look at offshore wind to power seawater cracking to make hydrogen. There’s lots we should do and start now.
Onshore wind is way quicker and cheaper to build, though. The drastic political limitations on it in the UK are the efforts if Tory nimbies.
Over two thirds of those polled on the issue support its expansion. A figure which might well now be even higher since energy prices rocketed.
There is no such thing as rapid deployment of nuclear, and its costs are uncertain - but certainly not cheap.
There are big long-term environmental issues with some onshore wind. They are best in upland areas, and large tracks are constructed across vast tracts of land to get the massive turbines up there. They're quite a scar, and massively more substantial than the tracks grouse shooters use.
We have a wind farm a few miles from us; and I have no problem with it as it is built on an old airfield site; essentially brownfield land. I do have issues with the farms on some of our precious upland landscapes, and especially on peat moorland.
I readily confess to being a nimby… from our home we have uninterrupted views of the Forest of Bowland fells, the Yorkshire peaks, the Howgills and the Lakeland hills… @Cyclefree is just out of sight…. If we strain our eyes we can just see the wind farm by the M6 in Cumbra, the thought that the environments of the National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty should be damaged, marginally to supplement offshore just seems wrong….
Indeed. This is a particular problem in Scotland and to some extent Mid-Wales, where whole landscapes are being ruined by the march of the turbines. And as pointed out, not just the wider landscape, but the peat on which many are sited. Once these are drained for the roads or the surface layer is broken through to site the massive concrete pedestals there's no way back.
Most of the UK's best carbon sinks are not forests, they are bogs.
The majority of the politicians making the decisions on turbines are urbanites and don't really care about such things, but some of us do.
There's nothing more depressing than visiting what used to be a remote peak or corrie to find an array of turbines in front of you.
I know we have almost no 'wild' land in the UK but we should be improving what we have, not making it worse.
Offshore is much better in ALL respects.
I know what you mean but
1. it's a tiny fraction of the acreage
2. Once we have got fusion cracked the turbines will go and the platforms will weather to invisibility
3. Tracks provided they don't have heavy traffic on them are a comparatively mild eyesore, a boon to walkers and cyclists and actually protective of the peat by preventing people spreading out over it
1. Each turbine may have a small base but they are often a visual eyesore for tens of miles around.
2. The concrete pad won't be dug up and will still provide a water sink for the surrounding peat. It will permanently affect the hydrology.
3. Nobody wants to walk on a 10m wide 'road' up to a 120m high turbine in what was open country. Worn paths through peat made by walkers are usually only apparent on popular routes which if they become bad enough are repaired by a 1m wide (at most) stone track laid on top.
I wonder what Cyclefree would make of a power station on Black Combe - an "ideal" site for one if you are only interested in power. It won't happen because "Lake District" but move it across the Solway and...
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
In the Peaks they've started to bury the major powerlines on an effort to reduce the visual impact.
Should they bury the wind turbines as well?
It would increase the predictability of their output!
Very quick. You have to admit I set that up nicely for you.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
Le Pen will presumably get all of Zemmour. Taking her to 32%. Maybe half of Pecresse? 37%?
Macron will get the other half of Pecresse, taking him to 33%
It's all about the Melenchon supporters. He is hard left so on one reading they virtually all go to Macron and Macron wins quite easily (but not a landslide). However he may be attracting people who just want to protest and will vote for anything anti-Establishment, possibly Le Pen. In which case she gets some of his voters and she wins, narrowly
On Oddschecker Le Pen is now down to 5/1 from 14/1 a week back
The turnout for the first round has traditionally been much much lower than the runoff and that makes this sort of speculation even harder.
Is this true? Looks the other way around for 2017 to me.
I agree with you Farooq. Last time Fillion and Melenchon scored high teens, they gave some voters to le pen, more to mscron, and, the bit that proves you right, a good chunk of their vote abstained second round.
I reckon Macron has helped himself to the Fillion/pecrasse vote, or most he will likely get of it now less than half fillion got, early this time. One of the reasons why he is in trouble. A lot of abstentions may go to the anti establishment challenger (which I am still fully expecting to be Melenchon actually) for as Willian Glen said he is running on a record this time. The other difference from last time is Zemmour, not many of hits votes will go to macron, and they might well be very motivated to vote.
I can’t see Macron getting within 10 of Melenchon or 5 of le pen in a second round.
Plenty of Fillon voters have gone to Zemmour not Pecresse this time and they will now go en masse to Le Pen in the runoff.
Melenchon voters will be decisive however in deciding if Macron or Le Pen win
So where have the Pécresse voters come from then?
Fillon but she is polling barely half what Fillon got in 2020, with the rest going to Zemmour
We are all guessing, without this years study’s to give us facts. Alternatively, From her high teens high point before Macrons bounce began, I think some of those votes went from pecresse to macron. how do you square they went from her high point to Zemmour when he’s gone from his high point to identical low point. If you look at what happened to Fillions 20% vote in the chart below, abstentions, little bit to le pen, great chunk to macron. He ate his chunk early when pecresse bombed is my analysis. In mikes header (disowned by his own family, but I like it) she was as high as 15 early March, quite a bit higher earlier. Zemour also high at that time, Macron and Le Oen and Melenchon have risen, pecresse and Zemmour dropped. Macron ate pecresse, Le Pen munched Zemmour, and Melenchon nibbled a bit of both as well as the rest of the left.
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
Which probably entails an obligation to send troops in
"[For the purpose of this Treaty] "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group..."
Putin is not intent on destroying the Ukrainian people.
We have it from his own mouth that there is no such thing as a Ukrainian people or Ukrainian state - and he has invaded their country and is killing, and forcibly deporting thousands to impose that view. I'd say that's a pretty strong prima facie case.
I see the argument. But if we are invited to invade Russia on the back of it, the fact that it might meet the test for genocide is not convincing. Better to rely on the commission of war crimes.
No one is inviting anyone to invade Russia. Proving genocide in court would take years.
There is an international obligation to prevent it, as you suggest. Absent a UN resolution, such actions could be justified only if there's a reasonable expectation that the harm done is outweighed by the harm prevented.
You might make a case for direct intervention in the Ukraine conflict (though as we've seen there's a strong belief on the part of all western leaders that this would risk a nuclear WWIII) - but invading Russia would obviously fail any such test.
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The other thing about wind turbines is, of course, there is a whole generation who've grown up with them. They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids. They are just part of the landscape.
The other thing about wind turbines is, of course, there is a whole generation who've grown up with them. They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids. They are just part of the landscape.
I remember in the 80's there was an experimental turbine in North Devon, near Ilfracombe. Kind of inspiring. Never believed that there would be days in my lifetime when most of our electricity came from them.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I tend to agree with you on the shorter forms of the game, but I think test cricket hasn't really changed that much, other than batsmen not being able to bat any more (English ones at least). I don't really mind the commentators roster either, I was brought up on Brian Johnson, CMJ, Aggers latterly etc. The newer crop are either ex players (such as Daggers - solid county career), Isa Guha (ex England) or very enthusiastic amateurs who bring a love and extensive knowledge to the table such as Dan Norcross and Henry Moeran.
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Disagree. Test Match cricket is undergoing exactly the same revolution. Where as the commentary is too much ohhhh bring on such and such he's a good bowler. The level of analysis now is down to looking at exact field placement of every player for every ball in addition to all the Hawkeye stats about the actual delivery.
C4's extremely highbrow lineup today we must preserve from privatisation to the lowest common denominator of populism.
Includes Kitchen Nightmares, Undercover Boss, Steph's Packed Lunch, A Place in the Sun, New Life in the Sun, Sun, Sea and Selling Houses, Hollyoaks, the Simpsons and a Gogglebox double bill
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
The other thing about wind turbines is, of course, there is a whole generation who've grown up with them. They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids. They are just part of the landscape.
Hmm. Some of the comments on PB today remind me of reactions - very mixed - to electricity pylons (the lattice steelwork ones) in the 1930s or thereabouts. Novelty must be a factor.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
What do you think of MOTD pundits?
Crap....next....if you spend anytime reading the likes of the Athletic or listening to the guys from StatsBomb (although they don't do their podcast anymore) you will realise again the level of sophistication of modern football analysis.
While MOTD of the day are going oh yeah he needs to get it wide and whip more crosses in...the pros have heat maps which tell them from any position on the pitch, given the opposition position, the % chance of the current move leading to a shot on goal depending on where they move the ball to next. They are literally told passing to ball to x here 30 yards from goal leads to a goal scoring opportunity 8.45% of the time, instead the ball to y was 9.97%.
The other thing about wind turbines is, of course, there is a whole generation who've grown up with them. They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids. They are just part of the landscape.
I remember in the 80's there was an experimental turbine in North Devon, near Ilfracombe. Kind of inspiring. Never believed that there would be days in my lifetime when most of our electricity came from them.
Yeah. They aren't exactly new. There are loads round here. They don't seem to bother anyone. There is a quite remarkable fear of the unknown, change, and modernity in a significant tranche of the population at the moment.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I tend to agree with you on the shorter forms of the game, but I think test cricket hasn't really changed that much, other than batsmen not being able to bat any more (English ones at least). I don't really mind the commentators roster either, I was brought up on Brian Johnson, CMJ, Aggers latterly etc. The newer crop are either ex players (such as Daggers - solid county career), Isa Guha (ex England) or very enthusiastic amateurs who bring a love and extensive knowledge to the table such as Dan Norcross and Henry Moeran.
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Disagree. Test Match cricket is undergoing exactly the same revolution. Where as the commentary is too much ohhhh bring on such and such he's a good bowler. The level of analysis now is down to looking at exact field placement of every player for every ball in addition to all the Hawkeye stats about the actual delivery.
Also: Kathleen Stock can REALLY write. Lovely phrasing; elegant and articulate
Also also: there should be a word for once-leftwing writers, thinkers, academics, etc, who have been in some way cancelled or abolished by the Woke, and end up working for rightwing journals - see also Suzanne Moore, Tanya Gold, Julie Bindel, &c
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I tend to agree with you on the shorter forms of the game, but I think test cricket hasn't really changed that much, other than batsmen not being able to bat any more (English ones at least). I don't really mind the commentators roster either, I was brought up on Brian Johnson, CMJ, Aggers latterly etc. The newer crop are either ex players (such as Daggers - solid county career), Isa Guha (ex England) or very enthusiastic amateurs who bring a love and extensive knowledge to the table such as Dan Norcross and Henry Moeran.
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Disagree. Test Match cricket is undergoing exactly the same revolution. Where as the commentary is too much ohhhh bring on such and such he's a good bowler. The level of analysis now is down to looking at exact field placement of every player for every ball in addition to all the Hawkeye stats about the actual delivery.
Doesn't seem to be doing England much good.
England have prioritised all these resources into ODI / T20 game, which they are the best in the world at. They are now a long way behind other teams at the long form of the game.
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
If Le Pen wins most white Melenchon voters however she wins the Presidency. When you add in the fact she will win almost all the Zemmour voters and at least a third of Pecresse voters too
C4's extremely highbrow lineup today we must preserve from privatisation to the lowest common denominator of populism.
Includes Kitchen Nightmares, Undercover Boss, Steph's Packed Lunch, A Place in the Sun, New Life in the Sun, Sun, Sea and Selling Houses, Hollyoaks, the Simpsons and a Gogglebox double bill
I watch Countdown even though I don't like Anne Robinson or Rachel Riley. Also looking forward to Season three of Derry Girls. I have only just watched the first two seasons on demand. Channel 4 news is still quite good.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I tend to agree with you on the shorter forms of the game, but I think test cricket hasn't really changed that much, other than batsmen not being able to bat any more (English ones at least). I don't really mind the commentators roster either, I was brought up on Brian Johnson, CMJ, Aggers latterly etc. The newer crop are either ex players (such as Daggers - solid county career), Isa Guha (ex England) or very enthusiastic amateurs who bring a love and extensive knowledge to the table such as Dan Norcross and Henry Moeran.
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Disagree. Test Match cricket is undergoing exactly the same revolution. Where as the commentary is too much ohhhh bring on such and such he's a good bowler. The level of analysis now is down to looking at exact field placement of every player for every ball in addition to all the Hawkeye stats about the actual delivery.
Doesn't seem to be doing England much good.
Probably a text-book case of paralysis by analysis.
The other thing about wind turbines is, of course, there is a whole generation who've grown up with them. They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids. They are just part of the landscape.
Hmm. Some of the comments on PB today remind me of reactions - very mixed - to electricity pylons (the lattice steelwork ones) in the 1930s or thereabouts. Novelty must be a factor.
I remember a conversation with my Dad who thought wind turbines were an eyesore. "So you'll be campaigning to pull down those pylons then?" He laughed. "Don't be ridiculous! They're essential for electricity!"
I was just came across this story. BBC reporting on British special forces executing civilians in Afghanistan - in raids on family members of the Taliban, circa 2011/2012. Part of what is alleged to have been a deliberate policy. I am not claiming any sort of equivalence between the UK in Afghanistan and Russia in Ukraine, but would suggest that the allegation of genocide should be used very carefully.
One of the harms of Twitter is also its speed. A couple of weeks ago, after that car was crashed into a carnival in Belgium, Twitter was alive with speculation: North Africans, religion of peace, authorities covering it up, BBC not reporting it, all that shit. Later it emerges that it's two local guys who'd been out on the sauce, but by then the story's moved on and people have had their biases confirmed. You know when people say a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has got its shoes on? Twitter is the main vector for that these days.
It didn't move on for me
I stayed on Twitter an extra few hours, and filtered the info, and discovered that it was, indeed, two "local" Italian dudes out on a spin
Maybe I'm just better at Twitter....
Nice one
Remember the Glasgow bin lorry? Some PBers absolutely convinced it was a religious extremist attack (and not a Protestant or Catholic one).
Did it turn out to be staffer speeding to get away from Alex Salmond's advances?
What a bell end, don't give up on the job seekers allowance, you will never make a comedienne
C4's extremely highbrow lineup today we must preserve from privatisation to the lowest common denominator of populism.
Includes Kitchen Nightmares, Undercover Boss, Steph's Packed Lunch, A Place in the Sun, New Life in the Sun, Sun, Sea and Selling Houses, Hollyoaks, the Simpsons and a Gogglebox double bill
I watch Countdown even though I don't like Anne Robinson or Rachel Riley. Also looking forward to Season three of Derry Girls. I have only just watched the first two seasons on demand. Channel 4 news is still quite good.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
Ah I see you have a more than passing interest. So you're saying it is something akin to Moneyball.
But I'm still not sure that you comprise more than, say, 0.05% of the audience. I would suggest that the vast majority of punters would be and are happy with the existing framework of enthusiastic amateurs and ex-players.
Look at F1 (please, no, don't, but as an example). Murray Walker kept it alive and then you'd have an ex-driver saying he needs to speed up there to get round the bloke in front on that bend. Same with boxing. Adam Smith commentating keeping it interesting and then an ex-boxer saying he is using the jab to open him up, etc.
Some of the most entertaining commentators in my experience are those Aussie guys in MotoGP (no idea if they are still doing it). Plenty of ooohs and aaahhhs and not much max torque, etc.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I tend to agree with you on the shorter forms of the game, but I think test cricket hasn't really changed that much, other than batsmen not being able to bat any more (English ones at least). I don't really mind the commentators roster either, I was brought up on Brian Johnson, CMJ, Aggers latterly etc. The newer crop are either ex players (such as Daggers - solid county career), Isa Guha (ex England) or very enthusiastic amateurs who bring a love and extensive knowledge to the table such as Dan Norcross and Henry Moeran.
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Disagree. Test Match cricket is undergoing exactly the same revolution. Where as the commentary is too much ohhhh bring on such and such he's a good bowler. The level of analysis now is down to looking at exact field placement of every player for every ball in addition to all the Hawkeye stats about the actual delivery.
Doesn't seem to be doing England much good.
Probably a text-book case of paralysis by analysis.
Not at all. England T20 / ODI team has been ahead of the rest of the other world teams in analytics and it has showed for the past 3-4 years, as they have been the #1. The most successful IPL teams have been the only other people matching the level of analysis, and revolutionising how the game is played.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Old programme called Time Team? Way to make most of us feel ancient!
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
What do you think of MOTD pundits?
Crap....next....if you spend anytime reading the likes of the Athletic or listening to the guys from StatsBomb (although they don't do their podcast anymore) you will realise again the level of sophistication of modern football analysis.
While MOTD of the day are going oh yeah he needs to get it wide and whip more crosses in...the pros have heat maps which tell them from any position on the pitch, given the opposition position, the % chance of the current move leading to a shot on goal depending on where they move the ball to next. They are literally told passing to ball to x here 30 yards from goal leads to a goal scoring opportunity 8.45% of the time, instead the ball to y was 9.97%.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
Ah I see you have a more than passing interest. So you're saying it is something akin to Moneyball.
But I'm still not sure that you comprise more than, say, 0.05% of the audience. I would suggest that the vast majority of punters would be and are happy with the existing framework of enthusiastic amateurs and ex-players.
Look at F1 (please, no, don't, but as an example). Murray Walker kept it alive and then you'd have an ex-driver saying he needs to speed up there to get round the bloke in front on that bend. Same with boxing. Adam Smith commentating keeping it interesting and then an ex-boxer saying he is using the jab to open him up, etc.
Some of the most entertaining commentators in my experience are those Aussie guys in MotoGP (no idea if they are still doing it). Plenty of ooohs and aaahhhs and not much max torque, etc.
The commentary team don't need to give a read out of the computer model. But when they are criticising a player for not running a single, or why are they taking off such and such star bowler, its because they don't understand the game and just talking horseshit.
The classic commentary bollocks they spout is the ohhhh he has gone for one too many big hits, it was always going to be the case he got out, poor batting.....when in many cases, this will have been the exact tactics the team have insisted the player follows, we want you try and hit as many boundaries as fast as possible, it is negative EV not to do so in this spot, getting out is not in itself a bad result.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Films has some good independent films or classic films.
However a lot of the time it is just X Men or Transformers etc
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Old programme called Time Team? Way to make most of us feel ancient!
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
What do you think of MOTD pundits?
Crap....next....if you spend anytime reading the likes of the Athletic or listening to the guys from StatsBomb (although they don't do their podcast anymore) you will realise again the level of sophistication of modern football analysis.
While MOTD of the day are going oh yeah he needs to get it wide and whip more crosses in...the pros have heat maps which tell them from any position on the pitch, given the opposition position, the % chance of the current move leading to a shot on goal depending on where they move the ball to next. They are literally told passing to ball to x here 30 yards from goal leads to a goal scoring opportunity 8.45% of the time, instead the ball to y was 9.97%.
I'm sure that would be riveting commentary.
As I said, you don't need to read the computer model out, but you should understand why teams are doing what they are doing. MOTD talking heads on the whole don't.
Plus when I started [on TMS], I was 31 and easily the youngest member of the team. Everyone was an old white bloke. It is a much more diverse commentary team now - I mean it's a rarity now when a woman isn't commentating - which makes it more appealing to more people.”
Yes, but totally clueless about modern international test cricket....
Jonathan Agnew Simon Mann Alison Mitchell Kevin Howells Charles Dagnall ("Daggers") Daniel Norcross Isa Guha Henry Moeran Aatif Nawaz
None of these people have any expert insight into it. Aatif Nawaz is a stand-up comedian.
But the commentator is usually paired with an ex player - e.g. Michael Vaughn (pre-cancelling), Phil Tuffnell etc. You can argue that they are too long out the game, and need refreshing, but they do usually still understand test cricket.
They really don't though, thats the problem. Tuffnell knows as much about modern cricket as the Nigel Farage type down the pub. I remember the T20 coverage they did last year, they really were totally clueless about what the tactics being deployed were.
Its the blind leading the blind, but its more ethnically diverse, so TMS must stay is Agnew's argument.
Sky on the other hand have taken serious steps. Botham, Holding, Bumble, Gower all gone. The likes of Key and Sangakkara in. I am trying to remember the West Indian international (who is still playing) they had come in last season, and it was totally eye opening have him explain what the tactics are.
I enjoyed Carlos Brathwaite on TMS.
I think the point is quite subtle. I don't need TMS to be cutting edge numerical analysis, but I think you are correct about their T20 coverage when it comes to tactics and such.
Isn't T20 tactics smack the ball as hard as possible? Does it get more nuanced than that?
(Again, not that I know anything about it - my one trip to see T20 I was too busy ingesting the curry and beer to notice what was happening on the pitch.)
Modern elite T20 is a game 4D chess. Each team now has a team of highly qualified mathematical analytical teams crunching data and formulating extremely detailed models, which update on the fly during the game...which they then signal to their team who to adjust their decisions e.g. different bowler to bowl the next over or a change to which batsman will be sent in next...even such and such a batsman is instructed to effectively get themselves out.
So if I may ask how are you able to understand it when all the old, clueless, er, Test cricketers don't?
Because I made a living betting this stuff at one point and have continued to read / listen to those that are involved in the elite side of the game....also it isn't are they able to understand it, it is they don't appear to choose to do so. It requires doing your homework.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
Ah I see you have a more than passing interest. So you're saying it is something akin to Moneyball.
But I'm still not sure that you comprise more than, say, 0.05% of the audience. I would suggest that the vast majority of punters would be and are happy with the existing framework of enthusiastic amateurs and ex-players.
Look at F1 (please, no, don't, but as an example). Murray Walker kept it alive and then you'd have an ex-driver saying he needs to speed up there to get round the bloke in front on that bend. Same with boxing. Adam Smith commentating keeping it interesting and then an ex-boxer saying he is using the jab to open him up, etc.
Some of the most entertaining commentators in my experience are those Aussie guys in MotoGP (no idea if they are still doing it). Plenty of ooohs and aaahhhs and not much max torque, etc.
The commentary team don't need to give a read out of the computer model. But when they are criticising a player for not running a single, or why are they taking off such and such star bowler, its because they don't understand the game and just talking horseshit.
The classic commentary bollocks they spout is the ohhhh he has gone for one too many big hits, it was always going to be the case he got out, poor batting.....when in many cases, this will have been the exact tactics the team have insisted the player follows, we want you try and hit as many boundaries as fast as possible, it is negative EV not to do so in this spot, getting out is not in itself a bad result.
V interesting. Genuinely. The secret is translating that into accessible commentary.
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Old programme called Time Team? Way to make most of us feel ancient!
It's been relaunched on YouTube. It's a little rough and ready but it's certainly serviceable.
C4's extremely highbrow lineup today we must preserve from privatisation to the lowest common denominator of populism.
Includes Kitchen Nightmares, Undercover Boss, Steph's Packed Lunch, A Place in the Sun, New Life in the Sun, Sun, Sea and Selling Houses, Hollyoaks, the Simpsons and a Gogglebox double bill
C4's extremely highbrow lineup today we must preserve from privatisation to the lowest common denominator of populism.
Includes Kitchen Nightmares, Undercover Boss, Steph's Packed Lunch, A Place in the Sun, New Life in the Sun, Sun, Sea and Selling Houses, Hollyoaks, the Simpsons and a Gogglebox double bill
Well, as I've mentioned earlier on, this is a symptom of the deregulating ideologues' of the 90's dogmas, not Channel 4's original purpose or ecosystem.
It was supposed to be a channel balanced between commercial funding and commercially-minded programmes, on the one hand, and an extensive public service remit supported by some of ITV's advertising money . on the other. If something is built with this structure in mind, and half the structure is taken out, the machine quite predictably enough won't work as intended.
What we really need is a campaign of better public awareness to understand why much TV has become bluntly and unimaginatively ratings-obsessed, and how to return it to its former glory. It can be done ; lose not ye hope.
While funny I wouldn't exactly call either highbrow too
So it's been successful under its current ownership. What do you think will improve by selling it?
It had 2 comedy shows which were successful. Neither showing new episodes now.
Overall its ratings are pretty low
It generates tens of millions of pounds of surplus. Advertisers aren't stupid, why are they paying?
And to be clear, is that your measure of this being successful, increased ratings?
Well they will keep paying if it is privately owned then.
The only involvement the state should have in TV is to fund a few high-brow arts, science and culture programmes which can be shared amongst private broadcasters.
Everything else should be funded by advertising or subscription in my view with all channels privately owned
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Old programme called Time Team? Way to make most of us feel ancient!
Particularly me as I worked on a few of them.
😂. Terribly sorry, but I’ve seen great ones from before I was born.
While funny I wouldn't exactly call either highbrow too
So it's been successful under its current ownership. What do you think will improve by selling it?
It had 2 comedy shows which were successful. Neither showing new episodes now.
Overall its ratings are pretty low
It generates tens of millions of pounds of surplus. Advertisers aren't stupid, why are they paying?
And to be clear, is that your measure of this being successful, increased ratings?
Well they will keep paying if it is privately owned then.
The only involvement the state should have in TV is to fund a few high-brow arts, science and culture programmes which can be shared amongst private broadcasters.
Everything else should be funded by advertising or subscription in my view with all channels privately owned
It is already funded by advertisers. So the best you've got so far is "advertisers will keep paying"? I was asking what the improvement would be.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Old programme called Time Team? Way to make most of us feel ancient!
dixie if they were any older, the reboot might discover them under three feet of earth, in the middle of Shropshire!
The idea you need a linear tv channel to ensure creative and niche content (which isn't focused on solely maximising ratings) just isn't true in the modern world. People can and do make high quality video and audio productions from their back bedrooms and distribute them across a wide range of platforms via the internet.
You only have to see the rise of all these long form interview podcasts, which are usually filmed. They don't exist anywhere on commercial tv, but millions tune into them.
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The Green Belts were set up to preserve the structure of towns and cities as they were in the 1950s - essentially placing limits on growth to prevent sprawl. The idea was that they would just be kept open for this purpose, and use of the land would be limited to a small number of uses connected to farming and outdoor recreation. In the case of London, they have prevented the city becoming a sprawling megapolis from Slough to Southend, which I accept has some value, although it has had a disproportionately harmful effect on the ability of London to accommodate economic growth and house its citizens in appropriate living conditions.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
I believe that Macron will win easily, albeit by a smaller margin than last time. I think those looking at the polls today are overlooking four key points:
1. In an opinion poll about a hypothetical (albeit expected) second round, those who strongly prefer one of the candidates whom the question assumes will be eliminated are loathe to admit that they will, after all, vote for the lesser of two evils. This is particularly important for the soft-left currently saying they'll vote Mélenchon.
2. Whilst it's true that Le Pen has benefitted from a smart campaign and especially by Zemmour making her look comparatively less toxic, she is still toxic to a lot of voters.
3. The grandees of all the various factions and other parties (excluding Zemmour's lot) are likely to come out strongly and urge their supporters to hold their noses and vote for Macron, irritating though he is.
4. The final week won't take place in a vacuum. Expect Le Pen's record of being a bit too chummy with Putin to feature strongly - at exactly the same time that the full horrors of Putin are being splashed across French TV screens.
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
That article has been mentioned many times recently. I had not actually read it before. My God
The idea you need a linear tv channel to ensure creative and niche content (which isn't focused on solely maximising ratings) just isn't true in the modern world. People can and do make high quality video and audio productions from their back bedrooms and distribute them across a wide range of platforms via the internet.
You only have to see the rise of all these long form interview podcasts, which are usually filmed. They don't exist anywhere on commercial tv, but millions tune into them.
They do ; that's right. But large-scale TV productions are still able to do things others can't ; otherwise the big streaming platforms like Netflix wouldn't have the reach they do.
You could call that a streaming platform, or a channel ; but it takes a lot of money and scaled-up organisation whatever it is, and either way.
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The Green Belts were set up to preserve the structure of towns and cities as they were in the 1950s - essentially placing limits on growth to prevent sprawl. The idea was that they would just be kept open for this purpose, and use of the land would be limited to a small number of uses connected to farming and outdoor recreation. In the case of London, they have prevented the city becoming a sprawling megapolis from Slough to Southend, which I accept has some value, although it has had a disproportionately harmful effect on the ability of London to accommodate economic growth and house its citizens in appropriate living conditions.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
The Greenbelt ensures that you can travel on the central line from Loughton to Theydon Bois and Epping essentially through greenfields.
It ensures that Epping remains a market town surrounded by countryside not a suburb of London in all but name like Loughton, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill. It also ensures lots of greenspaces around outer suburban parts of London too like Enfield
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
Cracking programme, although the tendency to recreate an entire civilization from a small shard of pottery was always fun...
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
Mélenchon is pro immigration and a strong supporter of French Muslims which doesn’t sit well with Le Pen and Zemmour .
I can’t see any way he makes it into the second round given Le Pen is currently hoovering up what’s left of Pécresses more hard right voters aswell as some Zemmour supporters who are jumping ship to her.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
It's just started again on YouTube. Crowd-funded, I think. Quite good so far.
I'm quite happy to pay the licence fee - for the radio as much as the TV - but I very rarely watch live TV. I mostly watch YouTube. It's certainly the first thing I go to when I put the tele on. I can't help but think that that all linear TV channels will ultimately become extinct. Superfluous. Relics of a bygone age. Like physical, actual paper newspapers will once people of a certain age have met the Grim Reaper. Or CDs, beyond the inevitable resurgence amongst hipsters in about ten years time. Sad but inevitable, perhaps. That's progress.
The exception that proves the rule is vinyl. That shit will never die. Don't understand it myself but we're all different.
Good morning. The news about onshore wind is profoundly depressing. It seems we will wean ourselves off foreign fossil fuels by doing, erm, pretty much the same as we have always done.
We need a mix. Onshore wind is more easily maintained but the powered generation capacity is lower than offshore. We should build the tidal lagoons in South Wales and think about the Solway firth to have a time offset for tidal capacity. We should rapidly develop the micro nuclear capability and build the long term nuclear waste storage repository. Quite a few of these schemes would flow money into the north and help local economies and jobs there. Also look at offshore wind to power seawater cracking to make hydrogen. There’s lots we should do and start now.
Onshore wind is way quicker and cheaper to build, though. The drastic political limitations on it in the UK are the efforts if Tory nimbies.
Over two thirds of those polled on the issue support its expansion. A figure which might well now be even higher since energy prices rocketed.
There is no such thing as rapid deployment of nuclear, and its costs are uncertain - but certainly not cheap.
There are big long-term environmental issues with some onshore wind. They are best in upland areas, and large tracks are constructed across vast tracts of land to get the massive turbines up there. They're quite a scar, and massively more substantial than the tracks grouse shooters use.
We have a wind farm a few miles from us; and I have no problem with it as it is built on an old airfield site; essentially brownfield land. I do have issues with the farms on some of our precious upland landscapes, and especially on peat moorland.
I readily confess to being a nimby… from our home we have uninterrupted views of the Forest of Bowland fells, the Yorkshire peaks, the Howgills and the Lakeland hills… @Cyclefree is just out of sight…. If we strain our eyes we can just see the wind farm by the M6 in Cumbra, the thought that the environments of the National Parks and Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty should be damaged, marginally to supplement offshore just seems wrong….
Indeed. This is a particular problem in Scotland and to some extent Mid-Wales, where whole landscapes are being ruined by the march of the turbines. And as pointed out, not just the wider landscape, but the peat on which many are sited. Once these are drained for the roads or the surface layer is broken through to site the massive concrete pedestals there's no way back.
Most of the UK's best carbon sinks are not forests, they are bogs.
The majority of the politicians making the decisions on turbines are urbanites and don't really care about such things, but some of us do.
There's nothing more depressing than visiting what used to be a remote peak or corrie to find an array of turbines in front of you.
I know we have almost no 'wild' land in the UK but we should be improving what we have, not making it worse.
Offshore is much better in ALL respects.
I know what you mean but
1. it's a tiny fraction of the acreage
2. Once we have got fusion cracked the turbines will go and the platforms will weather to invisibility
3. Tracks provided they don't have heavy traffic on them are a comparatively mild eyesore, a boon to walkers and cyclists and actually protective of the peat by preventing people spreading out over it
1. Each turbine may have a small base but they are often a visual eyesore for tens of miles around.
2. The concrete pad won't be dug up and will still provide a water sink for the surrounding peat. It will permanently affect the hydrology.
3. Nobody wants to walk on a 10m wide 'road' up to a 120m high turbine in what was open country. Worn paths through peat made by walkers are usually only apparent on popular routes which if they become bad enough are repaired by a 1m wide (at most) stone track laid on top.
I wonder what Cyclefree would make of a power station on Black Combe - an "ideal" site for one if you are only interested in power. It won't happen because "Lake District" but move it across the Solway and...
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
In the Peaks they've started to bury the major powerlines on an effort to reduce the visual impact.
Doesn't that play havoc with the efficiency? From memory something about magnetic fields from the current interacting with groundwater, increasing electrical resistance? Might be nonsense, not sure.
It's a fairly complex topic AIUI. There is an interesting situation in the Peaks: the Woodhead tunnels carry power cables. From memory, the original power system had the cables in a trough in the tunnel invert (floor), surrounded by water to cool them. As the tunnel has a gradient, the water coming out the other end was much warmer!
fifteen or so yeas ago, the deterioration of the tunnel led them to move the cables to the 'new' (1950s) tunnel. In this, the cables are apparently heavily-insulated and attached to the tunnel walls.
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
I'm always surprised that Le Pen doesn't get more of the Melenchon vote, because economically, he is very similar to her.
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
Film4. Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
It's just started again on YouTube. Crowd-funded, I think. Quite good so far.
I'm quite happy to pay the licence fee - for the radio as much as the TV - but I very rarely watch live TV. I mostly watch YouTube. It's certainly the first thing I go to when I put the tele on. I can't help but think that that all linear TV channels will ultimately become extinct. Superfluous. Relics of a bygone age. Like physical, actual paper newspapers will once people of a certain age have met the Grim Reaper. Or CDs, beyond the inevitable resurgence amongst hipsters in about ten years time. Sad but inevitable, perhaps. That's progress.
The exception that proves the rule is vinyl. That shit will never die. Don't understand it myself but we're all different.
Speaking of YouTube...
‘Often a Russian mother has a TV for a brain’: Ukraine YouTuber films PoWs calling home
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has admitted to mistakes in his government's approach towards Russia, adding that his support for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was "clearly a mistake." https://twitter.com/dw_politics/status/1511004226624888838
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The Green Belts were set up to preserve the structure of towns and cities as they were in the 1950s - essentially placing limits on growth to prevent sprawl. The idea was that they would just be kept open for this purpose, and use of the land would be limited to a small number of uses connected to farming and outdoor recreation. In the case of London, they have prevented the city becoming a sprawling megapolis from Slough to Southend, which I accept has some value, although it has had a disproportionately harmful effect on the ability of London to accommodate economic growth and house its citizens in appropriate living conditions.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
The Greenbelt ensures that you can travel on the central line from Loughton to Theydon Bois and Epping essentially through greenfields.
It ensures that Epping remains a market town surrounded by countryside not a suburb of London in all but name like Loughton, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill. It also ensures lots of greenspaces around outer suburban parts of London too like Enfield
Yes - people like it and that is why it remains. But of course, there is a wider societal cost of keeping this land undeveloped.
This suggests that there are mass graves about to be discovered.
Russian MoD accusing the Ukrainian Army of staging 'provocations' in the city of Sumy, involving staging mass executions of civilians to falsely accuse Russians sounds more than ominous - afaik, the Ukrainian Army has not re-entered Sumy yet https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1511307449457954820
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The Green Belts were set up to preserve the structure of towns and cities as they were in the 1950s - essentially placing limits on growth to prevent sprawl. The idea was that they would just be kept open for this purpose, and use of the land would be limited to a small number of uses connected to farming and outdoor recreation. In the case of London, they have prevented the city becoming a sprawling megapolis from Slough to Southend, which I accept has some value, although it has had a disproportionately harmful effect on the ability of London to accommodate economic growth and house its citizens in appropriate living conditions.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
The Greenbelt ensures that you can travel on the central line from Loughton to Theydon Bois and Epping essentially through greenfields.
It ensures that Epping remains a market town surrounded by countryside not a suburb of London in all but name like Loughton, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill. It also ensures lots of greenspaces around outer suburban parts of London too like Enfield
Yes - people like it and that is why it remains. But of course, there is a wider societal cost of keeping this land undeveloped.
It, for instance, [edit] inflates the house prices of Tory-voting houseowning pensioners in Epping etc.
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The Green Belts were set up to preserve the structure of towns and cities as they were in the 1950s - essentially placing limits on growth to prevent sprawl. The idea was that they would just be kept open for this purpose, and use of the land would be limited to a small number of uses connected to farming and outdoor recreation. In the case of London, they have prevented the city becoming a sprawling megapolis from Slough to Southend, which I accept has some value, although it has had a disproportionately harmful effect on the ability of London to accommodate economic growth and house its citizens in appropriate living conditions.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
The Greenbelt ensures that you can travel on the central line from Loughton to Theydon Bois and Epping essentially through greenfields.
It ensures that Epping remains a market town surrounded by countryside not a suburb of London in all but name like Loughton, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill. It also ensures lots of greenspaces around outer suburban parts of London too like Enfield
Yes - people like it and that is why it remains. But of course, there is a wider societal cost of keeping this land undeveloped.
Part of it is being developed in Epping Forest, for example, for new housing and that is unpopular locally in the areas affected
I have a small vineyard in the middle of a pretty section of the North Downs. It's in an AONB. In the valley there are two large electricity lines with a pylon every couple of 100 metres. There is also a large mobile phone mast directly opposite the field, which emits a constant quite loud whirring. The neighbours might not like these - at a guess, I would say you can see 8 such structures from most of the houses on the valley sides - but they have never been particularly controversial or debated at central government level. Companies just go ahead and erect them.
Yet wind turbines, which my almost all accounts are much less of an eyesore than an electricity pylon (and don't have ugly high tension wires strung between them), seem to attract much attention from a small group of right wing backbenchers who just happen also to include in their number several climate change sceptics and oil industry artisans. I wonder why.
Wind turbines are massively more of an eyesore than pylons (although those are bad enough), for the very simple reason that they move. In beautiful scenery, it's akin to having a flashing advert next to painting in a gallery. Plus the particular way in which the blades rotate is particularly unpleasant - too fast to be gentle, too slow for the movement to be lost in a blur.
Pushing them offshore was an absolute stroke of genius of the Cameron government; because of the clarity and focus it provided, it meant lots of wind turbines were installed, without all the opposition and planning delays, not to mention the environmental damage. We should do more offshore installation, and leave what's left of our beautiful scenery unwrecked by them.
There are many places that wind turbines can be put up completely harmlessly. The 'ban' was not helpful. More generally, lots of the countryside has little or no aesthetic value. The madness of this country is that there is vast amounts of underutilised and empty land which is awaiting political direction as to its future use. Particularly the London Green Belt. If you spend time there, outside the country parks and golf courses, as I have, you can see it is just full of flytipped rubbish, degraded hedgerows, unused fields, abandoned equestrian enterprises, informal builders yards, barbed wire, cctv and deafening motorway noise.
Valued landscapes should be protected, but we need to be clear about what these are.
But the shit bits of the Green Belt - and they do exist, if not to the extent you describe - are a buffer zone protecting the really nice chunks of Green Belt. That is to say, if you allow proper building on the Green Belt, then the shit bits will be shunted further out into the nice chunks, and so we lose another huge tranche of genuinely lovely British countryside
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
The Green Belts were set up to preserve the structure of towns and cities as they were in the 1950s - essentially placing limits on growth to prevent sprawl. The idea was that they would just be kept open for this purpose, and use of the land would be limited to a small number of uses connected to farming and outdoor recreation. In the case of London, they have prevented the city becoming a sprawling megapolis from Slough to Southend, which I accept has some value, although it has had a disproportionately harmful effect on the ability of London to accommodate economic growth and house its citizens in appropriate living conditions.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
The Greenbelt ensures that you can travel on the central line from Loughton to Theydon Bois and Epping essentially through greenfields.
It ensures that Epping remains a market town surrounded by countryside not a suburb of London in all but name like Loughton, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill. It also ensures lots of greenspaces around outer suburban parts of London too like Enfield
Yes - people like it and that is why it remains. But of course, there is a wider societal cost of keeping this land undeveloped.
It, for instance, [edit] inflates the house prices of Tory-voting houseowning pensioners in Epping etc.
Who then vote LD, Residents or Green locally if it is developed. Even younger families in my experience don't want development on the greenbelt once on the housing ladder.
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
I'm always surprised that Le Pen doesn't get more of the Melenchon vote, because economically, he is very similar to her.
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
You can think of it a bit like the Red Wall seats and Labour. Economic antipathy towards the Tories fell and the more conservative social attitudes combined to help them in 2019.
You are right economically Le Pen is closer to Mélenchon but socially worlds apart and this will act as a block on vote transfers towards her in the second round .
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
I'm always surprised that Le Pen doesn't get more of the Melenchon vote, because economically, he is very similar to her.
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
You can think of it a bit like the Red Wall seats and Labour. Economic antipathy towards the Tories fell and the more conservative social attitudes combined to help them in 2019.
You are right economically Le Pen is closer to Mélenchon but socially worlds apart and this will act as a block on vote transfers towards her in the second round .
Exactly. The idea that economic policy is all-important is itself a political opinion and is certainly not shared by all.
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
That article has been mentioned many times recently. I had not actually read it before. My God
It is tedious and boring. The more I see, the analogy of a wife beater trying to explain himself at the police station keeps growing on me. They just make up more and more insane excuses, incredulous lies and wild counter accusations.
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
I'm always surprised that Le Pen doesn't get more of the Melenchon vote, because economically, he is very similar to her.
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
You can think of it a bit like the Red Wall seats and Labour. Economic antipathy towards the Tories fell and the more conservative social attitudes combined to help them in 2019.
You are right economically Le Pen is closer to Mélenchon but socially worlds apart and this will act as a block on vote transfers towards her in the second round .
Exactly. The idea that economic policy is all-important is itself a political opinion and is certainly not shared by all.
Indeed, economically seats like Oxford West and Abingdon and Putney should be Conservative and Leigh and Bolsover should be Labour. They were in 2015.
However now culture trumps economics post Brexit, Oxford West and Abingdon is LD and Putney Labour. While Leigh and Bolsover have gone Conservative
Their lockdown is ferocious. Children taken from parents - even babies. There are multiple videos showing riots and unrest: people fighting back
Of course Twitter, disinfo, etc, but there is too much evidence for it all to be fabulated. A somewhat perilous moment for the CCP. Zero Covid is ending in disaster
I believe that Macron will win easily, albeit by a smaller margin than last time. I think those looking at the polls today are overlooking four key points:
1. In an opinion poll about a hypothetical (albeit expected) second round, those who strongly prefer one of the candidates whom the question assumes will be eliminated are loathe to admit that they will, after all, vote for the lesser of two evils. This is particularly important for the soft-left currently saying they'll vote Mélenchon.
2. Whilst it's true that Le Pen has benefitted from a smart campaign and especially by Zemmour making her look comparatively less toxic, she is still toxic to a lot of voters.
3. The grandees of all the various factions and other parties (excluding Zemmour's lot) are likely to come out strongly and urge their supporters to hold their noses and vote for Macron, irritating though he is.
4. The final week won't take place in a vacuum. Expect Le Pen's record of being a bit too chummy with Putin to feature strongly - at exactly the same time that the full horrors of Putin are being splashed across French TV screens.
I think you could be overestimating Macron's ability to dominate the agenda in his favour between the two rounds.
Perhaps the biggest similarity with Brexit is that it's a battle of differential turnout, and he needs to motivate people to go out and reelect him.
Zelensky says Ukraine has "moral right" to demand a change to the world security system.
"If you don't know how to make a decision...you can remove Russia [from the security council], as an aggressor...or you can dissolve yourself altogether, if you can do nothing but talk." https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1511357279777525765
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
That article has been mentioned many times recently. I had not actually read it before. My God
It sets out the underpinning to justify the use of WMD in Ukraine as far as I can see. Plenty of other propaganda that seeks to dehumanise and “other” the Ukrainians out there too. Given Biden’s comments that intelligence points to Russia’s preparedness to use chemical weapons, it adds up to a pretty nauseous feeling doesn’t it. And still the Germans spend all week fussing about GDP growth rather than turning off Russia’s tap to foreign currency.
Mark Hertling @MarkHertling · 16h The RU forces - of various types - have suffered losses beyond comprehension. Some estimates have said 10-15%...I'd put it closer to 30-50% of the front line combat units.
This isn't a computer game, or stratego...those forces do not just leave one area to fight in another
Zelensky says Ukraine has "moral right" to demand a change to the world security system.
"If you don't know how to make a decision...you can remove Russia [from the security council], as an aggressor...or you can dissolve yourself altogether, if you can do nothing but talk." https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1511357279777525765
Mark Hertling @MarkHertling · 16h The RU forces - of various types - have suffered losses beyond comprehension. Some estimates have said 10-15%...I'd put it closer to 30-50% of the front line combat units.
This isn't a computer game, or stratego...those forces do not just leave one area to fight in another
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
That article has been mentioned many times recently. I had not actually read it before. My God
It sets out the underpinning to justify the use of WMD in Ukraine as far as I can see. Plenty of other propaganda that seeks to dehumanise and “other” the Ukrainians out there too. Given Biden’s comments that intelligence points to Russia’s preparedness to use chemical weapons, it adds up to a pretty nauseous feeling doesn’t it. And still the Germans spend all week fussing about GDP growth rather than turning off Russia’s tap to foreign currency.
Yes, I'd say it is now more likely than not that Putin will use chemical or nuclear weapons in Ukraine
He needs to recreate Fear of Russia. That is the only way to do it
It's bizarre. It's not particularly certain to be much use in the UK, and when there is tidal energy and other oilfields and gas ... become a right-wing shibboleth.
The other thing about wind turbines is, of course, there is a whole generation who've grown up with them. They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids. They are just part of the landscape.
Hmm. Some of the comments on PB today remind me of reactions - very mixed - to electricity pylons (the lattice steelwork ones) in the 1930s or thereabouts. Novelty must be a factor.
As someone who did experiments on turbine blades (albeit much much smaller ones) I can appreciate their structure as much as anyone.
They just have their place, and it isn't somewhere where there are currently no structures visible.
We have very little wild land in this country. We shouldn't ruin what little is left.
I fear we may be talking at cross purposes as to what wild land actually is...
This is Fisherfield Forest:
How many wind turbines are appropriate? You could definitely site some on the flatter parts of Ruadh Stac Beag (left). This is not a National Park. You could definitely argue that 99.99% of the population will never go there.
You could probably create a hydro scheme while you are at it.
Zelensky says Ukraine has "moral right" to demand a change to the world security system.
"If you don't know how to make a decision...you can remove Russia [from the security council], as an aggressor...or you can dissolve yourself altogether, if you can do nothing but talk." https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1511357279777525765
You can't remove Russia or China from the UN Security Council as both have a veto power and nuclear weapons. The whole point of the UN Security Council is to include all the major global powers to try and avoid another major war
Their lockdown is ferocious. Children taken from parents - even babies. There are multiple videos showing riots and unrest: people fighting back
Of course Twitter, disinfo, etc, but there is too much evidence for it all to be fabulated. A somewhat perilous moment for the CCP. Zero Covid is ending in disaster
Half expected to see Will Smith and his dog (I am Legend) walking down the street ...
In 2017 first round vote Mélenchon took 37% of the Muslim vote followed by Macron on 24%.
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
People look at the polling and think Melenchon is out of it because it shows Macron beats him more easily in second round. I would caution against that. If he makes top two he will be looked at again and differently by a lot of voters, not least because he is a better campaigner and debater than Le pen and will slice and dice Macron in debates. And in your post, he retains the ethnic vote, thats harder to transfer to Le pen to keep out the clutches of Macron. I still think this is fluid enough, long enough to go, and so many previous first rounds thrown up surprises for Melenchon to sneak into last two. And once there present Macron a more dangerous opponent, one who brings the left and ethnic votes, in theory could attract the anti establishment anti EU votes of Zemmour and Le pen, and the protestors against Macrons pension and tax policies.
I'm always surprised that Le Pen doesn't get more of the Melenchon vote, because economically, he is very similar to her.
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
You can think of it a bit like the Red Wall seats and Labour. Economic antipathy towards the Tories fell and the more conservative social attitudes combined to help them in 2019.
You are right economically Le Pen is closer to Mélenchon but socially worlds apart and this will act as a block on vote transfers towards her in the second round .
Exactly. The idea that economic policy is all-important is itself a political opinion and is certainly not shared by all.
Indeed, economically seats like Oxford West and Abingdon and Putney should be Conservative and Leigh and Bolsover should be Labour. They were in 2015.
However now culture trumps economics post Brexit, Oxford West and Abingdon is LD and Putney Labour. While Leigh and Bolsover have gone Conservative
There is a lot of demographic change in Bolsover as well with new houses being built as well as the Brexit realignment although Labour still has a large WWC vote in Bolsover itself and Shirebrook. I also think the Tories overperformed in OxWAb in 2010 and 2015 because Cameron's seat was next door although probably safe LD now. I wouldn't write off the Tories chances of winning back Putney when the next Labour gvt loses power as they are still dominant at a local level and the Tories could still cling onto Wandsworth in May. Leigh is interesting although the Tories would need to hold their majority nationally to hold it probably.
I actually think the key determinant is age really and the level of pensioner voting for the Conservatives is now somewhat unique to Britain.
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
That article has been mentioned many times recently. I had not actually read it before. My God
It sets out the underpinning to justify the use of WMD in Ukraine as far as I can see. Plenty of other propaganda that seeks to dehumanise and “other” the Ukrainians out there too. Given Biden’s comments that intelligence points to Russia’s preparedness to use chemical weapons, it adds up to a pretty nauseous feeling doesn’t it. And still the Germans spend all week fussing about GDP growth rather than turning off Russia’s tap to foreign currency.
Yes, I'd say it is now more likely than not that Putin will use chemical or nuclear weapons in Ukraine
He needs to recreate Fear of Russia. That is the only way to do it
Yes their army has basically turned into a laughing stock. All it can do is kill, rape and main unarmed civilians, with half of them too busy trying to loot booze and white goods to bother fighting. Put them in front of a reasonably disciplined and well motivated force and they get smashed. And a massive chunk of its battle ready equipment has now been destroyed or captured, which won’t be easy to replace.
If you were paranoid about external (or internal) threats capitalising on this weakness to take bites out of Russia, there is a sick logic to going as brutal and indiscriminate as possible in Ukraine, encourager les autres etc…
Unless of course the consequences were clearly communicated by the West ahead of time. The dilly dallying in Europe over hydrocarbon sanctions hardly sends a strong message does it.
Comments
The biggest issue I found recently was where the WI series was broadcast. Not TMS. And Talk Sport 2 seems not to be on my DAB radios (car or house) so online only. Now I could have streamed it from my phone to the car via blue tooth but WTF - why should I have too? There should be a commitment to have it broadcast in a way that the public can receive it.
Same as the football pundits, if they did some proper research about the modern game they would know spouting the likes of xG and possession stats is Farage down the pub stuff.
Proving genocide in court would take years.
There is an international obligation to prevent it, as you suggest. Absent a UN resolution, such actions could be justified only if there's a reasonable expectation that the harm done is outweighed by the harm prevented.
You might make a case for direct intervention in the Ukraine conflict (though as we've seen there's a strong belief on the part of all western leaders that this would risk a nuclear WWIII) - but invading Russia would obviously fail any such test.
Put it differently: Russia taking the Donbas did not remove the Russian threat to the rest of Ukraine. It made it worse
So Russia is London. The Donbas is the shit bit of the Green Belt. I apologise for the tastelessness of this analogy
They aren't eyesores, unsettling, or beautiful to my kids.
They are just part of the landscape.
15 point lead nailed on.
Includes Kitchen Nightmares, Undercover Boss, Steph's Packed Lunch, A Place in the Sun, New Life in the Sun, Sun, Sea and Selling Houses, Hollyoaks, the Simpsons and a Gogglebox double bill
https://twitter.com/WalkerMarcus/status/1511328157873418253?s=20&t=s6feJWI45tuI18Ty1aVFnQ
It was a case of anybody but Le Pen.
In 2022 the second round was a foregone conclusion , this time not so .
This is likely to see the abstention rate fall as we head towards Election Day especially in the Muslim community who make up a crucial 8% of the population .
Pécresses voters currently break 65 to 35 towards Macron . What’s left of her vote is more centre right , the far right parties have already hovered up the more far right voters who jumped ship .
As in the UK older voters are more likely to turnout and Macron is winning this by a huge majority in the second round .
Le Pen can win but the current polling is over inflating her popularity in the second round . And she needs a perfect storm of events to deliver that .
While MOTD of the day are going oh yeah he needs to get it wide and whip more crosses in...the pros have heat maps which tell them from any position on the pitch, given the opposition position, the % chance of the current move leading to a shot on goal depending on where they move the ball to next. They are literally told passing to ball to x here 30 yards from goal leads to a goal scoring opportunity 8.45% of the time, instead the ball to y was 9.97%.
There is a quite remarkable fear of the unknown, change, and modernity in a significant tranche of the population at the moment.
While funny I wouldn't exactly call either highbrow too
Nothing more necessary.
https://unherd.com/2022/04/how-philosophy-gave-up-on-the-truth/
Also: Kathleen Stock can REALLY write. Lovely phrasing; elegant and articulate
Also also: there should be a word for once-leftwing writers, thinkers, academics, etc, who have been in some way cancelled or abolished by the Woke, and end up working for rightwing journals - see also Suzanne Moore, Tanya Gold, Julie Bindel, &c
Film4.
Have you ever seen an old programme called time team. I have watched lots in the last few years and they are all brilliant, like piecing together an holistic puzzle.
"So you'll be campaigning to pull down those pylons then?"
He laughed.
"Don't be ridiculous! They're essential for electricity!"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53597137
Overall its ratings are pretty low
But I'm still not sure that you comprise more than, say, 0.05% of the audience. I would suggest that the vast majority of punters would be and are happy with the existing framework of enthusiastic amateurs and ex-players.
Look at F1 (please, no, don't, but as an example). Murray Walker kept it alive and then you'd have an ex-driver saying he needs to speed up there to get round the bloke in front on that bend. Same with boxing. Adam Smith commentating keeping it interesting and then an ex-boxer saying he is using the jab to open him up, etc.
Some of the most entertaining commentators in my experience are those Aussie guys in MotoGP (no idea if they are still doing it). Plenty of ooohs and aaahhhs and not much max torque, etc.
Way to make most of us feel ancient!
The classic commentary bollocks they spout is the ohhhh he has gone for one too many big hits, it was always going to be the case he got out, poor batting.....when in many cases, this will have been the exact tactics the team have insisted the player follows, we want you try and hit as many boundaries as fast as possible, it is negative EV not to do so in this spot, getting out is not in itself a bad result.
However a lot of the time it is just X Men or Transformers etc
And to be clear, is that your measure of this being successful, increased ratings?
https://ukrainianpost.com/opinions/272-what-should-russia-do-with-ukraine
It says that "most likely" the majority of Ukraine is drawn into the Nazi regime, and Denazification of the country is inevitable. This is setting the stage for mass genocide.
It was supposed to be a channel balanced between commercial funding and commercially-minded programmes, on the one hand, and an extensive public service remit supported by some of ITV's advertising money . on the other. If something is built with this structure in mind, and half the structure is taken out, the machine quite predictably enough won't work as intended.
What we really need is a campaign of better public awareness to understand why much TV has become bluntly and unimaginatively ratings-obsessed, and how to return it to its former glory. It can be done ; lose not ye hope.
The only involvement the state should have in TV is to fund a few high-brow arts, science and culture programmes which can be shared amongst private broadcasters.
Everything else should be funded by advertising or subscription in my view with all channels privately owned
So the best you've got so far is "advertisers will keep paying"? I was asking what the improvement would be.
You only have to see the rise of all these long form interview podcasts, which are usually filmed. They don't exist anywhere on commercial tv, but millions tune into them.
I would say that the continued existence of the Green Belt makes little or no positive contribution at all to the parts of the countryside around London that have actual landscape value, such as the Surrey Hills, the North Downs and the Chilterns, all of which benefit from AONB or National Park designation.
British Electoral Politics
Should Scotland remain in the United Kingdom or leave the United Kingdom:
Remain: 50%
Leave: 35%
Don’t Know: 9%
Don’t knows excluded:
Remain: 59%
Leave: 41%
@YouGov, On 29-31 March 2022.
You could call that a streaming platform, or a channel ; but it takes a lot of money and scaled-up organisation whatever it is, and either way.
It ensures that Epping remains a market town surrounded by countryside not a suburb of London in all but name like Loughton, Chigwell and Buckhurst Hill. It also ensures lots of greenspaces around outer suburban parts of London too like Enfield
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10687627/Drone-video-shows-Russian-tank-opening-fire-cyclist-Bucha.html
I can’t see any way he makes it into the second round given Le Pen is currently hoovering up what’s left of Pécresses more hard right voters aswell as some Zemmour supporters who are jumping ship to her.
He’s just too far behind now .
I'm quite happy to pay the licence fee - for the radio as much as the TV - but I very rarely watch live TV. I mostly watch YouTube. It's certainly the first thing I go to when I put the tele on. I can't help but think that that all linear TV channels will ultimately become extinct. Superfluous. Relics of a bygone age. Like physical, actual paper newspapers will once people of a certain age have met the Grim Reaper. Or CDs, beyond the inevitable resurgence amongst hipsters in about ten years time. Sad but inevitable, perhaps. That's progress.
The exception that proves the rule is vinyl. That shit will never die. Don't understand it myself but we're all different.
"WATCH: Robot dog making sure the enforcement of COVID lockdown in Shanghai, China"
https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1509194659465207818?s=20&t=mm7oFk1thqlKexW1rrByIg
https://twitter.com/kevverage/status/1511258791572127746
fifteen or so yeas ago, the deterioration of the tunnel led them to move the cables to the 'new' (1950s) tunnel. In this, the cables are apparently heavily-insulated and attached to the tunnel walls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTaG8qTmveE
Incidentally, few people know that power cables are buried beneath the Regents Canal towpath through London.
https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/how-the-regents-canal-ended-up-carrying-electricity-instead-of-coal-20053/
By contrast, Macron and Pecresse have almost identical economic policies, and they both supported pension and labour market reform.
So I find the idea that the Pecresse block is going sharply Le Pen in the second round slightly odd; I could see Melenchon's vote moving much more easily.
https://twitter.com/Hromadske/status/1511335848666566657
‘Often a Russian mother has a TV for a brain’: Ukraine YouTuber films PoWs calling home
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/05/often-a-russian-mother-has-a-tv-for-a-brain-ukraine-youtuber-films-pows-calling-home
"We failed."
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has admitted to mistakes in his government's approach towards Russia, adding that his support for the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline was "clearly a mistake."
https://twitter.com/dw_politics/status/1511004226624888838
But of course, there is a wider societal cost of keeping this land undeveloped.
Russian MoD accusing the Ukrainian Army of staging 'provocations' in the city of Sumy, involving staging mass executions of civilians to falsely accuse Russians sounds more than ominous - afaik, the Ukrainian Army has not re-entered Sumy yet
https://twitter.com/maxfras/status/1511307449457954820
You are right economically Le Pen is closer to Mélenchon but socially worlds apart and this will act as a block on vote transfers towards her in the second round .
The more I see, the analogy of a wife beater trying to explain himself at the police station keeps growing on me. They just make up more and more insane excuses, incredulous lies and wild counter accusations.
However now culture trumps economics post Brexit, Oxford West and Abingdon is LD and Putney Labour. While Leigh and Bolsover have gone Conservative
https://twitter.com/BeCuriousarabi/status/1511003334051872768?s=20&t=N57liT1JtixmEw3KqdO9ow
Their lockdown is ferocious. Children taken from parents - even babies. There are multiple videos showing riots and unrest: people fighting back
Of course Twitter, disinfo, etc, but there is too much evidence for it all to be fabulated. A somewhat perilous moment for the CCP. Zero Covid is ending in disaster
Perhaps the biggest similarity with Brexit is that it's a battle of differential turnout, and he needs to motivate people to go out and reelect him.
"If you don't know how to make a decision...you can remove Russia [from the security council], as an aggressor...or you can dissolve yourself altogether, if you can do nothing but talk."
https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1511357279777525765
https://twitter.com/KevinASchofield/status/1511316580298371079?s=20&t=s6feJWI45tuI18Ty1aVFnQ
@MarkHertling
·
16h
The RU forces - of various types - have suffered losses beyond comprehension. Some estimates have said 10-15%...I'd put it closer to 30-50% of the front line combat units.
This isn't a computer game, or stratego...those forces do not just leave one area to fight in another
https://twitter.com/MarkHertling/status/1511098971032375309
He needs to recreate Fear of Russia. That is the only way to do it
Le Pen 50%
Macron 34%
Behind the headline poll figures there is still a lot of anti Le Pen sentiment in the country.
They just have their place, and it isn't somewhere where there are currently no structures visible.
We have very little wild land in this country. We shouldn't ruin what little is left.
I fear we may be talking at cross purposes as to what wild land actually is...
This is Fisherfield Forest:
How many wind turbines are appropriate? You could definitely site some on the flatter parts of Ruadh Stac Beag (left). This is not a National Park. You could definitely argue that 99.99% of the population will never go there.
You could probably create a hydro scheme while you are at it.
I actually think the key determinant is age really and the level of pensioner voting for the Conservatives is now somewhat unique to Britain.
If you were paranoid about external (or internal) threats capitalising on this weakness to take bites out of Russia, there is a sick logic to going as brutal and indiscriminate as possible in Ukraine, encourager les autres etc…
Unless of course the consequences were clearly communicated by the West ahead of time. The dilly dallying in Europe over hydrocarbon sanctions hardly sends a strong message does it.