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It’s odds-on that Johnson won’t be an MP after the general election – politicalbetting.com
It’s odds-on that Johnson won’t be an MP after the general election – politicalbetting.com
One of the problems that the former prime minister, Boris Johnson, has got it is that on current polling he could struggle to remain an MP after the next election. His Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency is being changed as a result of the new boundaries and looking at the numbers it is hard to see how he could have confidence about holding it.
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The standard of women's cricket has improved out of all recognition in only a few years. It's now really good to watch (despite some shocking fielding by India yesterday).
The new Bicester & Woodstock seat is an outside possibility but that's likely to be a Con/LD marginal.
Unless they've changed recently, Disney's solution is quite smart. They have on Disney+ the full, unedited versions of the movies as they were released - but put up a disclaimer before it starts saying that it was made in a different era to different standards and some may now find offensive, or something along those lines.
Unless you're looking for offence one way or another, that seems like a sensible compromise. Don't compromise the integrity of the art, and if you're offended by a disclaimer you're just as sensitive as the worst of the woke.
If Puffin do the same, put a new page at the start with a disclaimer but leave the text of the book unaltered, that seems logical.
If you want to put your superstitions before others liberties, then others are free to call you out for that.
Johnson's problem may be the standards committee and the taint for an unfavourable ruling., Not a a market for me as I've no understanding of the process and potential influences.
The Aristocats isn't available on a Disney+ Child's profile but you can watch it on the adult profile with a disclaimer in front as I did last night.
For their other things like Dumbo, Aladdin etc were people have been offended though, the disclaimer is their general and sensible compromise solution. If there's a disclaimer and you watch it anyway and are offended you only have yourself to blame, and if you watch something and are offended by a disclaimer then you're even more sensitive.
Forbes and Regan are close for second.
Letting parents take responsibility to decide, rather than Disney deciding for one or the other side of the "woke" debate seems perfectly reasonable.
Regan 4.0-5.1
Forbes 3.5-3.8
Looks like it could be an exciting contest.
Electoral Calculus is suggesting 83 conservative seats after the next GE, many of them in places which would be unacceptable to Mr & Mrs Johnson. And you think the likes of David Duguid are going to step politely aside for him?
https://www.thesteepletimes.com/opulence-splendour/brightwell-manor-boris/
Theoretically that seat could be won by the Libs, assuming mass tactical voting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wantage_(UK_Parliament_constituency)
My guess is best campaign wins?
I think people in the West are missing something that is growing obvious to the front line states, and increasingly to Russians themselves: the regime in Moscow is in a growing crisis. As one well connected Estonian said to me, "the Kremlin is now scorpions in a jar". The various factions are turning end-stage Putinism into a danse macabre, and though the population of Russia itself is still waiting to see what happens next, the idea that Russia can sustain another year of this catastrophic humiliation without cost to the regime is really not likely. Indeed the regime is beginning to circle the drain. I just came past the Russian Embassy. a big (for Estonia) demonstration with dozens of white-blue-white tribands (the anti-war Russian flag), and guess what? These were not Estonians, they were Russians.
Putin continues the war, because he is hoping against hope that the West will crack, or that China will intervene, or some other unlikely miracle will happen. Yet trusting to luck is a fools errand, and the Russians are now beginning to understand that Russia no longer controls their own destiny, that their own primitive and shrinking economic resources will not avail them any kind of victory in the face of an implacable West, and that China will not be shackled to the corpse of Putinism, but is instead seeking opportunities to take control of significant assets after VVP falls. The Putinist conspiracies: kompromat, bribery and blackmail have all failed.
A culmination is coming. As the ZSU gains more and more trained echelons equipped with the latest NATO kit, the ammunition shortage for Soviet era kit that has led to the stalemate over January and February will give way to a more mobile front and the Russian line will finally crack, as the mincing machine does its terrible work (as an aside, the Russian high command should surely face trial from their own side, even if they never make it to the Hague). Many analysts of the Soviet system knew the system was unsustainable, but the question was not if, but how and when the USSR would fall. The same applies now: the system will fall, the questions are how and when.
The murderous thugs, commanding the peripheral units, such as Kadyrov and Prigrozhin are already trying to make plans to survive the wreck. Neither will in fact survive, for the Russian Stavka (GHQ) will kill them before their own fall and the free Chechens have far more battlefield experience in Ukraine than the Kadyrovtsi.
So admitting uncertainty as to exact direction and timeline, we can I think be sure that the war is likely to end with the breaking of the will of the Kremlin and the withdrawal of Russian forces to the 2014 borders. After that the question which terrifies Western analysts is what happens next inside Russia. I could write more on that subject, but the character limit is upon me...
Slowish start by SA but no wickets lost.
Poland is sending Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine on Friday, the first of 14 vehicles the government has promised, according to an official who declined to be named, Bloomberg says.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1629067361511788545
A touch of symbolism in the timing.
Though no evidence yet of human to human transmission.
By the way, I'm currently reading and enjoying The Person Of Color Of The Narcissus. Highly recommended.
So Boris if he wants to stay an MP should do a 'chicken run' to Nadine's safer and more rural seat.
He could then be a contender for Leader of the Opposition if Sunak and Hunt lose the next general election to Starmer and able to say 'I told you so, you should have stuck with me!'
I would personally love to see a full restoration of the 1991 borders, a total and clear failure of this war that leaves Russia without Crimea and not even a fig leaf to claim as "success". Show any future dictators what happens when you mess with the free world.
Believes she is the “unity candidate” for the SNP and wider independence movement, is spiritual not religious but respects others views - and wants people to respect her decision to send her kids to private school.
Thread with several videos
https://twitter.com/ginadavidsonlbc/status/1629064619292491778
"Roald Dahl's original books are to be printed under their Puffin titles, publishing house Penguin has said.
The unaltered story books will now go alongside updated versions of his hugely popular children's writing.
Earlier this week, Dahl's estate said books such as the BFG and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had been made more suitable for modern audiences."
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/russia-ukraine-war-one-year-national-identity/673192/
They ought to have done this in the first place when they decided to meddle with the text.
"Poland to handover more tanks soon
Poland has delivered the first four Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and will send more soon, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has announced.
Speaking at a joint press conference with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv, Morawiecki said the tanks would help protect Ukrainian troops on the Battlefield and more would be on the way "in a few days".
The Polish PM also told reporters that 60 PT-91 tanks would also be sent to Ukraine in the coming days, the Unian news agency reports."
Nothing states pointlessness like over a year of warfare, hundreds of thousands of deaths and a ruined economy for zero gain. Unlike the Ukraine victory outcome involving a recapture of Donbas and Crimea, there would be zero chance of Putin being able to scare Russians into the idea the world is trying to destroy them, and zero sympathy for those real or imagined persecuted Russian minorities in Donetsk and Luhansk. The whole thing would just look pathetic: Russia squarely the aggressor with no recourse to victimhood, but a 100% failure at the same time.
The best PR outcome of all would involve a Russian withdrawal to 2014 borders followed by UN-overseen polls in occupied Crimea and Donbass with majorities voting to return to Ukraine.
Glad we're on the same page. Yes I expect the same.
It’s not as though his time in office has been without controversy.
For some reason the BBC called it unlucky. Schoolgirl error to me.
Russia needs to have lost by then or the Democrats need to win.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PT-91_Twardy
It really is a poor choice for their membership to chose from and Labour must think Christmas has come early .
The choice being Mr Angry , Miss Bible Basher and Miss Non-entity .
In Wales, Plaid Cymru held off a challenge from Labour and retained their seat.
In Scotland, SNP failed to match them: although they led on first preferences, there was a significant swing to Labour, and Labour gained the seat (from Con) at stage 8. Remember that Scotland has STV, and last time out the SNP were well ahead of the others, winning two of the four seats with Con ahead of Labour too.
Good Week/Bad Week Index:
PC +41
Lab +38
Con +3
Grn -3
LDm -4
SNP -16
Adjusted Seat Value
PC +0.7
Lab +0.6
Con +0.0
Grn +0.0
LDm -0.1
SNP -0.3
For a full explanation of the Good Week/Bad Week Index, see: https://drinkentire.wordpress.com/2023/02/07/the-good-week-bad-week-index/
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/02/23/volodymyr-zelenskyy-ukraine-leadership-comedy-00083489
… GEN. PAUL NAKASONE, director, National Security Agency, and commander, U.S. Cyber Command: We knew they weren’t going to invade in April 2021. Why do we know it was an exercise? Because the U.S. intelligence community really knows when Russia conducts exercises, and it was an exercise.
JAKE SULLIVAN: Part of the motivating impulse for making the proposal for the summit in Geneva [in June 2021] was to try to create an alternative path that would involve Russia deescalating around Ukraine and us trying to inject some stability — not just into the U.S.-Russia relationship, but stability into the broader Ukraine situation. When President Biden met with President Putin in Geneva, obviously the top story around that visit was the ransomware attacks and cyber, but a healthy amount of the discussion behind closed doors was about Ukraine...
… BILL BURNS: The trip the president asked me to take to Moscow at the beginning of November was to lay out in an unusual amount of detail exactly why we were concerned that Putin was preparing for a major new invasion, and then to be very clear about what the consequences would be should Putin choose to execute that plan. I had a bad feeling going out on that trip about what was coming. That was only reinforced by the conversations I had there.
The desolate POINTLESSNESS
Half a million dead? Several million injured and displaced and grieving
And for what?
Russia cannot win. It may not lose, but it cannot win.
There is a woman Ukrainian MP crying on Al Jazeera English right now. Weeping for her dead friends, her injured husband, ah fuck it
The absolute last thing he wants is to live in his constituency.
Has Mr Angry said anything convincing in support of same-sex marriage (and to rebuff the rumours surrounding his convenient-looking absence from the final parliamentary vote on the matter?) If he does, he wins. Miss Bible Basher is already disqualified by her social conservatism and Miss Non-Entity will probably come a cropper likewise for being too chummy (in the view of most of the selectorate, at any rate,) with TERFs.
But I am happy to claim the prize of Batterydamus
… AMB. MICHAEL CARPENTER: We thought, “OK, if there’s a crisis of European security, then let’s talk about it. Let’s identify the Russian concerns and see if there’s a way that we can address them through diplomacy.” Poland assumed the chairperson-ship of the OSCE on January 1, 2022, and so I immediately went to go visit with the Polish Foreign Minister to talk about the diplomatic angle. He was very receptive, and subsequently launched a process called the renewed European Security Dialogue. Russia basically refused to engage, and that’s when it became increasingly clear the Kremlin really had no interest in diplomacy all along. It was bent on war.
All of its alleged concerns — everything that it was putting out there in the public domain — was really a smokescreen. They turned their backs completely on the diplomacy that we were proposing at the OSCE, the diplomacy that was being proposed on behalf of NATO and then also bilaterally what we were discussing with the Russians. There was nothing to offer them, because they didn’t even want to talk…
Putin has successfully made the war existential. Therefore Russian defeat in Ukraine is the conquest of Russia. That cannot happen because Russian is a great power WITH NUKES. Even if Putin is toppled no replacement will be allowed to negotiate “surrender”
This is Korean War 2.0. Quagmire and Armistice beckons, eventually
Plus given their own rhetoric on this, massively increasing arms production capability isn’t something they can oppose.
x True, bigots can be found everywhere
However, although Russia formally claims the territory of Crimea, Kherson, Zoporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk as part of the Russian Federation, they have since been forced to retreat from the city of Kherson, and did not respond with the use of nuclear weapons. So it has already been proven that Russia regards the status of Ukrainian territory that it has conquered differently to territory within the internationally recognised borders of Russia.
So your argument doesn't follow.
The war may still be heading for a stalemate, if Russia remains able to conscript enough people to replace its losses, and either produce or procure sufficient weaponry and ammunition to keep their army sufficiently supplied that it can keep fighting. But not because of nukes.
It all ends with partition along a line of control as per Kashmir, with neither side recognising the territory held by the other de jure, but an accommodation being reached de facto. The 80% of Ukraine that remains unoccupied will then be pumped so full of cash and weapons that the cost of trying to resume the war of conquest at some point in the future will be too steep for Putin or his successors to stomach.
This state having been reached, the key challenge will then be to maintain a degree of unity with respect to the ostracism of Russia. Fundamentally, this is a fascist state with a fascist leadership and an overwhelmingly fascist-sympathising population: the existence of a handful of doomed internal dissidents and Pussy Riot does nothing to alter the fact that most Russians back both Putin and his imperial ambitions to the hilt. There will have to be a lot of determined diplomacy to prevent potential backsliders like Italy and Germany from trying to resume antebellum positions on trade and appeasement.