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Barely a third of voters back the Rwanda immigration plan – politicalbetting.com
Barely a third of voters back the Rwanda immigration plan – politicalbetting.com
I am convinced that the “process illegal immigrants in Rwanda” plan is not a serious policy but Johnson throwing a dead cat onto the table in order to get the subject off his party gate fines.
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"An unpublished survey of 1,867 skeletons from sixty-one sites in Britain likewise documents an increase in body height after the end of Roman rule. These findings reinforce the general impression conveyed by a more eclectic long-term survey of stature in different parts of Europe that identifies troughs during the Roman period and the High Middle Ages and peaks in the post Roman period and in the wake of the Black Death."
What we can learn from evidence like this is that in times of high inequality, which is what happens when extractive regimes hold hegemonic power, the average citizen suffers. Empires is an extremely bad system of government for normal people, and the continued sense of nostalgia and romance around them is a function of the narrative focus on the elites, who, of course, benefit hugely from such a system of government.
The Ministry of Defence of Ukraine reminds the russian navy that the Black Sea straits are closed for entry only. The part of your fleet that remains afloat still has a way out.
https://twitter.com/DefenceU/status/1514941186397683715
I didn't say it was good to be ruled by them. I hate the expression, but you've clearly been triggered for some reason into seeing more there than I wrote. I said there were worse people to be ruled by, that doesn't mean it was good or nice.
Good evening
I haven't posted since early yesterday as I was at a family funeral all day yesterday and have been out most of today
However, I have concluded the following:
Conservative mps need to replace Boris ASAP
The Rwanda refugee scheme seems very controversial and I am not sure it will work or boost the conservatives as some think
I expect the lib dems to do spectacularly well in may, labour ok, and conservatives to have a nightmare
I cannot see past Starmer as next pm especially if the conservatives do not act against Boris and Rishi and even then, the momentum is with Starmer heading a minority government probably with lib dem support
I genuinely do not know who I will vote for in 24, but my single vote is not going to make any difference as labour should come out on top
I hope labour recover in Scotland gaining seats and further diminishing the SNP and independence
If I lived in Scotland, as I once did, I would vote for the union candidate against the SNP, irrespective of party
This is a tired government out of ideas and it is silly to say Boris must remain in post because of Ukraine, as he could be incapacitated in one way or another that would require a new PM anyway
I do not see Starmer as an inspiring leader but he may not need to be as the conservative party self destruct
Anyway I hope everyone enjoys their Good Friday evening
Happy Easter
President Joe Biden will travel to Seattle next Friday in his first visit as president, according to the White House.
While details have yet to be announced, the visit will center on the administration’s efforts “to continue bringing down costs for American families and building a more resilient economy,” according to the White House.
The visit comes amid sagging national approval numbers for the president, and growing worries among Democrats that inflation will cost the party control of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections.
Biden has blamed the inflation spike on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden last visited Seattle in November 2019 while campaigning in the Democratic presidential primaries. He attended a fundraiser at the home of Amazon executive David Zapolsky.
Additional details were expected to be released about the visit in the coming days.
This is the Haaretz article about how the Israeli scheme was set up - it sounds very similar.
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/israel-to-pay-rwanda-5-000-for-every-asylum-seeker-deported-there-1.5466805
This is an article about how it went wrong:
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/asylum-seekers-who-left-israel-for-rwanda-warn-those-remaining-don-t-1.5785996
Gwynt y Môr (Welsh: meaning sea wind) is a 576-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm located off the coast of Wales and is the fifth largest operating offshore windfarm in the world. The farm has 160 wind turbines of 150 metres (490 ft) tip height above mean sea level.
If it felt like an attack on you, I apologise, it wasn't intended that way but I can see how it might have seemed that way.
Maybe it is just a case that people would rather the boats were stopped, rather than the government spend billions on flying plane loads of people to Rwanda.
Or perhaps the government are chasing the voters of 6 years ago - trying to resucitate the Brexit magic. But the fact is that lots of Brexit voters are dying due to old age, and this is only going to gather pace as the years go on.
Seriously. Look at what Big G has open-heartedly just posted. And as I mentioned this morning, a close friend of mine who is a lifelong tory voter, arch monarchist, proud Briton, thinks it's 'totally appalling.'
Big G - we may have our differences but I'm sorry to hear about the family funeral. Hope you are okay.
He can leave actually trying to win the next general election until after he has secured his core vote and leadership
Whether it is or not is irrelevant to this particular point. It sounds cruel, and most people aren't.
Yes, a (slim) majority don't want "more immigration" and "illegals" but they don't want to feel cruel either. A not inconsiderable number of "don't knows" will be in that boat too.
THE SNP has been criticised by opposition politicians over out-of-date information on their website that suggested students could vote twice in next month’s election.
In a "handy guide" on registering how to vote, Nicola Sturgeon’s party said that "a person who has two homes (like a university student who has a term-time address and lives at home during holidays) can register to vote at both addresses if they’re in two different council areas, and can vote in the local elections for the two different councils."
While that's true in England, it's not true north of the border. The law changed late last year.
The Electoral Commission says students now "need to choose one address and vote in only that area" when voting in a council election.
They warn that voting in more than one location “is a criminal offence.”
https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/20073042.row-snp-tells-students-can-vote-twice-mays-council-elections/?ref=twtrec
https://acoup.blog/2022/02/11/collections-rome-decline-and-fall-part-iii-things/
Britain may have enjoyed a brief sweet spot, where it was no longer paying taxes to Rome, but things did fall apart after the mid Fifth century. By the mid Sixth century, Britain must have been like the world of Mad Max.
Read Lord Wolfson's resignation letter and understand that many of us share his sentiments and words
https://twitter.com/DXWQC/status/1514280176636633090?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1514280176636633090|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https://d-35573752523818653632.ampproject.net/2203172113000/frame.html
10% of Conservative voters strongly oppose it. That's about 3% of voters overall. Now, if they oppose it enough to change their vote (and my impression is that this has cut through among those who've heard it in a really visceral way... those who dislike it really think it's evil), that's more votes than the Conservatives can afford to lose. After all, 43% is a triumphant landslide and 33% is a one-way ticket to Oppositionsville.
Politically, it might work, in the short term at least. But it's not Brexit redux. The thing about Brexit was that Leave won because they had heart arguments, and very very few people had passionate feels about Remain. (Ironically, by going bull-in-a-china-shop about it, the government may have created people who do.) For the assylum changes, the heart arguments are mostly on the anti-government side.
Besides, until yesterday, Priti Patel was about the least popular member of the government. Half the population hated what she said, and the other half despised her inablilty to convert her horrible words into action. If this mad plan dies on its bum, and there are many ways it can do that, that same toxic combination will spread to the rest of the government.
The SNP told the Herald they had simply replicated the Electoral Commission advice that was in place at the time.
Until April 14, the Electoral Commission's website told students that if their home and university addresses were in two different council areas, they could vote in council elections in both areas.
“This is because they are separate elections.”
The SNP says that when the Electoral Commission updated its website, they subsequently asked the party to do the same.
There was a retreat into the towns and cities while the country was increasingly abandoned to bandits and others and this obviously accelerated with the collapse of the security apparatus after 410.
The Romano-British successors lacked, it seems, the will rather than the means to organise the defence of Britain once Honorius had withdrawn the final troops and used paid mercenaries to try to hold the line which didn't end well as we know. To what extent Vortigern, if he existed, held any kind of real political power is uncertain.
I can only imagine the psychological shock for the Romano-British to find themselves without Imperial protection for the first time in nearly five centuries, to see Hadrian's Wall abandoned to the Picts and Scots who could presumably roam at will far to the south forcing the populace into fortified and isolated towns.
I think not, personally, since I've regained my faith in the British people, but my point is it could be. That only a minority like it doesn't mean that it isn't.
At that point, I don't think anyone in Rome thought that the retreat from Britain was permanent, and I expect there were probably people in Britain who expected imperial control to be reasserted. The Notitia Dignitatum, of 423, still lists Britain as a part of the empire.
Britain is a most unusual case because of the totality of collapse. Throughout most of Western Europe, one can point to institutions or noble families that long outlived the fall of the Western Empire, but in Britain, everything vanished, pretty much. My guess is that Southern Germany and Austria was similar to Britain at the time, judging by the Life of St. Severinus
The concept being that plans and concepts fail at first contact with the enemy, and the failed senior officers get replaced (by either forced retirement or death) with fresher, bloodied officers.
The question is whether Russia is going through this process: the replacements for the dead senior officers (let alone the injured and forcibly retired ones) are better because their ideas and plans have been forged in this war.
Somehow I doubt it; at least in the timescales this war has allowed. I do wonder if the rather (ahem) inaccurate story being given out by Russian media is the same one being given to, and believed by, the senior officers. In which case they are screwed.
I did see what I can only assume is a Ukrainian tractor - they really are going to some lengths and heights to catch those Russian tanks!
For three days, several booby traps left behind by Russians didn't allow to recover the mutilated body of Vadim Postolyuk, 27, found in Poliske on April 5.
https://mobile.twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1515017420083187719
I like to think of this in terms of the ice age. The weight of the glaciers across northern Europe is still being expressed today, with isostatic rebound causing tremors and changes in sea level. You could say that the frozen dead weight of the ice was a stabilising factor, and the sudden (geologically) removal of that caused all kinds of problems. And in a sense, that is correct. But when weighing up whether you'd like to live in say Aberdeenshire today versus when it was covered in an icesheet a mile thick, it's no comparison.
Evidence of transition difficulties can be set alongside evidence of transition benefits, but I do still think that the overall effect of living under an empire is worse than not.
"Tom, you are not a wartime consigliere."
Harsh, esp on an adopted son, but it was necessary.
Edit: perhaps I exaggerate. Add the odd Times leader, and ahalf a paperback written by a C4 journalist.
* The windfarm is currently be-calmed
https://www.northwalestidalenergy.com/news/tidal-lagoon-report-delivers-major-boost-for-7-billion-north-wales-scheme
The fact that in the countryside, it is spectacular how many Anglo Saxon sites are built next to the old Villa sites (and ever more so as modern tech helps us find more of both) and how many Anglo Saxon churches are built from villa walls, on Roman sites...
I don't buy the "rapid, wholesale collapse, and population replacement" story, even among elites.
It is noteworthy how many of the faces of dead and captured Russians are very 'eastern' in appearance. It's almost as though Russia is depleting its regions of its young men rather than its western cities.
(I'm aware this might be seen as racist, but the pictures do give that impression - as does the info on where the men are coming from ...)
How woke is that? In contrast to Putin's Putinism. Esp. Vladimir the Terrible's war on Woke.
Putin & fellow war criminals can keep their racism and bigotry. Makes great contrast to Zelensky's & Ukrainian's humanity and decency.
https://www.oxfordshirecotswolds.org/things-to-do/attractions/widford-st-oswalds-church-p457601
Its shameful.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10721527/Shanghai-rises-against-Communist-Covid-chaos-residents-scuffle-hazmat-suited-police.html
Any idea what happened with today's COVID stats?
Deaths have jumped the last day or two.
Being furiously by remoaner twitter
They are running out of ideas. It is evident.
Russia is throwing her minorities into the the meat grinder, see kamilkazani on twitter who is himself Tatar.
My old Russian teacher is Russian-Tartar, I haven't dared get in touch.
I share your view on Bakewell, and the other towns which surround the Peak District, a bit. But my knee is awaiting an op and my wife's back was sore and frankly for the sheer joy of being at large unencumbered by children we could have been anywhere and it would have been wonderful.
We know that the emperors also instituted radical land and military reforms, in response to the Arabs, in a way that just didn't happen in the West. Land was taken from the magnates, in many cases, and redistributed to Anatolian peasants, in return for military service. One can say with some confidence that life for a the average Eastern peasant in 800 was rather better than in 400.
I love that area. The Limestone Way descending down through the gully into Castleton is sublime for a number of reasons,
Rwanda: Genocide
I think that explains the polling.
By, total collapse, I mean the total collapse of all Roman institutions (including the Church) in a way that did not happen, in say, France, Spain, or Italy.
I agree that the British population was not replaced, but I think the evidence does point to a big decline in numbers.
It sure beats the living daylights out of discussing the Rwanda nonsense.
If successful, that gets BJ another 2 years in Downing Street. The General Election? That's for another day.
It is quite something to see that huge windfarm at a standstill with not a breath of wind at present
Once that system collapsed due to the loss of markets in both the British cities and the export market (Britain was the second largest wheat producer in the Empire after Egypt) the countryside effectively emptied. This of course was also linked to the succession of plagues that swept across the Empire in the 4th century but basically there was no 'British' part of the Romano-British rural landscape to carry on - it had been wiped away by 3 centuries of Roman occupation and exploitation.
The Anglo-Saxon sites next to Roman villa sites is a bit misleading. The same geographic features which made sites suitable for a Roman villa (position, access to water and good farming land) also made them ideal for Saxon settlers. Indeed there is a lot of evidence for the Saxons avoiding the villa remains themselves until they had 'decontaminated' them - usually by burying their dead into them in the form of cremation urns. These are remarkably common and I excavated the earliest known example in Lincolnshire on my own site at Ancaster a couple of years ago.
Can I just say that I have had the theme tune of World at war and the somber voice of Laurence Olivier in my head the entire day after your contribution this morning.
Nearly 50 years on and I don’t think anything I have seen on TV came close to matching it. Surely the greatest documentary series of all time.
‘Down this road on a summer day in 1944, the soldiers came. Nobody lives here now. They stayed only a few hours. When they had gone, the community, which had lived for a thousand years, was dead. This is Oradour-sur-Glane, in France. The day the soldiers came, the people were gathered together. The men were taken to garages and barns, the women and children were led down this road, and they were driven into this church. Here, they heard the firing as their men were shot. Then they were killed too. A few weeks later, many of those who had done the killing were themselves dead, in battle. They never rebuilt Oradour. Its ruins are a memorial. Its martyrdom stands for thousands upon thousands of other martyrdoms in Poland, in Russia, in Burma, China, in a world at war.’
https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/jonathan-haidt-on-social-medias-havoc?s=r
Or
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-dishcast-with-andrew-sullivan/id1536984072
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/04/zelensky-kyiv-russia-war-ukrainian-survival-interview/629570/
I still haven't seen any comments that have not been predictable, or serious alternative suggestions - except essentially "open the borders" or "throw money at the Home Office".
Let's face it, the party isn't what it used to be. And people who saw themselves as Conservatives in the beforetimes have to decide how to respond to that.
Hell in the Pacific was a good series too, though.
The talking heads of those who were there would be much less numerous, mind.
There are very few boats coming across the Channel, there is no 'problem' at all. This is purely being whipped up by the right wing media.
"That a quarter of CON voters are opposed should be a concern."
Someone may already have said this in which case my apologies, but personally I find it of far greater concern that three quarters of Conservative voters are apparently not opposed.
If that is the case then the Tory party is morally bankrupt and has no right to survive (though of course, as is the nature of these things, it will).
some people in the UK obviously would be attracted to Le Pen, and some of those are conservative supporters, but nowhere near the 48% or whatever she is poling at in France.
Russian TV running a translated Tucker Carlson segment with Nigel Farage and lauding both for their stance on Russia.....
https://twitter.com/RespectIsVital/status/1514496802220818437
On e reasons that is posited for this is that the occupants were primarily foederati and their families who had arrived in the 4th century from the northern German lands that were later the source of the main AS migrations.
To me the interesting places are (as said) Youth Hostels - though my favourite is Beverley, where they let me hijack the lounge for a day to study once, B&Bs in characterful places run by characters, places with a real local pub nearby, and I expect that one or two of the small country house hotels are outstanding.
If you want a little town to wander round, perhaps Tideswell? Great carvings in the church:
That's interesting (and I suspect slavery is the key here, reducing the median height) but remember that human height diminished greatly when we moved from hunter-gathering to agriculture. Because domesticated animals gave us zoonotic plagues and diseases (!!) and the general life was probably tougher - Adam forced to hew and toil with the sweat of his brow
But who would seriously want to stop human evolution at the hunter-gathering stage?