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Stodge and MoonRabbit’s Cheltenham Preview – politicalbetting.com
Stodge and MoonRabbit’s Cheltenham Preview – politicalbetting.com
Weather & Going (according to MoonRabbit) the week will be wet and windy at times, if you are going your wind resistant waterproof is essential. Put some heatpads in pockets too. The course and famous hill are always a stamina test, wet tracks add jeopardy, but will rain actually make for much soft going – just not been business as usual under turf all winter after last summers heatwave, what falls just absorbs so quick. With thirsty water table despite rain forecast, I think we should expect fast racing – remind ourselves of size and quality of all these fields, what comes out to play in a true-run race? For example, in the Champion Hurdle, if good pace throughout, Vauban can turnover State Man – anticipate other favourites losing out due to good going rather than soft.
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Welcome to my header ☺️
General advice, as always, go for the best odds offered;
www.oddschecker.com
And make the most of any bookmaker offers.
Punting on horses is almost always EV- but the first day of Cheltenham has historically been one of the few EV+ opportunities.
A few years ago, PP were offering £1k free bets to new customers. Sadly those days are gone, but there is still value out there, courtesy of the bookmakers marketing departments.
Take full advantage.
If Maries Rock wins you will have to scrape me off the ceiling - absolutely ❤️ Marie’s Rock.
But ❤️ Love Envoi too, so absolutely conflicted I have to choose between the two. 😖
I’ll probably place the bet on Love Envoi, who I have fancied for Mares Hurdle all winter, and cheer Rock to her win and madly celebrate despite losing bet.
Couple of changes clearly, from posting my copy to final card confirmations - they can enter more than one run and go at least till 48hrs I think I read even 24 to finalise which one, so I don’t know how the newspapers with their pull out specials manage. Maries Rock race has been decided, she runs today. And Bainbridge doesn’t.
And it’s all that added emotional drama, that makes the big sporting events of every year so compelling isn’t it?
HMP Aylesbury ‘thrown into chaos’ by MoJ policy change, says watchdog
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/14/hmp-aylesbury-thrown-into-chaos-by-moj-policy-change-says-watchdog
Meanwhile.
More than 1,500 UK police officers accused of violence against women in six months
‘Staggering’ figures from the National Police Chiefs’ Council show that less than 1% of those accused have been sacked
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/14/more-than-1500-uk-police-officers-accused-of-violence-against-women-in-six-months
In which case, what proportion of those accused would you expect to be sacked within six months, allowing for due process? Ten percent? Fifty percent? Ninety-nine percent? How many of the accused have been suspended from duty, or put on restricted duties?
I'd expect more than one percent, but how much more?
It's also interesting that a little over half the cases were 'conduct' cases, usually raised by people within the force.
- a bizarre series of miscarriages of justice where obviously innocent officers are crucifixes, because process
- a number of cases where the obviously guilty are promoted. Because process.
It is my belief that Chief Constable Savage is alive, well and has passed all his diversity exams with 100% marks. He now oversees a policy of arresting people for ordering their coffee black. Mostly black people, at anti-racism demos.
I am working so won't be able to watch the races but put a few bets on.
Thanks for the tips both!
Not really my area of expertise, but all the more interesting for that.
How depressing.
While I’m uncomfortable with making “conversion therapy” illegal, she makes a damn good argument for why it should be.
She frames her argument in terms of “freedom” but her ideology, her church and her backers - such as Souter - were fully behind section 28 and want it reintroduced.
No freedom for the gays, in her ideal world.
A nasty nasty piece of work.
Complaints about police officers' treatment of women are highly unlikely to result in action, according to new police data for England and Wales.
The National Police Chiefs' Council says nine in 10 complaints were dropped in the six months to March 2022.
It comes as the former wife of a West Yorkshire Police firearms officer says the force failed to fully investigate her allegations of domestic violence.
West Yorkshire Police says it has now suspended an officer.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64915126
At least none you would notice.
Anglo-Saxon feminist and transgender activism is threatening France, a leading French columnist has warned.
Eugénie Bastié, 31, has angered leftwingers with an essay, Sauver la Différence des Sexes (Save the Difference Between the Sexes), in which she argues against the arrival in France of British and American theories she says involve a “totalitarian” cancel culture and the negation of biological realities.
She says the result is women struggle to combine a career and childcare, and men, shorn of role models and their ancestral identity, become sad porn addicts. Her opponents call her a “gender crusader” panicking at the ending of France’s patriarchal system.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/transgender-war-france-le-figaro-2023-hpft3mp7l
Note also that the figures were supposed to have been published last November - and five forces are yet to submit any at all,
Which also suggests how seriously it's been taken up until very recently.
You might also ask, with numbers like that, how many think it simply not worth making a complaint at all - as also evidenced by recent notorious cases.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/13/bbc-licence-fee-criminalising-poverty-1000-people-week-prosecuted/
But almost all of the cases are now dealt with under the controversial Single Justice Procedure (SJP), which means they are heard behind closed doors without the accused needing to enter a plea.
If they fail to respond to the letter telling them they have been charged, the court simply rubber-stamps the guilty verdict and issues a fine, which can be up to £1,000.
Now who introduced that then eh? Suella Braverman.
The idea of untrammelled rights for anyone, no matter how deserving is horse manure.
Mike himself still has the knack, but this place desperately needs succession management. Far too many quality officers have jumped ship, and the bridge has a rat or two.
https://mobile.twitter.com/mckaycoppins/status/1635368417325879296
My theory is that a large and growing number of prominent conservatives (politicians, media personalities, etc.) are incapable of even feigning fluency in fiscal policy because they've been talking about culture war stuff nonstop for like eight years.
(The comment was prompted by GOP responses to the 'woke' bailout - which was, of course, nothing of the sort.)
After weeks of dancing between the raindrops on Ukraine, DeSantis makes his views clear to Tucker Carlson: Protecting Ukraine not a key US interest.
https://mobile.twitter.com/maggieNYT/status/1635446358474620928
(Edited for clarity)
https://twitter.com/pjwoodside/status/1635472334621376512?s=46
I’m sure Anas Sarwar will be delighted.
And I say that as someone critical of woke culture.
So she'll be out first, but the pitch for her transfer votes is also live and from what I read it looks like Forbes is far better positioned to hoover those up. So despite her rocky start I expect her to win - quite simply because continuity Sturgeon isn't what members appear to want.
The question then will swing onto how Forbes translates her freakish religious beliefs into government policy. And for all that her views should be getting perverts like me recoiling in horror, I don't feel it. The world has moved on a long long way from the days of Section 28 and there is no going back. Gay marriage and equality before the law is already established and most people are comfortable of the concept (if not some of the more extreme laws that try and get pushed through like the GRR Bill).
So I would expect she is so busy showing off a dynamic Scotland making itself rich from green energy, from food and drink, AND from harnessing oil and gas that she won't have the inclination to start banning deviance. She talks a lot about a Scotland looking forward. So why would she look back on this?
Forbes is entitled to hold and express her views - I have no issue with that - but I also have the right to hold that particular view in contempt.
Yousaf 1/2 (Hills)
Forbes 2/1 (Coral)
Surely still value in Yousaf?
The sun's shining and it's looking in peak condition so why not? VAUBIN for the win......
That's not to say that the same effect doesn't exist to an extent on the Democratic side. But it's yet to destroy their ability to react rationally to events in the same way.
I always find that right reminding on the respect that street criminals with poor impulse control demand, but hey.
Dissing Forbes religion is acceptable, but if you said the same things about a religion held (largely) by an ethnic minority, you could face legal sanction.
Remember the Glenn Hoddle comedy?
If you think he’ll get more than 45% of First Preferences, take Hills’ 1/2. If you don’t, take a modest stake in Forbes at Coral.
You say everyone below the line is an idiot except you, despite the fact that almost everything you write is abusive, wrong or just plain dishonest and inspired by your irrational and extraordinary hatred of the English.
You keep saying that it is a minor and unimportant place despite spending huge amounts of time here.
So why the hell do you still come here?
More on the Fiona Bruce/Question Time domestic abuse fiasco...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11856311/Fiona-Bruce-hung-dry-BBC-bosses-accused-trivialising-domestic-abuse.html
The increase in employment gets a cursory and passing mention.
Such prejudice is no more acceptable, and I'm quite happy to say so.
Good luck trying to get Christianity, of any variant, “protected”
Interesting - I had wondered if she had actually been told in advance, as her wording did in deed imply.
But how? why? what made then do something so specific? The clanger was in response to a purely incidental remark by one panellist. The implication is that presenters are stuffed full to the gills with all sorts of possible "How Not to Upset Tories in the News" attack/defence lines.
The other possibility is that it is a recorded programme, and ...
https://twitter.com/davidrobson20/status/1634964692996345857?s=46
It’s almost as if they have an anti-government agenda
(*lights match and retires*)
Ring any bells....
Trump , Orban , Netenyahu , Bolsanaro , and now add to that the current crop of Tories who have clearly shown that they’re an existential threat to UK democracy .
That said, a smarter presenter would have pushed back. It's pretty obvious that saying "an allegation was previously made against him and was not denied" would have covered it.
https://twitter.com/j_coatsworth/status/1634834386959958018?s=46
Some people are idiots.
Every time I see this come up on twitter I'm just reminded of Farage/Trump and the "MSM", or worse the stupid march on Pacific Quay in 2014.
It harms your cause.
Sure, I'm working long hours, but no longer than when I was teaching, and I can fit my timetable around what I want to do.
The only thing it doesn't include, of course, is pension, but I've got quite a lot of that through TPS, a private scheme and a number of liquid assets.
If they have vacancies in schools (and I'm aware your point was wider than this) maybe they should start by pondering this problem. A physics or maths teacher can charge a hundred an hour tutoring and get it. Why would they work in a school for longer hours, less money and less flexibility?
Of all the various wankeries abroad, public discourse being conducted by friends, sources close to and anonymous individuals are among the worst.
Which is ok when you are considering what the government deficit is, for example. You would not want to be overly optimistic about that and create too much downside. The problem is these overly negative projections can be self fulfilling, they do not exactly encourage investment for example. And they narrow the window in which the government can act and perhaps seek to address the underlying problems.
As that is Mrs RP's position it sounds perfectly rational to me. Supporting something for other people that you couldn't do yourself is not - as keeps being reported - her being a threat to abortion. Or gay rights. Unless banning conversion therapy is a threat.
But you acknowledge that there is BBC bias. So, how does one go about countering that?
As if Stanley Johnson has friends.
I'd say she could have asked the charities concerned whether they wanted her to stay on in position, and just followed that recommendation. Given that it is about domestic violence, I don't see the BBC management causing trouble in those circs.
Lineker is a gormless, attention-seeking plank without a brain cell or a policy reflection to his name; Fiona Bruce is in a different league. Also, afaik she has not violated her own commitments made to the BBC.
(Lordy, checking the clip I see that Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was the panellist, and Fiona Bruce did absolutely nothing of what she has been accused, unless creative video-editing is involved. )
Due to being cursed by a witch to have atrocious horse betting luck, I am not betting on such things.
Annoying not to have the first half of the football season's records, but I think I'm probably going to shift to focus on the EPL with some bets for Serie A and Ligue 1. Had two more La Liga red bets, again a goal off green (but you don't get anything for that).
Red this year, but green overall.
Your downside may be protected by the level of vacancies in schools, but that’s why contracting work generally gets a premium
Its just insulting.
I think de minimis applies, although you're right about the principle.
Liz Truss had been vindicated by the economic data, and the Tory MPs should have rallied behind her, rather than bin her after only six weeks.
But actually given the frequency with which schools are restructuring at the moment to try and deal with their deficits two years is about the length of time you'd expect to stay anyway.
(Again, that doesn't really apply to physics or maths teachers of course!)
(But seriously, folks... Presumably that's one of the odd things about the economy now- the large number of people who have enough housing wealth that they feel they can act on the "I don't feel like working" impulse. Fine for Individuals, but possibly a problem at a national level.)
Thank goodness the rUK is entirely relaxed about the issue of BBC impartiality.
And, of course, we can't know that the crisis wouldn't have got much worse if she and Kwarteng had stayed rather than stabilising and reversing.
I think we should always be wary of according too much precision to forecasts, and consider what would the situation be if, say, the deficit is £15bn higher or lower than forecast.
Focus on stuff like migration, wind energy potential, the Nordic model, a 50-year plan for an independent Scotland and how that could diverge from a Scotland in the current devolution framework.
That surprises me (link ?), because
https://thetab.com/uk/cambridge/2022/07/05/bursars-committee-agrees-to-pay-raise-for-supervisors-162832
So, one-to-one or one-to-two undergraduate supervisions in Oxford & Cambridge (usually carried out by grad students/postdocs in the sciences) are paid at £32.59 an hour.
If your fact becomes widely known, you will collapse the College system in Oxbridge ...
The blank cheque was almost an afterthought. During the leadership fight she seemed reluctant to do anything at all but she got bullied into it and then went overboard.
Although that's not a problem confined to the SNP!
https://obr.uk/forecast-evaluation-reports/
...In each EFO, we stress the uncertainty that lies around all such forecasts. We compare our central forecasts to those of other forecasters. We highlight the limited confidence that should be placed in our central forecast given the scale of shocks that inevitably drive a wedge between any central predictions and subsequent outcomes. We use sensitivity and scenario analysis to show how the public finances could be affected by alternative economic outcomes. ..
?