So what do we think happens, if Russian forces in Ukraine encounter some random British special forces on a training mission?
Don't you mean lost British businessmen.....
There’s probably a fair few of those too. Make their Martinis shaken, not stirred.
Two more Russian Generals killed over the past day or so....incredibly unlucky that this keeps happening, in the same way anybody who crosses Putin becomes very unlucky.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
I agree with you Sandpit, Partygate is old hat and over egged now, the opposition parties will be better served now concentrating on the Governments response to the household bills crisis and Boris delusion about leading the world.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
Except that it’s provable that the UK has been providing both arms and extensive military training to Ukraine since 2014.
Sure, we didn’t spend the last few years shipping every surplus weapon in the arsenal to Kiev, but the UK has been one of the best performers in Europe (in sharp contrast to France and especially Germany) when it comes to helping out Ukraine.
Usual sh!t-stirring media, one expects better of the Sunday Times.
It's not shit stirring, it is former ministers and others, such as Defence ministers like Michael Fallon and Gerald Howarth, who have gone on the record.
Perhaps Putin believed he'd purchased key members of governing party - only to learn, he'd just rented them?
So what do we think happens, if Russian forces in Ukraine encounter some random British special forces on a training mission?
Don't you mean lost British businessmen.....
There’s probably a fair few of those too. Make their Martinis shaken, not stirred.
Two more Russian Generals killed over the past day or so....incredibly unlucky that this keeps happening, in the same way anybody who crosses Putin becomes very unlucky.
So what do we think happens, if Russian forces in Ukraine encounter some random British special forces on a training mission?
Don't you mean lost British businessmen.....
There’s probably a fair few of those too. Make their Martinis shaken, not stirred.
Two more Russian Generals killed over the past day or so....incredibly unlucky that this keeps happening, in the same way anybody who crosses Putin becomes very unlucky.
Mortality is quite high amongst oligarchs this year. You can't take it with you.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
— Former President DONALD TRUMP will appear at a rally tonight with J.D. VANCE, his endorsee in the Ohio GOP Senate primary making a Hail Mary push to win the nomination. Before Trump’s endorsement, Vance was lagging in the polls, short on cash and seen as an almost assured loser. But Trump’s nod, as our Natalie Allison reported Friday, has changed his fortunes “dramatically” and “upended one of the most contentious Republican primaries in the nation.”
Just over a week later, “more than $5 million in new donations have poured into a pro-Vance super PAC” and Vance “has taken the lead in polling for the first time since entering the crowded Republican primary in July.”
Still, Trump isn’t leaving anything to chance. The former president knows that this is the first major test of his post-presidency political power. If Vance loses, Trump will look weak and like he’s losing his grip on the GOP. It’s why the president is going the extra mile tonight — and why his son, DONALD TRUMP JR., has been campaigning like crazy for Vance this week and will keep at it next week.
There’s been intense blowback to Trump’s endorsement of Vance, who previously criticized the president and is viewed by some as a “Never Trumper” who’s now pandering to the ex-president. As the Columbus Dispatch notes, “thirty-three 2016 Trump delegates penned a letter calling on the former president to reconsider.”
“Unlike the other candidates in this race, J.D. Vance has not developed relationships with Republican voters and grassroots leaders that are crucial to win,” the letter read. “This endorsement of J.D. Vance is a betrayal to not only your Ohio supporters but Trump supporters across our great nation!”
The reaction has been most intense among allies of JOSH MANDEL, who was considered the frontrunner for a long time before Trump’s endorsement. Mandel plans to stump with Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas) next week and boasts the support of Club for Growth — which has landed on the ex-president’s bad side. Maggie Haberman reported earlier this week that when Trump learned the conservative group was still running ads highlighting Vance’s past criticism of him, he “had his assistant send [DAVID] McINTOSH a text saying, ‘Go f— yourself.’”
The reply from the Club? “We are increasing our ad buy,” a spokesman told our colleague Natalie.
Consider it war: “Dave McIntosh motivated Don Jr. to not only push J.D. over the finish line but tear down Mandel in the process," a source familiar told our Meridith McGraw.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
“ the possibility that things will turn around “.
You do realise that statement is pure fantasy land? A financial storm is about to hit voters the like of which this country has not seen since the Second World War. An election this June is the one last good month the Tories have before their credibility is shredded for a generation. Looking at it any other way is Mr McCawber fantasy thinking.
After posting what you just posted, for your next trick I suggest you go down onto the beach and demonstrate you can stop the tide coming in. 🙂
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
So what do we think happens, if Russian forces in Ukraine encounter some random British special forces on a training mission?
Don't you mean lost British businessmen.....
There’s probably a fair few of those too. Make their Martinis shaken, not stirred.
Two more Russian Generals killed over the past day or so....incredibly unlucky that this keeps happening, in the same way anybody who crosses Putin becomes very unlucky.
Mortality is quite high amongst oligarchs this year. You can't take it with you.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
“ the possibility that things will turn around “.
You do realise that statement is pure fantasy land? A financial storm is about to hit voters the like of which this country has not scene since the Second World War. An election this June is the one last good month the Tories have before their credibility is shredded for a generation. Looking at it any other way is Mr McCawber fantasy thinking.
After posting what you just posted, for your next trick I suggest you go down onto the beach and demonstrate you can stop the tide coming in. 🙂
I am not suggesting that these things will happen, merely demonstrating what other people think. We’ll see, but I note that the early election story on this thread is 2023. Fair play for making a prediction and giving reasons, but I don’t think you are right on this.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
No apparently Ms Rayner is fully clothed, but apparently a pervy old man looking up her skirt is still her fault.
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
No apparently Ms Rayner is fully clothed, but apparently a pervy old man looking up her skirt is still her fault.
£70k is peanuts, but why do they even need to outsource such a programme. Its made in the BBC studios and is just 4 talking heads from foreign media outlets based in the UK getting £100 an appearance. If you are already have the studio / setup up, doesn't require any outside expertise, creative script writing, VFX, etc.
So what do we think happens, if Russian forces in Ukraine encounter some random British special forces on a training mission?
Don't you mean lost British businessmen.....
There’s probably a fair few of those too. Make their Martinis shaken, not stirred.
Two more Russian Generals killed over the past day or so....incredibly unlucky that this keeps happening, in the same way anybody who crosses Putin becomes very unlucky.
Mortality is quite high amongst oligarchs this year. You can't take it with you.
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
If I remember it right, the BBFC originally classified it R18 because of that scene, and there was a huge row between the distributor and the censor as to whether it was artistically justified, rather than being porn.
£70k is peanuts, but why do they even need to outsource such a programme. Its made in the BBC studios and is just 4 talking heads from foreign media outlets based in the UK getting £100 an appearance. If you are already have the studio / setup up, doesn't require any outside expertise, creative script writing, VFX, etc.
We have all heard the story about how he used to do his Telegraph story. So it is unsurprising. But was anybody really reading his GQ column for actual motoring reviews? I bit like some of the restaurant critics, who don't actually review the food, its all about writing an amusing tale. Its entertainment.
So what do we think happens, if Russian forces in Ukraine encounter some random British special forces on a training mission?
Don't you mean lost British businessmen.....
There’s probably a fair few of those too. Make their Martinis shaken, not stirred.
Two more Russian Generals killed over the past day or so....incredibly unlucky that this keeps happening, in the same way anybody who crosses Putin becomes very unlucky.
Mortality is quite high amongst oligarchs this year. You can't take it with you.
Wow, being an oligarch is almost as bad for you as being a General.
At some point they are going to all work out what their common problem is.
Immediate subordinates of an incompetent fool failing to defenestrate him even though it's clearly in their stark and immediate interest to do it now, yesterday already? Only in Russia..
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
£70k is peanuts, but why do they even need to outsource such a programme. Its made in the BBC studios and is just 4 talking heads from foreign media outlets based in the UK getting £100 an appearance. If you are already have the studio / setup up, doesn't require any outside expertise, creative script writing, VFX, etc.
It’s about the cheapest program they produce. Almost as if the executives want to poke the politicians who control the funding.
Sure, its what the BBC always does when any suggestion of reform, they pick some programme and go full woe is me, we can't afford it, its the cuts...
My point was more, why are they even outsourcing it in the first place. It is literally 4 foreign journalists sitting around talking for 30 mins, in the BBC studio, filmed with BBC cameras. They then pay an ex-BBC employees company £70k a year to do I presume do a spot of editing and the call around for guests. Smells like jobs for the boys, tax efficient limited company etc.
We have all heard the story about how he used to do his Telegraph story. So it is unsurprising. But was anybody really reading his GQ column for actual motoring reviews? I bit like some of the restaurant critics, who don't actually review the food, its all about writing an amusing tale. Its entertainment.
The story does include that the cost in parking fines was worth it to the employer, and so implicitly was the bullshit.
But then that was the calculation, wasn't it - Boris's downsides, the cost and bullshit, was considered worth it to enough people in 2019. Now?
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
Prime Minister ‘plots early General Election to see off his rivals’: https://t.co/3hh46KV6O6
It seems to be silly season in the papers tonight.
No, no, it's an excellent plan
Would be classic Johnson to plunge the country into a GE simply to stave off an investigation by the Privileges committee into his own lying.
I suppose it is pointless pointing out that only this week we were being told by his Cabinet supporters that now was not the time to change to have a leadership contest because of Ukraine.
But a GE in which the entire administration could change? Oh yes, that's fine.
£70k is peanuts, but why do they even need to outsource such a programme. Its made in the BBC studios and is just 4 talking heads from foreign media outlets based in the UK getting £100 an appearance. If you are already have the studio / setup up, doesn't require any outside expertise, creative script writing, VFX, etc.
It’s about the cheapest program they produce. Almost as if the executives want to poke the politicians who control the funding.
Sure, its what the BBC always does when any suggestion of reform, they pick some programme and go full woe is me, we can't afford it, its the cuts...
My point was more, why are they even outsourcing it in the first place. It is literally 4 foreign journalists sitting around talking for 30 mins, in the BBC studio, filmed with BBC cameras. They then pay an ex-BBC employees company £70k a year to do I presume do a spot of editing and the call around for guests.
Isn't it that the "internal market" at the BBC makes the charge to be the full allocated cost, not the marginal cost of a spare studio, hence in-house productions are "expensive" compared to contracted out?
We get much the same issues with contracting out in the NHS.
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
If I remember it right, the BBFC originally classified it R18 because of that scene, and there was a huge row between the distributor and the censor as to whether it was artistically justified, rather than being porn.
The most obscene thing about it was a mooby Michael Douglas wearing a v neck au naturel to an LA nightclub.
We have all heard the story about how he used to do his Telegraph story. So it is unsurprising. But was anybody really reading his GQ column for actual motoring reviews? I bit like some of the restaurant critics, who don't actually review the food, its all about writing an amusing tale. Its entertainment.
I’m sure if you’re the kind of person who likes Johnson’s writing you would find them entertaining.
Doesn’t alter the fact that, if in those columns he wrote as if he’d driven the cars he didn’t drive, he was lying. Seemingly repeatedly. Trivial perhaps, you might think, and in the grand scheme of things it is. But if he made out he’d driven the damn things, it is another example of his willingness to lie, to bullshit. An indicator of his character.
"Yes, but she [ Jo Swinson] increased the Lib Dem vote 60%."
She didn't. The Lib Dem vote in 2019 was 4.2% up on GE 2017.
In my view, she'd have done better to state the truth: that she wouldn't win, but that in many seats, voting LibDem was the ONLY option for keeping the two worst candidates for PM in living memory out of power. That forcing Johnson's, Corbyn's (and her own) tribalist supporters to confront reality could ensure a Hunt or Starmer-led Alliance that'd keep Brexit Britain in the Single Market.
But it wasn't just Labour and the Tories that would have none of this: the LibDem 2019 Conference was almost messianic in its determination to vote itself out of any real ability to win any more seats.
The question now is whether the Lib Dems' extraordinary success in leading sensible, Johnsonism-thrashing, alliances in Oxfordshire, Cambridge and Cumbria can be extended elsewhere this May. And then whether that model can help restore grown up government to the country as a whole in 2023/2024.
The LibDem vote rose from 2,371,861 to 3,696,419, an increase of 56%.
The LibDem vote share rose by 4.2 percentage points.
Yes, when I say % I mean percent. Obviously the Lib Dem vote didn't rise by 60pp. Also, when I did the calculation, I didn't bother to type all the digits in, I just did 3.7/2.3. The point was to give a rough idea for the increase in Lib Dem support at the 2019 election.
£70k is peanuts, but why do they even need to outsource such a programme. Its made in the BBC studios and is just 4 talking heads from foreign media outlets based in the UK getting £100 an appearance. If you are already have the studio / setup up, doesn't require any outside expertise, creative script writing, VFX, etc.
It’s about the cheapest program they produce. Almost as if the executives want to poke the politicians who control the funding.
Sure, its what the BBC always does when any suggestion of reform, they pick some programme and go full woe is me, we can't afford it, its the cuts...
My point was more, why are they even outsourcing it in the first place. It is literally 4 foreign journalists sitting around talking for 30 mins, in the BBC studio, filmed with BBC cameras. They then pay an ex-BBC employees company £70k a year to do I presume do a spot of editing and the call around for guests.
Isn't it that the "internal market" at the BBC makes the charge to be the full allocated cost, not the marginal cost of a spare studio, hence in-house productions are "expensive" compared to contracted out?
We get much the same issues with contracting out in the NHS.
I don't think that's correct, but as it says in the article, they are just going to have another programme of a similar nature, but only BBC staff. And appearance fees for journalists on those shows is literally £100 (and not all charge it, as its good advertising for their outlet), so they aren't really saving on that.
My guess is more that its an (ex)BBC producer, who probably pitched it as an idea way back and the condition was it was made by his company. Jobs for the boys. And they just carried on that deal for 20 years. And although he might have Dateline London as the trademark, the programme format is so generic, the BBC could have in-housed it at any time under London Dateline.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
I read your post several times and my only conclusion is that you have also just been at a party.
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
If I remember it right, the BBFC originally classified it R18 because of that scene, and there was a huge row between the distributor and the censor as to whether it was artistically justified, rather than being porn.
The most obscene thing about it was a mooby Michael Douglas wearing a v neck au naturel to an LA nightclub.
Well I've noticed it pop up on the Odeon site as screening in some cinemas at the moment, 30th anniversary, so everyone should go and see it and report on its obscenity level.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
The reaction to this has nothing to do with a self-loathing problem. I think there are people who get off a little at the idea the UK is a laughing stock, or up there with the worst in everything, and I criticise that, but that doesn't mean getting het up about hypocrisy and deceit (or, for the government explanation, stupidity and incompetence instead), even though manifested in petty incidences, is a part of that.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
Except that it’s provable that the UK has been providing both arms and extensive military training to Ukraine since 2014.
Sure, we didn’t spend the last few years shipping every surplus weapon in the arsenal to Kiev, but the UK has been one of the best performers in Europe (in sharp contrast to France and especially Germany) when it comes to helping out Ukraine.
Usual sh!t-stirring media, one expects better of the Sunday Times.
It's not shit stirring, it is former ministers and others, such as Defence ministers like Michael Fallon and Gerald Howarth, who have gone on the record.
Hoping to achieve what exactly?
Boris Johnson did state at PMQs this week, he is leading the world in the fight against Putin.
No you are not Boris, you delusional Buffoon. 😠. You are in fact doing nothing different than any other leader of Tory’s today would do, and no different than Starmer would do if PM in this crisis. In fact if we had a less lazy and more trustworthy PM than you Boris, we could expect an even better job of it actually going on behind the scenes.
Does anyone on PB want to agree with Boris, he is leading the world in the fight against Putin?
He’s getting delusional on this isn’t he?
I think the PM was quoting the Ukranian PM Zelensky. The UK has been training the Ukranian military since 2014, and there’s a huge amount of mutual respect between the countries at a military level.
Boris has certainly been leading the European response, with Macron in election mode and that prat in Germany more worried about upsetting Putin. Johnson has also been key to getting Biden and the Americans involved, against a domestic background of not wanting to get involved in more foreign wars.
yes the usual “compared to Germany and France Boris is leading the world against Putin etc”. No Boris wasn’t quoting Zelenskyy, Boris genuinely believes what he said at PMQs - he is deluded enough to think he is leading the world in fight against Putin.
No we havn’t done too bad in supplying arms, though we were slow at first on sanctions and on oligarch’s and still not got it good on those needing refuge after fleeing, but that’s basically because under Petal this is the most useless home office EVER - that’s not just me saying it, that’s what her cabinet colleagues told her!
What has Boris and his government actually done that tops the doggedness and bravery of the Poles or the financial largess of the US? In fact, when you discount for pain and exposure to Russia Gas, have we really outstripped the EU?
The only world this lazy lying oaf Boris is leading is the world of delusion in his own head. The opposition party leaders should now pick him up on that claim at next PMQs and call him out as over egging it.
It’s called soft power, and the UK still has f***loads of it in Ukraine.
Amongst all the horrors, this has been one of the quietly satisfying points about this conflict. Whilst Germany and France were quite happy to suck up to Putin over the last decade, the UK were training the army in Ukraine to fight him. The Ukrainians understand that, and many people in England would rather not come to terms with it, they profoundly dislike the idea that we could have been doing something right (for a change).
I'd rate giving their citizens a place to live so their women and children can survive the bombing rates at least as highly as giving them weapons. My Brother who lives in Amsterdam has taken a family into their home as have millions around Europe including Germany and France. The British government has made it almost impossible,. Cut the chauvinism. It's sick making.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
I read your post several times and my only conclusion is that you have also just been at a party.
Every night has been a party this week! I have been house sitting (farm sitting) for my parents and had an amazing week left in charge as the boss. My girlfriend is here too trying to work from home, though about 180 miles from home, and I was trying to improve the Wi-Fi and wiped it out altogether so she had to tether her laptop to her phone. And then a friend came to dinner and she managed to fix the Wi-Fi for us in about 30 seconds 😂
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
That's a wilful misunderstanding if ever I read one. The principle that politicians should not break the laws they make, should not lie as frequently and brazenly as Boris does, and should not get away with it if they do, should not be a cause of embarrassment. The fact that the snubbing of these principles is animating the public is a sign of public esteem in our institutions and a general sense that we can and should expect better.
If we want to compare the putative indifference other countries would show to similar events, we should note any difference with pride. Others may accept the debasement of public life, but we do not. If some fuckwit writing in the Telegraph doesn't see that, it's because she's one of that set who are blind to misdeeds because the rosette is the right colour. In other words, a shill.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
Yes that’s the most part for sure, but I give you Beth Rigby as evidence of the media not following the rules, and almost certainly pissed at Brexit.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
That's a wilful misunderstanding if ever I read one. The principle that politicians should adhere to the laws they make, should not lie as frequently and brazenly as Boris does, and should not be a cause of embarrassment. The fact that the snubbing of these principles is animating the public is a sign of public esteem in our institutions and a general sense that we can and should expect better.
If we want to compare the putative indifference other countries would show to similar events, we should note any difference with pride. Others may accept the debasement of public life, but we do not. If some fuckwit writing in the Telegraph doesn't see that, it's because she's one of that set who are blind to misdeeds because the rosette is the right colour. In other words, a shill.
There is something rather obsessive about Partygate. I do think ordinary people who were fined thousands of pounds ought to have the money returned to them though.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
That's a wilful misunderstanding if ever I read one. The principle that politicians should not break the laws they make, should not lie as frequently and brazenly as Boris does, and should not get away with it if they do, should not be a cause of embarrassment. The fact that the snubbing of these principles is animating the public is a sign of public esteem in our institutions and a general sense that we can and should expect better.
If we want to compare the putative indifference other countries would show to similar events, we should note any difference with pride. Others may accept the debasement of public life, but we do not. If some fuckwit writing in the Telegraph doesn't see that, it's because she's one of that set who are blind to misdeeds because the rosette is the right colour. In other words, a shill.
If Ms Strimpel thinks the French wouldn't be as equally fecking angry as we are if Macron had repeatedly broken his own curfew laws and gone out to specially opened bars to get pissed every other evening then I have yellow vest to sell her.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
And there is a certain amount of sauce for the goose here. The same logic can be applied to some of Johnson's defenders; so grateful for Brexit, so anxious that a post-Boris Conservative leader will backslide, that they have to overlook behaviour and failings that they wouldn't accept from any other PM or government.
£70k is peanuts, but why do they even need to outsource such a programme. Its made in the BBC studios and is just 4 talking heads from foreign media outlets based in the UK getting £100 an appearance. If you are already have the studio / setup up, doesn't require any outside expertise, creative script writing, VFX, etc.
It’s about the cheapest program they produce. Almost as if the executives want to poke the politicians who control the funding.
Sure, its what the BBC always does when any suggestion of reform, they pick some programme and go full woe is me, we can't afford it, its the cuts...
My point was more, why are they even outsourcing it in the first place. It is literally 4 foreign journalists sitting around talking for 30 mins, in the BBC studio, filmed with BBC cameras. They then pay an ex-BBC employees company £70k a year to do I presume do a spot of editing and the call around for guests. Smells like jobs for the boys, tax efficient limited company etc.
If it’s £70k, I’m not too bothered, that’s the cost of one junior producer salary, or a part time producer spending a few hours a week on guest booking and final production.
Bigger issues are the BBC executives and ‘presenters’ still trying to bust IR35 on mid-six-figure salaries, and the senior management determination to engineer a row with the government over the licence fee.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
That's a wilful misunderstanding if ever I read one. The principle that politicians should adhere to the laws they make, should not lie as frequently and brazenly as Boris does, and should not be a cause of embarrassment. The fact that the snubbing of these principles is animating the public is a sign of public esteem in our institutions and a general sense that we can and should expect better.
If we want to compare the putative indifference other countries would show to similar events, we should note any difference with pride. Others may accept the debasement of public life, but we do not. If some fuckwit writing in the Telegraph doesn't see that, it's because she's one of that set who are blind to misdeeds because the rosette is the right colour. In other words, a shill.
There is something rather obsessive about Partygate. I do think ordinary people who were fined thousands of pounds ought to have the money returned to them though.
The “ordinary people” fined £10k for organising events, were either famous people organising parties, or venues deliberately costing the fine into the price of the illegal event.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
And the one where head of ethics brought in karaoke machine etc.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
And the one where head of ethics brought in karaoke machine etc.
I can't think of the last time I was in the office and someone didn't bring a karaoke machine. Some days there are three, four rival karaokes going on on different floors. Totally normal working day.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
That's a wilful misunderstanding if ever I read one. The principle that politicians should adhere to the laws they make, should not lie as frequently and brazenly as Boris does, and should not be a cause of embarrassment. The fact that the snubbing of these principles is animating the public is a sign of public esteem in our institutions and a general sense that we can and should expect better.
If we want to compare the putative indifference other countries would show to similar events, we should note any difference with pride. Others may accept the debasement of public life, but we do not. If some fuckwit writing in the Telegraph doesn't see that, it's because she's one of that set who are blind to misdeeds because the rosette is the right colour. In other words, a shill.
There is something rather obsessive about Partygate. I do think ordinary people who were fined thousands of pounds ought to have the money returned to them though.
The “ordinary people” fined £10k for organising events, were either famous people organising parties, or venues deliberately costing the fine into the price of the illegal event.
I'm fairly sure that some luckless students won £10k fines for the outrageous crime of having parties at their student houses. IIRC, at least one student actually died after they tried to escape over a roof from the police breaking up a party at a student house, and fell.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
And the one where head of ethics brought in karaoke machine etc.
I can't think of the last time I was in the office and someone didn't bring a karaoke machine. Some days there are three, four rival karaokes going on on different floors. Totally normal working day.
I’ve never had an office job. I used to work in a pub and in a charity shop. That’s very different.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
Really, the nature of the party is a red herring. We can stroke our metaphorical beard and philsophise about what makes something a party, but what we do know is there were multiple incidents of lawmakers breaking their own laws, allowing laws to be broken, lying about the lawbreaking. Recourse to semantics is really the last room in the bunker, and it's not going to save him.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
The email states "we thought it would be a good idea" given the nice weather etc etc.
Who is "we"?
Reynolds sent the email, but unless he is a royal personage using the royal 'we' then others were involved.
It went to 100s.
iirc 30 or 40 turned up.
If that isn't a 10K fine along the lines of the Nottingham students then I don't know what is. Clearly not just an after work thing with people who were already sitting around at the same five desks in the same room. It was organised. And it was social. And it was an event.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
Really, the nature of the party is a red herring. We can stroke our metaphorical beard and philsophise about what makes something a party, but what we do know is there were multiple incidents of lawmakers breaking their own laws, allowing laws to be broken, lying about the lawbreaking. Recourse to semantics is really the last room in the bunker, and it's not going to save him.
Exactly.
The students who were fined £1000s had no recourse to philosophising about what actually constitutes a party. They just got the 'standard issue kicking at their door'.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
Really, the nature of the party is a red herring. We can stroke our metaphorical beard and philsophise about what makes something a party, but what we do know is there were multiple incidents of lawmakers breaking their own laws, allowing laws to be broken, lying about the lawbreaking. Recourse to semantics is really the last room in the bunker, and it's not going to save him.
Exactly.
The students who were fined £1000s had no recourse to philosophising about what actually constitutes a party. They just got the 'standard issue kicking at their door'.
That's their fault for not knowing someone powerful and connected, probably from a Public school. I call that a valuable life lesson for them.
I think lost in what was a party, what wasn't a party, was the cake taken out of the tupperware container, it misses the central issue. It absolutely clear Boris fostered a culture where it was totally normal for staff to have a drinks on a regular basis in the office, and to excess, let your hair down, nudge nudge wink wink, all working hard chaps and chapesses, you need to relax.
As the boss, its a bit iffy in normal times, but in the time when the government message was firmly you can't even go out for more than your daily jog, while only essential worker should be out and about and no hanging about when you aren't, that was totally the wrong (and illegal) culture being promoted.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
Really, the nature of the party is a red herring. We can stroke our metaphorical beard and philsophise about what makes something a party, but what we do know is there were multiple incidents of lawmakers breaking their own laws, allowing laws to be broken, lying about the lawbreaking. Recourse to semantics is really the last room in the bunker, and it's not going to save him.
“ it's not going to save him. “
I’m thinking now it’s not actually going to bring him down is it?
His enemies, not all on the opposition benches though they’ve certainly had a lot of fun hollowing him out with this, and it has greatly hollowed him out. But it’s going to take this and several more things to also hollow him out to actually cost him the next election, or even less likely, the chance to lead into that election.
Not to say other damaging things can’t come along?
Wallpaper gate was damaging too, because of the cash for access element - is that the only instance of cash for access that can emerge from this money mad lazy government?
Once the current popular “arms to Ukraine” has become history the pre war closeness to Kremlin money could prove damaging too.
Covid enquiry, late locking down due to not understanding it couldn’t be dealt with herd immunity will certainly undermine the claim of getting big calls right, not least any sense of colossal waste with massive contracts to mates, loans to criminals, lack of value for money or avoiding proper scrutiny of contracting.
Even if they have a good recession and cost of living crisis between now and end of this parliament getting big calls right, the voters will still not be kind about the pain, there will always be opportunity for opposition to say you never done enough. Osborne said the roof wasn’t fixed when sun was shining in the most successful Captain Hindsight manoeuvre of the last 20 years.
In short Partygate isn’t going to hollow out Boris to end his premiership, but many other hollowing out opportunities could finish the job, some of them we may currently be blissfully unaware of.
On the Boris thing the Tories should engineer a recall election.
If he wins that kind of takes the bite out of the issue and they know they've got a winner to stick with for the full term so they can stop leaking scandals about each other.
If he loses they get rid of him without it being strictly their fault.
Probably not, but I reckon it's got a slim chance of being one now and no chance of it being one in a three-way contest. So fair play and smart politics.
@CorrectHorseBattery - Starmer is boring and unappealing. We are heading for 1992 rather than 2010 in reverse. The Tories will just about get to 310 maybe as high as 325-326 in 2024. The first clue will be in two weeks time when voters will come out motivated by a dislike of the main stream media to vote and will stick with Boris as a Two figured gesture to the media and their poster boy Sir Keir.
I agree that we are likely to see 1992 rather than 2010 next time around. But don't forget that the Conservatives were getting hammered in the locals ahead of 1992.
In the 1990 locals, Labour got 44% of the vote against the Conservatives 33% and gained almost 300 councillors.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
“ the possibility that things will turn around “.
You do realise that statement is pure fantasy land? A financial storm is about to hit voters the like of which this country has not seen since the Second World War. An election this June is the one last good month the Tories have before their credibility is shredded for a generation. Looking at it any other way is Mr McCawber fantasy thinking.
After posting what you just posted, for your next trick I suggest you go down onto the beach and demonstrate you can stop the tide coming in. 🙂
Unless the war in Ukraine ends, in which case oil and gas prices will collapse. And household bills will shortly follow.
Yuriy Ignat, a Ukrainian air force spokesman, said Ukraine shot down three Russian planes (according to preliminary estimates those are Su-25, Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft), five missiles and 9 UAVs over the past 24 hours.
It takes a long time to unpack all the misogyny on show. Perhaps Ms Rayner should wear a burka so as not to distract males from serious matters?
From the Male on Sunday...
I've never seen Basic Instinct, but I remember the hoo-hah about the scene in question - surely the Mail aren't suggesting that Labour's Deputy Leader is re-enacting it in its entirety? In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
She's got tights on, so given the speed involved, the non-presence of knickers would be difficult to assess.
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
Zoe Strimpel in the Telegaph described it well last week....
Sure. "They're angry about Brexit" is the go to excuse for the government and its dwindling band of apologists. As a rallying cry, all the 'save our Brexit' schtick is wearing a bit thin.
A total of 56 MPs – including two shadow cabinet ministers – have been reported to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS), according to the Sunday Times...
I had a nice trrixie up at Sandown today, 1st 3 winners. I toyed doing Nicholls to win all 7 races but did not, 5 winners would have been worth a few bob though so cost me.
Still got it on the horses, Malcolm, haven't you? Not such a wasted youth after all.
For sure I put in plenty of practice as a boy. I used to mark the boards in days when it was all done by speaker only. Used to light the coal fire. I was into all sorts then , pitch and toss, cards etc. Much more subdued nowadays, just small bets on the horses nowadays for fun. I love the jumps.
Flat for me. I'm getting back into it this year after a pandemic break.
I usually stick to the long distance races on flat , 1M 2F minimum. Good luck for the season.
Ha! I was at Sandown yesterday too. Reasonably profitable as well.
There’s a range of polls showing closer gap and lower Labour scores, yougovs, Kantor and now this opinonion that are not poor for Labour but fools gold for Tories, because they have greens on unrealistic 7s and 8s. I’m sorry Big G but you don’t know how to read the polls across the companies in the bigger picture at the moment. But it’s simple really, let me teach you. You do two things. Firstly, if Greens 7 take off 3 give to labour if they 8 take off 4 give to Labour and BINGO - it now looks just like polls from the other companies. Secondly total lab, Libdem and green together to come to 54 or 55, and you find 9 point labour leads produce that same 54 or 55 total as the 3 and 2 leads from other pollsters.
At first glance it looks like all the polling companies can’t be right because the lab to Tory gap is so different, but in their defence I suggest this theory, Libdem and green hard to poll correctly because their pockets of support are not uniform national swing changes. So when the green and Libdem figures are higher than other pollsters it’s invariably at expense of Labours lead.
Hope this helps. 🙂
Your thesis only works if tactical voting occurs
By any definition tonight's poll is poor for labour when some were forecasting 20% leads nailed on
In any case, I'm sceptical about the idea of just lumping the Labour, Green, and Lib Dem vote shares all together.
This is an unpopular government, but not an unusally unpopular government.
Then you are clueless in how elections work. People never vote positively they vote negatively. They don’t vote for, they vote against, which is why the 55% average I quoted WILL mean tactical voting and Tory losses that seat calculators struggle to show you.
Forget 97, I’m giving you 2005 and 1992 to prove you are wrong.
Firstly 2005, how does that result happen if you are ruling out tactical anti Tory vote on a massive scale when the climate is right for it?
secondly, how do you think 92 happened. Labour leads in polls, great by election and local election results all the way up to election, and then crushing defeat? The answers easy let me explain it to you. In the years up to the election Labour didn’t get positive votes for, the votes were against government, or more importantly not even a vote, a sitting on hands. The 92 result was negative vote against Labour, fearful of economy, tax policy, and defence in their hands, the no longer sitting on hands but using the vote against Labour.
Incidentally, this same MoonRabbit theory means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then the local elections results are meaningless as GE guide and no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time.
I have quite a bit of knowledge about how elections work, thank you. I've contested quite a few, either as a candidate, or as an organiser.
In every general election in my lifetime, the combined vote share for Labour, Lib Dems and the Greens have exceeded the Conservative vote share. The Conservatives have won more than half of those same elections.
I don’t mind your patronising response, so typical of PB, because you didn’t attwck or prove my theory wrong at all.
Basically you can’t, because you know I am right.
2005 there was massive anti Tory tactical vote to produce those seat totals from the popular vote share. You know I’m right.
1992. The stay at home vote from previous things such as locals came out to stop labour they feared in government. You know I am right.
And my theory doesn’t just work retrospectively, it can predict the future.
Yes this same MoonRabbit theory of tactical votes, including stay at home votes and coming out to stop someone winning not positive for the other parties, means the election in two weeks is a meaningless result for predicting the next General Election, unless the pebble counters can show us actual transfer of votes, people voting different not merely sitting on their hands and not voting, then coming local elections results are meaningless as GE guide, no one on PB or MPs in parliament should pay any attention to it in two weeks time as a GE guide.
I want to see specifics of actual churn. I want to see proof what degree it’s stay at home voters disproportion from a particular party, but evidence those who voted Boris last election now vote Labour just two years later not merely staying home.
Without that evidence I dare you to draw conclusion it’s bad result for Tories, because if it’s just hand sitters stay at home votes putting Tories say 7% behind Labour nationally, that merely points possibility 1992 happening all over again at next election.
You started with the ad hominem attack on me. My response was restrained, and in no way patronising.
Okay, I’ll concede that mate. 👍🏻
I’ll also wouldn’t mind if you could use that knowledge about elections, to prove my theory about the 2005 and 1992 elections is actually wrong. Because if I am right about what happened then and why, it shows what things to look for in predicting future elections.
Were you not saying we would shortly be having a snap general election?
A weeks a long time in politics, let alone last month.
Labour didn’t have to go in 1970, but lured into by good locals.
I stand by what I said on basis the Tory’s have war gamed every month left of this term for the best moment to have election, 2023 2024 are completely ruled out by stagflation and recession and double digit poll deficits so you see the point that if there was enough war bounce left this May then June, before three years of economic pain hurts voters so much isn’t such a bad idea. You see my point?
It’s a theory but there are counter arguments, not least 24 months in office with an 80 seat majority, the possibility that things will turn around, a new leader at some point, tax bribes, resolution of Ukraine and good will to the U.K., coupled with economy recovering.
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
“ the possibility that things will turn around “.
You do realise that statement is pure fantasy land? A financial storm is about to hit voters the like of which this country has not seen since the Second World War. An election this June is the one last good month the Tories have before their credibility is shredded for a generation. Looking at it any other way is Mr McCawber fantasy thinking.
After posting what you just posted, for your next trick I suggest you go down onto the beach and demonstrate you can stop the tide coming in. 🙂
Unless the war in Ukraine ends, in which case oil and gas prices will collapse. And household bills will shortly follow.
NI will be an issue (though not a household bill as such, it has the same effect). Food will be an issue for at least another year, I should think (depending on how good harvests are).
It’s the concentration on Village gossip, rather than issues that matter to normal people. Labour had the opportunity last week to force a debate on inflation, minimum wage or cost of living, but instead decided to have a go at the PM personally because his wife bought him a birthday cake two years ago.
I don’t know how many times I’ve said this now, but everyone needs to get off Twitter and look at what’s happening in the real world.
The real world doesn’t live in Zone 1, drives to work and is watching petrol prices.
Yes and no.
The party itself isn't as important as the other things you mention, sure. But telling the truth does matter a lot. After all, if the party (let alone the others that we know happened) isn't that important, why did Johnson go to the trouble of not making a full confession from the off? Why is the extent of the problem having to be dragged out of him?
I've said before that my take on Johnson is that he's an overgrown schoolboy. And one of the things that schoolboys do when they've been caught out (copy of Big and Bouncy in their locker, that sort of thing) is to make it as painful and humiliating as possible to bring them to justice, even when they've been caught bang to rights.
It's the same MO that Johnson and Cummings used in 2019, and Johnson and Patel are trying over the Rwanda plan. "Sure, you can stop us. But if you do, loads of people will hate you for stopping us in an underhand way. And if you don't, loads of other people will hate you for being weak and failing to stop us when you could have." Clever politics, but it tends to lead to Dick Dastardly-style behaviour that distracts from good government.
The PM could stop Partygate tomorrow, if he wanted to. All he has to do is tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But if he insists on clinging on by his fingernails, he doesn't get to complain if the doorframe gets scratched.
Well let’s all be honest with one another here. Partygate is nothing to do with parties. It’s to do with lying about parties. It’s to do with expressing anger you now know some people had a party, when you had actually attended the same party, and whilst your spokesman is live on TV telling the nation your new law is they can’t party, get married, attend funerals or visit sick loved ones, you are yards away with the booze blowing off steam, at a party.
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
As I think Andrew Lilicco suggested, they didn’t think most people would behave so well, for so long, so they did what they did, assuming everyone was doing the same. This was a factor in prolonging the lockdowns. If you think people are paying lip service, another week won’t matter. But it did.
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
It’s mostly about Brexit, and the desire for those opposed to it to bring down the PM.
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's not about bloody Brexit!!
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
The problem is the massive misrepresentation, there wasn’t the ‘partying’ that’s being represented at all.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
No, I don't think that is correct. We have been told of parties going on until the early hours. And Wilf's swing did not get broken after 30 mins of people standing around politely discussing the weather after a hard day with just a half glass of wine.
There was a report of a serious late-night party, but that was when the PM and his family were out of town for the weekend.
Really, the nature of the party is a red herring. We can stroke our metaphorical beard and philsophise about what makes something a party, but what we do know is there were multiple incidents of lawmakers breaking their own laws, allowing laws to be broken, lying about the lawbreaking. Recourse to semantics is really the last room in the bunker, and it's not going to save him.
Quite revealing that that indeed is the recourse being adopted - move the goalposts so far they are off the pitch.
a) complete accidents b) Accidents dew to rushing because they are supplying so much fuel to the Russian army c) False Flag, by Russian state d) sabotage by workers sympathetic to Ukraine e) Sabotage/bomb by Ukrainian special forces f) Missile/helicopter strike by Ukraine.
I think f most likely, but any other thoughts? will we see more of this?
Comments
No government is going to trade 24 or more months of power when actually behind in the polls. That would be mad.
Next question.
No, no, it's an excellent plan
https://www.newsweek.com/every-russian-oligarch-who-has-died-since-putin-invaded-ukraine-full-list-1700022
— Former President DONALD TRUMP will appear at a rally tonight with J.D. VANCE, his endorsee in the Ohio GOP Senate primary making a Hail Mary push to win the nomination. Before Trump’s endorsement, Vance was lagging in the polls, short on cash and seen as an almost assured loser. But Trump’s nod, as our Natalie Allison reported Friday, has changed his fortunes “dramatically” and “upended one of the most contentious Republican primaries in the nation.”
Just over a week later, “more than $5 million in new donations have poured into a pro-Vance super PAC” and Vance “has taken the lead in polling for the first time since entering the crowded Republican primary in July.”
Still, Trump isn’t leaving anything to chance. The former president knows that this is the first major test of his post-presidency political power. If Vance loses, Trump will look weak and like he’s losing his grip on the GOP. It’s why the president is going the extra mile tonight — and why his son, DONALD TRUMP JR., has been campaigning like crazy for Vance this week and will keep at it next week.
There’s been intense blowback to Trump’s endorsement of Vance, who previously criticized the president and is viewed by some as a “Never Trumper” who’s now pandering to the ex-president. As the Columbus Dispatch notes, “thirty-three 2016 Trump delegates penned a letter calling on the former president to reconsider.”
“Unlike the other candidates in this race, J.D. Vance has not developed relationships with Republican voters and grassroots leaders that are crucial to win,” the letter read. “This endorsement of J.D. Vance is a betrayal to not only your Ohio supporters but Trump supporters across our great nation!”
The reaction has been most intense among allies of JOSH MANDEL, who was considered the frontrunner for a long time before Trump’s endorsement. Mandel plans to stump with Sen. TED CRUZ (R-Texas) next week and boasts the support of Club for Growth — which has landed on the ex-president’s bad side. Maggie Haberman reported earlier this week that when Trump learned the conservative group was still running ads highlighting Vance’s past criticism of him, he “had his assistant send [DAVID] McINTOSH a text saying, ‘Go f— yourself.’”
The reply from the Club? “We are increasing our ad buy,” a spokesman told our colleague Natalie.
Consider it war: “Dave McIntosh motivated Don Jr. to not only push J.D. over the finish line but tear down Mandel in the process," a source familiar told our Meridith McGraw.
You do realise that statement is pure fantasy land? A financial storm is about to hit voters the like of which this country has not seen since the Second World War. An election this June is the one last good month the Tories have before their credibility is shredded for a generation. Looking at it any other way is Mr McCawber fantasy thinking.
After posting what you just posted, for your next trick I suggest you go down onto the beach and demonstrate you can stop the tide coming in. 🙂
In any case, I would have thought that Boris Johnson would be quite desensitised to the sight of a c*nt, if only from looking in the mirror.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/apr/23/bbc-set-to-pull-the-plug-on-dateline-london-after-25-years-of-news-debate-show
Only in Russia..
Accusing the BBC of xenophobia , after she was part of a Leave campaign which was full of anti EU national hate .
It’s the first lesson any human should learn, it’s not what you did, it’s the fact you knowingly lied to us about it.
My point was more, why are they even outsourcing it in the first place. It is literally 4 foreign journalists sitting around talking for 30 mins, in the BBC studio, filmed with BBC cameras. They then pay an ex-BBC employees company £70k a year to do I presume do a spot of editing and the call around for guests. Smells like jobs for the boys, tax efficient limited company etc.
But then that was the calculation, wasn't it - Boris's downsides, the cost and bullshit, was considered worth it to enough people in 2019. Now?
And it’s also about Brexit, for rather a lot of the metropolitan elite who will always hate Johnson for what he did. Lots of them in the media...
Would be classic Johnson to plunge the country into a GE simply to stave off an investigation by the Privileges committee into his own lying.
I suppose it is pointless pointing out that only this week we were being told by his Cabinet supporters that now was not the time to change to have a leadership contest because of Ukraine.
But a GE in which the entire administration could change? Oh yes, that's fine.
We get much the same issues with contracting out in the NHS.
Although it would not get to the stage of him actually asking, as the aides to Queen would have made it quite clear through the usual channels.
Edit:
"Any evidence the monarch would ever or ever has applied those principles in the modern UK?"
Lascelles is from 1950, so not exactly ancient times.
Doesn’t alter the fact that, if in those columns he wrote as if he’d driven the cars he didn’t drive, he was lying. Seemingly repeatedly. Trivial perhaps, you might think, and in the grand scheme of things it is. But if he made out he’d driven the damn things, it is another example of his willingness to lie, to bullshit. An indicator of his character.
Also, when I did the calculation, I didn't bother to type all the digits in, I just did 3.7/2.3. The point was to give a rough idea for the increase in Lib Dem support at the 2019 election.
My guess is more that its an (ex)BBC producer, who probably pitched it as an idea way back and the condition was it was made by his company. Jobs for the boys. And they just carried on that deal for 20 years. And although he might have Dateline London as the trademark, the programme format is so generic, the BBC could have in-housed it at any time under London Dateline.
Zoe Strimpel in the Telegaph described it well last week.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/04/17/sorry-remainiacs-britain-far-laughing-stock-world/
“Britain’s self-loathing problem hangs itself on whatever is going. In the case of Partygate, it’s a hugely over-egged question of which ministers secretly consumed which foodstuffs in company, where and for how long during lockdown. There is some understandable anger among parts of the electorate over this, but in the main it has simply become an excuse for distorting or drowning out everything else going on. Like trying to come up with a workable border policy. Or our exemplary attempts to save Europe from the grotesque ambition of a malign, nuke-happy Russia.
“The most embarrassing thing of all about Partygate is that in almost any other country, it wouldn’t even bubble to the surface. This is partly because most places are actually in worse shape than Britain, and next to the unrest and discontent they face, a scandal over cakes and ale would be, well, a luxury. A joke.”
It's about being told every night on TV at 5pm for months that you could not see your mates, visit family, hug parents or even hold your own bloody mother's hand at your father's funeral, whilst those who literally drafted the rules and stood in front of cameras to tell us the rules were getting lashed up every other fucking evening with 20 or 30 mates and Abba and disco music and tables of food, laughing their tits off at the little people.
And then lying about it repeatedly and on the record.
That’s the reason I didn’t post much on PB. 🙂
The principle that politicians should not break the laws they make, should not lie as frequently and brazenly as Boris does, and should not get away with it if they do, should not be a cause of embarrassment. The fact that the snubbing of these principles is animating the public is a sign of public esteem in our institutions and a general sense that we can and should expect better.
If we want to compare the putative indifference other countries would show to similar events, we should note any difference with pride. Others may accept the debasement of public life, but we do not. If some fuckwit writing in the Telegraph doesn't see that, it's because she's one of that set who are blind to misdeeds because the rosette is the right colour. In other words, a shill.
Bigger issues are the BBC executives and ‘presenters’ still trying to bust IR35 on mid-six-figure salaries, and the senior management determination to engineer a row with the government over the licence fee.
There were a handful of incidents over a period of months - one of which was the PM being surprised with a birthday cake, and one of the others was a group of people who had been working together inside all day, spending half an hour together outside later.
And he told us that these events never happened.
You had to be there....
The email states "we thought it would be a good idea" given the nice weather etc etc.
Who is "we"?
Reynolds sent the email, but unless he is a royal personage using the royal 'we' then others were involved.
It went to 100s.
iirc 30 or 40 turned up.
If that isn't a 10K fine along the lines of the Nottingham students then I don't know what is. Clearly not just an after work thing with people who were already sitting around at the same five desks in the same room. It was organised. And it was social. And it was an event.
It was illegal.
The students who were fined £1000s had no recourse to philosophising about what actually constitutes a party. They just got the 'standard issue kicking at their door'.
As the boss, its a bit iffy in normal times, but in the time when the government message was firmly you can't even go out for more than your daily jog, while only essential worker should be out and about and no hanging about when you aren't, that was totally the wrong (and illegal) culture being promoted.
I’m thinking now it’s not actually going to bring him down is it?
His enemies, not all on the opposition benches though they’ve certainly had a lot of fun hollowing him out with this, and it has greatly hollowed him out. But it’s going to take this and several more things to also hollow him out to actually cost him the next election, or even less likely, the chance to lead into that election.
Not to say other damaging things can’t come along?
Wallpaper gate was damaging too, because of the cash for access element - is that the only instance of cash for access that can emerge from this money mad lazy government?
Once the current popular “arms to Ukraine” has become history the pre war closeness to Kremlin money could prove damaging too.
Covid enquiry, late locking down due to not understanding it couldn’t be dealt with herd immunity will certainly undermine the claim of getting big calls right, not least any sense of colossal waste with massive contracts to mates, loans to criminals, lack of value for money or avoiding proper scrutiny of contracting.
Even if they have a good recession and cost of living crisis between now and end of this parliament getting big calls right, the voters will still not be kind about the pain, there will always be opportunity for opposition to say you never done enough. Osborne said the roof wasn’t fixed when sun was shining in the most successful Captain Hindsight manoeuvre of the last 20 years.
In short Partygate isn’t going to hollow out Boris to end his premiership, but many other hollowing out opportunities could finish the job, some of them we may currently be blissfully unaware of.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/utah-democrats-back-independent-evan-mcmullin-in-effort-to-beat-mike-lee/ar-AAWwz1V
Do we reckon it's a race?
If he wins that kind of takes the bite out of the issue and they know they've got a winner to stick with for the full term so they can stop leaking scandals about each other.
If he loses they get rid of him without it being strictly their fault.
In the 1990 locals, Labour got 44% of the vote against the Conservatives 33% and gained almost 300 councillors.
⚡️Ukraine’s airforce destroys 17 Russian aerial targets.
Yuriy Ignat, a Ukrainian air force spokesman, said Ukraine shot down three Russian planes (according to preliminary estimates those are Su-25, Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft), five missiles and 9 UAVs over the past 24 hours.
https://twitter.com/KyivIndependent/status/1518028419652628482
"They're angry about Brexit" is the go to excuse for the government and its dwindling band of apologists.
As a rallying cry, all the 'save our Brexit' schtick is wearing a bit thin.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/apr/23/three-cabinet-ministers-reportedly-facing-allegations-of-sexual-misconduct
...Three cabinet ministers are among more than 50 MPs reportedly facing allegations of sexual misconduct after being referred to a parliamentary watchdog.
A total of 56 MPs – including two shadow cabinet ministers – have been reported to the Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS), according to the Sunday Times...
https://twitter.com/TWMCLtd/status/1518390835519311874?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1518390835519311874|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/04/25/a-mysterious-explosion-in-bryansk-n464687
As I see it possibilities include:
a) complete accidents
b) Accidents dew to rushing because they are supplying so much fuel to the Russian army
c) False Flag, by Russian state
d) sabotage by workers sympathetic to Ukraine
e) Sabotage/bomb by Ukrainian special forces
f) Missile/helicopter strike by Ukraine.
I think f most likely, but any other thoughts? will we see more of this?