A slew of material was uncovered during pre-trial discovery that implicated Carlson. More information could be out there that could be legally damaging for Fox as it stares down more defamation cases. A former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who is suing the network for allegedly trying to manipulate her testimony during pre-trial discovery for the Dominion case, said in a legal filing just before the trial that there were Fox News tapes showing Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies admitting they had no evidence to support their claims about Dominion election fraud. In private text messages with other Fox News hosts, Carlson pressed to get a fellow Fox News reporter fired for accurately fact-checking a tweet from Donald Trump that praised Fox News' coverage about the voting machines and referenced Dominion Voting Systems. Carlson did not immediately respond to an Axios request for comment...
Looking at the data behind the R&W poll, men put Labour ahead 38-28 awhile women have Labour ahead 36-20 but among men 11% are Don't Knows (DKs) while among women it's 21% so a big gender gap.
Among the 2019 Conservative vote, 55% are still loyal, 16% are DKs and 15% have switched to Labour with a further 8% for Reform. Among the 65+ age group, the Conservatives lead 34-28 with 16% DKs.
Stripping out the DKs and it's an 11-point lead among men and a 20-point leas among women while the 65+ group has a 40-33 lead for the Conservatives which would equate to a 20% swing since December 2019.
My favourite, as you know, is the "all England" sample - tonight it's Labour 45%, Conservative 30%, Liberal Democrat 12%, Reform 6% and Green 5%. As we know, in 2019, Boris Johnson won England 47-34 with the LDs on 12 so that's a swing of 14% from Conservative to Labour and 8.5% from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.
What, if anything, this means for the local elections I don't know. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats are polling close to where they were in late April 2019 but Labour are 15 points ahead of their number at that time suggesting the possibility of big Labour gains from all parties. Greg Hands was playing expectation management claiming the Conservatives might lose 1000 seats but that's all part of the game.
I’ve given up trying to get PB Tories who have been canvassing to tell us how many seats above 500 they are going to lose. They are keeping silent about that. Rather than talk seat losses now or afterwards, they will likely point out Labour got much less % in votes than polling - and we will certainly hear about it if the % gap between Lab to con is single figures 🥹
Two questions. If it’s a wasted vote for Labour, but cast tactically for Lib Dem or Green to prevent a Tory councillor, this will lower Labours %? If there is an awful lot of this Labour vote lending, it would obviously cause higher than expected Tory losses, maybe as many as 700, but would also bring down tLabours share of the vote? By that I mean, Labour only getting 39-40% of votes way off their polling could look bad, but if it actually reveals the willingness of LLG to lend votes to each other to hurt Tories, that’s probably more ominous GE indication for Tories isn’t it?
Secondly, this very important “since last election % of Con vote have switched to Labour” indicator from polls - do we know what the actual GE % from con 92 to Lab 97? Only then could we know if 15% is not good enough, good enough, or on par with 97?
There are plenty of nuances about this round of elections. 2019 was a curiosity. Usually, either the Opposition does well and the Government badly or (rarely) the other way round (1992, 2017). In 2019, both the Opposition and Government did badly and the winners were the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and a mix of Independents and anti-development Residents (the latter especially so in Surrey and other parts of the south east).
Trying to defend these gains won't be easy - the anti-development Residents were insurgents then but run the Council now (often with the LDs) and it'll be interesting to see how they are viewed four years on.
That was the main interest in but this time it will be all about Labour and the extent to which they can begin to roll back the Conservative advances in local councils in the Midlands and North which paved the way for the big constituency gains in the 2019 General Elections. A generation of growing Conservative strength may yet be undone in a single night in some areas.
In a little more detail, Bolton is the only Conservative-led among the Metropolitan Boroughs which are all-up this time. They have a minority administration with just 23 of 60 seats and while Labour might struggle from 19 to take overall control I wouldn't be surprised.
Dudley, Solihull and Walsall are the three Conservative-controlled authorities which are third-up this year. The Conservatives have a 20-seat majority (46-26) on Dudley and 24 seats are up for grabs. It's hard to see control changing - Labour would need to win 11 of the 13 Conservative seats up this time to take control.
Solihull has the Conservatives facing the Greens as the main opposition - Labour lost their last two councillors to defections in October 2021 - and while the majority might be reduced it would be a big surprise if the Conservatives lost control this time.
In Walsall, the Conservatives have a majority of 16 but are defending 13 of their 38 seats so could conceivably lose that majority but again it's a big stretch.
My expectation management would start with those four councils - IF Labour wins all four, Starmer is well on his way to No.10 - if the Conservatives keep all four, Sunak should be safe for another five years. I suspect neither will happen.
In the end it was the misogyny. As well as the money.
Tucker Carlson fired on Murdoch’s orders over discrimination lawsuit, report says https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2023/apr/24/biden-2024-election-debt-limit-trump-politics-live-updates … In March, Abby Grossberg, a producer who formerly worked on Carlson’s show, filed a suit saying that lawyers for the network “coached” and “intimidated” her into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. She also alleged a culture of sexism and misogyny at the network, and that executives tried to blame her and host Maria Bartiromo for the airing of 2020 election conspiracy theories.
While the Times reports that the dismissal wasn’t related to the Dominion lawsuit, it notes that comments made about managers at the network, which were revealed in the case’s discovery process “may have also played a role” in his ousting…
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
Easy, I’d shrug and go elsewhere, but do we really want to start this off again? For the record, I didn’t raise it - others did as (to his eternal credit) @ydoethur has recognised above!
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
Easy, I’d shrug and go elsewhere, but do we really want to start this off again? For the record, I didn’t raise it - others did as (to his eternal credit) @ydoethur has recognised above!
Please, let us not bring credit into this either! That's how the whole argument began!
(Seriously, these discussions are incredibly tedious. Can I please strongly advise everyone to drop it before they get bad tempered too?)
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
Two questions. If it’s a wasted vote for Labour, but cast tactically for Lib Dem or Green to prevent a Tory councillor, this will lower Labours %? If there is an awful lot of this Labour vote lending, it would obviously cause higher than expected Tory losses, maybe as many as 700, but would also bring down tLabours share of the vote? By that I mean, Labour only getting 39-40% of votes way off their polling could look bad, but if it actually reveals the willingness of LLG to lend votes to each other to hurt Tories, that’s probably more ominous GE indication for Tories isn’t it?
Secondly, this very important “since last election % of Con vote have switched to Labour” indicator from polls - do we know what the actual GE % from con 92 to Lab 97? Only then could we know if 15% is not good enough, good enough, or on par with 97?
Apologies for the snip - the point about tactical voting is interesting. We know the Conservatives are contesting 93% of all seats while we also know in some areas there is an understanding, pact, tacit agreement, call it what you will, between LDs, Greens, Residents and anti-Conservative Independents not so stand against each other to split the anti-Conservative vote. We'll see if it works.
Last time, in terms of actual votes cast, the Conservatives finished just under five points ahead of Labour (31.4 to 26.6) with the LDs on just under 17%, the Greens on 9% and UKIP on 4.5% with 11.5% reserved for Independents, Residents and the like. No two sets of locals are the same - in 2019 there were 8,411 seats contested - this time it's 8,092.
As for point two, if you look at the numbers (and this is incredibly simplistic and negates churn), the Conservatives lost 4.5 million votes between 1992 and 1997 - Labour gained 2 million, just over 2 million can be put down to turnout. In 1992, the Conservatives polled just over 14 million votes so if we argue (and this is really stretching it) 2 million switched directly that would be 14% so comparable to where we are now.
I wouldn't rely on that - there were switches from Conservative to Liberal Democrat and Referendum and LD losses (about 750,000 in total) to Labour and others so that's me trying to over-simplify a much more complex story.
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
Hard recommend to pb nerds. It begins as total fluff but ends up really quite compelling and twisty. And dark
Not immortal TV; but good, watchable TV if you’re into politics? Absolutely
Enjoyed Ep1. Will dive in further...
It gets better and darker. It ends up quite surprising. Best American politics drama since House of Cards?
I’ve been busy binge watching.
I agree with you Leon, Slow Horses is great fun.
We are all up to date on Montalbano and young Montalbano? I think Italians do good police procedurals. They are good at both types of detective mysteries, those solved by taking you on a journey through ratiocination and those solved by a flash of insight. Though pace is slow, Lento slow in Italian crime series the camera often looks on from afar making good use of sets and locations.
After binge watching Inspector Ricciardi, set in 1930s Italy like an Italian Babylon Berlin, I have started watching the equally very atmospheric Don’t Leave Me. the melodrama hungry camera dwells on peoples faces a lot, this makes the actors work and show their skills. I would recommend both. 🙂
This Infosys situation re the emergency alert contract absolutely stinks.
So Sunak was the new bright light? This is every bit as bad as Boris.
The tories deserve to be booted out for a hundred years. Disgusting, revolting, sleaze-ridden, utterly corrupt.
I do not expect rational discussion from someone who is so vengeful and full of hubris
It is an excellent means of communication, especially locally for all kinds of emergencies, and by trialling it it assists it in sorting out technical issues
Your hatred is getting the better of you
The alert was somewhat Orwellian. Authoritarian and intrusive.
Giving you information is authoritarian and intrusive?
What information? I got an extremely loud and distressing siren pumped to my phone and watch when I was chilling out on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody asked me for my permission to do this
Loud and distressing siren? A few seconds irritation is that big a deal?
Yes. You don't know what I was doing at the time.
Why didn't the government write to people to ask them before it did this?
There was publicity about it. Even if they had written to every address in the country large numbers of people would not have read it or would have forgotten about it. Plus, since when does the governemnt undertake a quasi referendum on an operational matter of government?
However righteously angry you are or people should be about it - like plenty of people I've asked what the need for it was - writing a letter to everyone in the country about it is not a serious suggestion.
Why not? It's done for many other governmental programmes.
Really? 65million people receive letters about such things to ask their consent (you did say to ask), meaning all those people have to write back? I don't remember the last thing I ever received from the government, so it sure cannot be very common.
I really do not understand just how angry people are about this. It's seething fury, not just irritation.
As LostPassword points out if you wanted no interruptions at all from whatever you were doing you could have turned your phone off entirely. So you're basically just mad because it was a little louder than a regular interruption, which is not exactly the tremendous outrage your initial fury showed. You weren't against an interruption, just not this one.
What ‘tremendous outrage’ and ‘initial fury’ is this? What an absurd exaggeration.
I wrote this: “ The alert was somewhat Orwellian. Authoritarian and intrusive.”
Where exactly did I demonstrate this spitting rage? You are just making it up.
My word, I engaged in mild hyperbole, what a crime. And you've demonstrated it very well I'd say - describing it as Orwellian and authoritarian shows tremendous outrage and spitting fury in my opinion, and incidentally is far more hyperbolic than my own words which you are now getting pissy about.
That's not making things up, it's an opinion based on your own words. People will disagree but its still opinion.
Also, either you are against hyperbole or you aren't. You've described an alert sent to mobile phones as 'somewhat orwellian', then whinge about an exagerration? Seriously now.
So would you like to withdraw your description as somewhat orwellian or do you want to withdraw your concern about hyperbolic language?
Sure, but at least he didn't engage in Orwellian tendencies like sending alerts to mobile phones without prior consent. That's a line even that monster wouldn't cross. I'd be mad about it, but apparently criticising Orwellian conduct like that does not show spitting rage, so it's good.
Edit: Being serious though, since it's no fun winding people up too much when they are the only ones getting annoyed, I'm not sure how many people didn't already think those things even on his own side - certainly some felt he was always a believer, but not all his backers did, they probably thought him a good convert.
My dislike of cash really triggers people here, to the point where they endlessly bring it up even though I have made no reference to it. Odd.
Oddly enough I was just wondering how you would feel about the shop today I encountered in a major city taking only cash (with prior trigger warning for those of nervous disposition) as both the electronics/digital whatever and cowry shells system had both failed.
For CR, I can write a 500 page report on the DfE and make him read it twice a day every day for twelve months.
But for turbotubbs, it's going to be a bit more complicated.
My object all sublime I shall achieve in time...
Are you taking the mick? Ah, don't.
The champion punner who’s just made a stunner Is given a lesson himself, His puns, I’ve decided, Shall all be derided And banned as an ‘azard to ‘ealth
It “confirms” nothing. Someone(s) asserts it is true, but unless that person is Boris or several named sources on record, we will never know.
Lots of people on here do this and take newspaper stories or political books as gospel. Trust me, once you have seen things you know about or were present for reported through those channels, you realise it’s all bollocks and stop taking any of it at face value.
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
Hard recommend to pb nerds. It begins as total fluff but ends up really quite compelling and twisty. And dark
Not immortal TV; but good, watchable TV if you’re into politics? Absolutely
Enjoyed Ep1. Will dive in further...
It gets better and darker. It ends up quite surprising. Best American politics drama since House of Cards?
I’ve been busy binge watching.
I agree with you Leon, Slow Horses is great fun.
We are all up to date on Montalbano and young Montalbano? I think Italians do good police procedurals. They are good at both types of detective mysteries, those solved by taking you on a journey through ratiocination and those solved by a flash of insight. Though pace is slow, Lento slow in Italian crime series the camera often looks on from afar making good use of sets and locations.
After binge watching Inspector Ricciardi, set in 1930s Italy like an Italian Babylon Berlin, I have started watching the equally very atmospheric Don’t Leave Me. the melodrama hungry camera dwells on peoples faces a lot, this makes the actors work and show their skills. I would recommend both. 🙂
Ice Cold Murders is excellent too. We are watching episode 6 of Don't Leave Me as I write. They have just rescued the boy in Lubliana.
Have you noticed all the actors are interchangeable from series to series? Young Livia is in Don't Leave Me and Stella, the Bank Manager from Moltalbano is the love interest in Ricciardi .
Luca Zingretti is great in Olivetti, if you haven't seen it
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
But also, no Boris = no Brexit. Partly because he did tip the balance in 2016 by giving Brexit an amusing respectable face, but more importantly because he had spent the preceeding 25 years chucking bricks and enjoying the chaos caused. Yes, he did solve a lot of Conservative problems in 2019, but he had done a lot to create them.
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
But also, no Boris = no Brexit. Partly because he did tip the balance in 2016 by giving Brexit an amusing respectable face, but more importantly because he had spent the preceeding 25 years chucking bricks and enjoying the chaos caused. Yes, he did solve a lot of Conservative problems in 2019, but he had done a lot to create them.
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Boris "could" have professed his loyalty to Cameron, supported the Prime Minister and, if you're right, given the Remain campaign enough of a boost to squeak an unconvincing win. A thankful Cameron would likely have rewarded him with a Cabinet role and who knows, Johnson might have been able to be a challenger to Osborne in 2018.
Covid casts the biggest of shadows over Johnson - a world without Covid, a world without lockdowns or vaccines or test and trace is such a different world it's quite hard to conceive. Would Johnson have gone gung-ho on a Thatcherite agenda of tax and spending cuts? Yet as is often said here, he calls himself a liberal conservative so a contradiction but more perhaps campaigner and showman than administrator.
He would dominate the political stage though and those who raised him up in 2019 would doubtless (as we know for they are still in the shadows) be loyal to him. Starmer can stand against the equally boring technocrat Sunak but against Johnson in a campaign, he'd have as much chance as Kinnock against Thatcher in the 80s.
I do agree he would be the architect of his own undoing.
According to wikipedia, the British sudanese community numbers about 18000. Interesting that 4000 are in Sudan. I wonder how many are living there and how many are just visiting.
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
But also, no Boris = no Brexit. Partly because he did tip the balance in 2016 by giving Brexit an amusing respectable face, but more importantly because he had spent the preceeding 25 years chucking bricks and enjoying the chaos caused. Yes, he did solve a lot of Conservative problems in 2019, but he had done a lot to create them.
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Boris Johnson would have been a shit PM Covid or no Covid. Because he has none of the skills or personality traits necessary to be an effective leader.
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
I did not consent for people to ring my phone number!
Fulton DA Fani Willis says she'll announce Georgia election interference charging decisions during grand jury term that starts JULY 11, in a letter sent Monday asking for "heightened security and preparedness." https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1650606853473050636
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
But also, no Boris = no Brexit. Partly because he did tip the balance in 2016 by giving Brexit an amusing respectable face, but more importantly because he had spent the preceeding 25 years chucking bricks and enjoying the chaos caused. Yes, he did solve a lot of Conservative problems in 2019, but he had done a lot to create them.
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Boris "could" have professed his loyalty to Cameron, supported the Prime Minister and, if you're right, given the Remain campaign enough of a boost to squeak an unconvincing win. A thankful Cameron would likely have rewarded him with a Cabinet role and who knows, Johnson might have been able to be a challenger to Osborne in 2018.
Covid casts the biggest of shadows over Johnson - a world without Covid, a world without lockdowns or vaccines or test and trace is such a different world it's quite hard to conceive. Would Johnson have gone gung-ho on a Thatcherite agenda of tax and spending cuts? Yet as is often said here, he calls himself a liberal conservative so a contradiction but more perhaps campaigner and showman than administrator.
He would dominate the political stage though and those who raised him up in 2019 would doubtless (as we know for they are still in the shadows) be loyal to him. Starmer can stand against the equally boring technocrat Sunak but against Johnson in a campaign, he'd have as much chance as Kinnock against Thatcher in the 80s.
I do agree he would be the architect of his own undoing.
I just don't get the Johnson is the ultimate campaigner narrative. Campaigning may be his happy place, but his campaigning style is a bizarre comedy of errors that his adoring public just lap up. It's very much a case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
I did not consent for people to ring my phone number!
I have never consented to anyone sounding their horn if I am about to walk out on front of their car. How dare they!
Our VW Passat has done about 280,000 km (so about 175,000 miles) and we recently had to replace the flywheel (and consequently also the clutch), which is a pretty routine sort of repair required on VW group cars, but still costs a fair whack. It's going to be pretty hilarious if it turns out that electric cars - even the batteries - last longer and in better condition than ICE cars. Where will the naysayers turn next?
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
I did not consent for people to ring my phone number!
I have never consented to anyone sounding their horn if I am about to walk out on front of their car. How dare they!
Same people probably reckon we should bring back the phone book.
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
But also, no Boris = no Brexit. Partly because he did tip the balance in 2016 by giving Brexit an amusing respectable face, but more importantly because he had spent the preceeding 25 years chucking bricks and enjoying the chaos caused. Yes, he did solve a lot of Conservative problems in 2019, but he had done a lot to create them.
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Boris "could" have professed his loyalty to Cameron, supported the Prime Minister and, if you're right, given the Remain campaign enough of a boost to squeak an unconvincing win. A thankful Cameron would likely have rewarded him with a Cabinet role and who knows, Johnson might have been able to be a challenger to Osborne in 2018.
Covid casts the biggest of shadows over Johnson - a world without Covid, a world without lockdowns or vaccines or test and trace is such a different world it's quite hard to conceive. Would Johnson have gone gung-ho on a Thatcherite agenda of tax and spending cuts? Yet as is often said here, he calls himself a liberal conservative so a contradiction but more perhaps campaigner and showman than administrator.
He would dominate the political stage though and those who raised him up in 2019 would doubtless (as we know for they are still in the shadows) be loyal to him. Starmer can stand against the equally boring technocrat Sunak but against Johnson in a campaign, he'd have as much chance as Kinnock against Thatcher in the 80s.
I do agree he would be the architect of his own undoing.
I just don't get the Johnson is the ultimate campaigner narrative. Campaigning may be his happy place, but his campaigning style is a bizarre comedy of errors that his adoring public just lap up. It's very much a case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
Maybe but as his supporters would point out, his electoral record, apart from Clwyd South in 1997, is pretty impressive for all he had a fair slice of luck facing Ken Livingstone not once but twice. Had he faced a better Labour candidate in 2012, he might well have lost.
Ah, so an absolute landslide of Britons, across all age groups, agree with me.
I truly do have my finger on the pulse of the nation.
Sure but 80pc of those asked barely use cash.. its similar to keeping the pub open that you never go to.
Exactly. It's almost irrelevant what people wish, in reality they are voting with their wallets or rather not doing so.
Indeed. As with so many things.
People don't want to leave the house with a pocket full of coins but they do want change for their folding money if they buy something. So the shopkeeper has to lug a sack of coins from the bank every morning which end up in a jar next to the purchaser's bedside to be returned to the bank in a year or three. The disappearance of local bank branches will eventually put a stop to this expensive circulation of little bits of almost worthless metal.
It's a bit like those funny red-and-plate-glass urinals you still see occasionally on street corners. Back in the day when they had pay phones in them there was usually a queue outside and that's what made them economical. As soon as the queue disappeared they were used for other purposes and suddenly weren't so popular.
The aristocracy still features quite strongly in German society so I wouldn't be surprised.
People from republics (Americans, French, Germans) are often obsessed with our monarchy, just as people from desert countries are besotted by water features, or Russians and Scandanavians love winters in Egypt and Thailand respectively.
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
But also, no Boris = no Brexit. Partly because he did tip the balance in 2016 by giving Brexit an amusing respectable face, but more importantly because he had spent the preceeding 25 years chucking bricks and enjoying the chaos caused. Yes, he did solve a lot of Conservative problems in 2019, but he had done a lot to create them.
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Boris "could" have professed his loyalty to Cameron, supported the Prime Minister and, if you're right, given the Remain campaign enough of a boost to squeak an unconvincing win. A thankful Cameron would likely have rewarded him with a Cabinet role and who knows, Johnson might have been able to be a challenger to Osborne in 2018.
Covid casts the biggest of shadows over Johnson - a world without Covid, a world without lockdowns or vaccines or test and trace is such a different world it's quite hard to conceive. Would Johnson have gone gung-ho on a Thatcherite agenda of tax and spending cuts? Yet as is often said here, he calls himself a liberal conservative so a contradiction but more perhaps campaigner and showman than administrator.
He would dominate the political stage though and those who raised him up in 2019 would doubtless (as we know for they are still in the shadows) be loyal to him. Starmer can stand against the equally boring technocrat Sunak but against Johnson in a campaign, he'd have as much chance as Kinnock against Thatcher in the 80s.
I do agree he would be the architect of his own undoing.
I just don't get the Johnson is the ultimate campaigner narrative. Campaigning may be his happy place, but his campaigning style is a bizarre comedy of errors that his adoring public just lap up. It's very much a case of the Emperor's New Clothes.
Comapred with May in 2017, he put on about 300 000 votes, just over 1 percent of share.
And not even TM's biggest fans would say that she was a great campaigner, or that 2017 was anything other than an omnishambles. What created the Boris Triumph was both the votes Labour lost (2.5 million) and where they lost them.
When does the world beating UK evacuation of Brits start in Sudan ?
Don't be a berk. When people made similarly snide comments about Libya it turned out that UK special forces had arrived in the country before the complaints even started. You can be certain that there is a lot more going on than any of us are aware. Just hope that everyone can safely leave.
Ah, so an absolute landslide of Britons, across all age groups, agree with me.
I truly do have my finger on the pulse of the nation.
Sure but 80pc of those asked barely use cash.. its similar to keeping the pub open that you never go to.
Exactly. It's almost irrelevant what people wish, in reality they are voting with their wallets or rather not doing so.
Indeed. As with so many things.
People don't want to leave the house with a pocket full of coins but they do want change for their folding money if they buy something. So the shopkeeper has to lug a sack of coins from the bank every morning which end up in a jar next to the purchaser's bedside to be returned to the bank in a year or three. The disappearance of local bank branches will eventually put a stop to this expensive circulation of little bits of almost worthless metal.
It's a bit like those funny red-and-plate-glass urinals you still see occasionally on street corners. Back in the day when they had pay phones in them there was usually a queue outside and that's what made them economical. As soon as the queue disappeared they were used for other purposes and suddenly weren't so popular.
Cash - particularly paper cash - became so enormously popular in the first place, because it was more convenient than the alternatives. So it's no surprise that it should be supplanted by electronic transactions.
However, we will pay a high price for this immediate convenience in loss of privacy. The banks in Ireland want six months of bank statements with a mortgage application, so that they can pore over every detail of my spending and judge me for it. Only they won't get a person to do it, just some faceless algorithm, with which there will be no reasoning, and no right of appeal.
I haven't even made a mortgage application yet, but I know that the bank is there, peering over my shoulder every time I make a purchase that isn't in cash. I'll happily carry around as much weight of coins as it takes not to have to second guess every single transaction.
It “confirms” nothing. Someone(s) asserts it is true, but unless that person is Boris or several named sources on record, we will never know.
Lots of people on here do this and take newspaper stories or political books as gospel. Trust me, once you have seen things you know about or were present for reported through those channels, you realise it’s all bollocks and stop taking any of it at face value.
Boris saying something means it's not bollocks? If only!
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
I did not consent for people to ring my phone number!
I have never consented to anyone sounding their horn if I am about to walk out on front of their car. How dare they!
As one whose flat is on the ground floor next to the car park I favour hang, drawing and quartering for those who can't leave the building without a cheery honk of the horn. It always seems to be a certain age group.
The aristocracy still features quite strongly in German society so I wouldn't be surprised.
People from republics (Americans, French, Germans) are often obsessed with our monarchy, just as people from desert countries are besotted by water features, or Russians and Scandanavians love winters in Egypt and Thailand respectively.
The grass is always greener ...
So how come the vast majority of democracies are republics, and not monarchies?
Two questions. If it’s a wasted vote for Labour, but cast tactically for Lib Dem or Green to prevent a Tory councillor, this will lower Labours %? If there is an awful lot of this Labour vote lending, it would obviously cause higher than expected Tory losses, maybe as many as 700, but would also bring down tLabours share of the vote? By that I mean, Labour only getting 39-40% of votes way off their polling could look bad, but if it actually reveals the willingness of LLG to lend votes to each other to hurt Tories, that’s probably more ominous GE indication for Tories isn’t it?
Secondly, this very important “since last election % of Con vote have switched to Labour” indicator from polls - do we know what the actual GE % from con 92 to Lab 97? Only then could we know if 15% is not good enough, good enough, or on par with 97?
Apologies for the snip - the point about tactical voting is interesting. We know the Conservatives are contesting 93% of all seats while we also know in some areas there is an understanding, pact, tacit agreement, call it what you will, between LDs, Greens, Residents and anti-Conservative Independents not so stand against each other to split the anti-Conservative vote. We'll see if it works.
Last time, in terms of actual votes cast, the Conservatives finished just under five points ahead of Labour (31.4 to 26.6) with the LDs on just under 17%, the Greens on 9% and UKIP on 4.5% with 11.5% reserved for Independents, Residents and the like. No two sets of locals are the same - in 2019 there were 8,411 seats contested - this time it's 8,092.
As for point two, if you look at the numbers (and this is incredibly simplistic and negates churn), the Conservatives lost 4.5 million votes between 1992 and 1997 - Labour gained 2 million, just over 2 million can be put down to turnout. In 1992, the Conservatives polled just over 14 million votes so if we argue (and this is really stretching it) 2 million switched directly that would be 14% so comparable to where we are now.
I wouldn't rely on that - there were switches from Conservative to Liberal Democrat and Referendum and LD losses (about 750,000 in total) to Labour and others so that's me trying to over-simplify a much more complex story.
“I wouldn't rely on that”
But if we have nothing, and until we have better, a crude calculation that Blair gained about 14% of the 1992 conservatives is a good place to start. Thanks.
what leaps out from your post is the understanding we know what has sometimes happened before, levels of apathy and levels of tactical vote, might happen again, but also might not happen again. And the difference between those two models could be huge.
Tories lost 4.5M votes, Labour gained just 2M really does point to 1997 result, ridiculously big majority for Labour, built not on huge number of Tory to Lab switchers, like we are currently looking for and measuring Starmer failing against, instead built upon a lot of sitting on hands from 1992 Conservatives. And We know Elections where tactical voting is large versus when it doesn’t happen much, can make a huge difference, versus modelling which places national swing across every seat. So outside of playing with numbers is to work out the mood for tactical voting, and the apathetic mood too, in order to project seat numbers and shares of vote.
If Lab Lib & Grn not put off voting for each other where they know it really can deprive the Tories, they are all motivated to hurt Tories, seat projections could be a long way out. And the amount of don’t knows or vowing today to vote reform, where suspicion is will swing back to be Tory votes in the GE, might just stay at home instead, that also could make mockery of both polling and seat projections built on swingback modelling.
Psephology literally means counting pebbles. But to be good at it is more than 50% psychology and less than 50% just counting in my opinion. It’s a science for picking up the actual moods which can matter so much.
And probably cannot even be done today, like you can’t harvest crops till they are grown. As per Mike Smithsons header last week, we probably cannot be sure what moods are in play outside of the raw polling numbers, until at least two weeks from the actual polling.
The aristocracy still features quite strongly in German society so I wouldn't be surprised.
People from republics (Americans, French, Germans) are often obsessed with our monarchy, just as people from desert countries are besotted by water features, or Russians and Scandanavians love winters in Egypt and Thailand respectively.
The grass is always greener ...
So how come the vast majority of democracies are republics, and not monarchies?
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
Ah, so an absolute landslide of Britons, across all age groups, agree with me.
I truly do have my finger on the pulse of the nation.
Sure but 80pc of those asked barely use cash.. its similar to keeping the pub open that you never go to.
Exactly. It's almost irrelevant what people wish, in reality they are voting with their wallets or rather not doing so.
Indeed. As with so many things.
People don't want to leave the house with a pocket full of coins but they do want change for their folding money if they buy something. So the shopkeeper has to lug a sack of coins from the bank every morning which end up in a jar next to the purchaser's bedside to be returned to the bank in a year or three. The disappearance of local bank branches will eventually put a stop to this expensive circulation of little bits of almost worthless metal.
It's a bit like those funny red-and-plate-glass urinals you still see occasionally on street corners. Back in the day when they had pay phones in them there was usually a queue outside and that's what made them economical. As soon as the queue disappeared they were used for other purposes and suddenly weren't so popular.
Cash - particularly paper cash - became so enormously popular in the first place, because it was more convenient than the alternatives. So it's no surprise that it should be supplanted by electronic transactions.
However, we will pay a high price for this immediate convenience in loss of privacy. The banks in Ireland want six months of bank statements with a mortgage application, so that they can pore over every detail of my spending and judge me for it. Only they won't get a person to do it, just some faceless algorithm, with which there will be no reasoning, and no right of appeal.
I haven't even made a mortgage application yet, but I know that the bank is there, peering over my shoulder every time I make a purchase that isn't in cash. I'll happily carry around as much weight of coins as it takes not to have to second guess every single transaction.
It's the other way around, I'm afraid. A mortgage lender wants to know if you have regular income and mundane outgoings like a normal citizen, which a credit card record would immediately establish. But a succession of inexplicable cash withdrawals with nothing to show for it arouses suspicion. Perhaps you are a victim of blackmail? Or worse...
When does the world beating UK evacuation of Brits start in Sudan ?
Don't be a berk. When people made similarly snide comments about Libya it turned out that UK special forces had arrived in the country before the complaints even started. You can be certain that there is a lot more going on than any of us are aware. Just hope that everyone can safely leave.
I'm always astonished where British people get to. What is anyone doing in Sudan?
Ah, so an absolute landslide of Britons, across all age groups, agree with me.
I truly do have my finger on the pulse of the nation.
Sure but 80pc of those asked barely use cash.. its similar to keeping the pub open that you never go to.
Exactly. It's almost irrelevant what people wish, in reality they are voting with their wallets or rather not doing so.
Indeed. As with so many things.
People don't want to leave the house with a pocket full of coins but they do want change for their folding money if they buy something. So the shopkeeper has to lug a sack of coins from the bank every morning which end up in a jar next to the purchaser's bedside to be returned to the bank in a year or three. The disappearance of local bank branches will eventually put a stop to this expensive circulation of little bits of almost worthless metal.
It's a bit like those funny red-and-plate-glass urinals you still see occasionally on street corners. Back in the day when they had pay phones in them there was usually a queue outside and that's what made them economical. As soon as the queue disappeared they were used for other purposes and suddenly weren't so popular.
Cash - particularly paper cash - became so enormously popular in the first place, because it was more convenient than the alternatives. So it's no surprise that it should be supplanted by electronic transactions.
However, we will pay a high price for this immediate convenience in loss of privacy. The banks in Ireland want six months of bank statements with a mortgage application, so that they can pore over every detail of my spending and judge me for it. Only they won't get a person to do it, just some faceless algorithm, with which there will be no reasoning, and no right of appeal.
I haven't even made a mortgage application yet, but I know that the bank is there, peering over my shoulder every time I make a purchase that isn't in cash. I'll happily carry around as much weight of coins as it takes not to have to second guess every single transaction.
They used to rely on a bank manager in your community who personally knew your business.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
Nope. Went out for a wander around but no sign in spite of it being a clear night and limited light pollution.
Johnson's tragedy or justice (depending on your viewpoint) is he manipulated and maneuvered his way to a position where the Conservative Party threw itself at him as their only chance to avoid the nightmare either of schism to Farage or of defeat to Corbyn. He did what the Party needed, saw off both Farage and Corbyn, won a majority and had the world at his feet.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
A 2020 Mr Churchill would have been a much better Prime Minister than Mr Johnson was. Johnson was out of his depth.
When does the world beating UK evacuation of Brits start in Sudan ?
Don't be a berk. When people made similarly snide comments about Libya it turned out that UK special forces had arrived in the country before the complaints even started. You can be certain that there is a lot more going on than any of us are aware. Just hope that everyone can safely leave.
I'm always astonished where British people get to. What is anyone doing in Sudan?
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
I did not consent for people to ring my phone number!
I have never consented to anyone sounding their horn if I am about to walk out on front of their car. How dare they!
There’s a perfect Matt cartoon on the subject tomorrow.
Ah, so an absolute landslide of Britons, across all age groups, agree with me.
I truly do have my finger on the pulse of the nation.
Sure but 80pc of those asked barely use cash.. its similar to keeping the pub open that you never go to.
Exactly. It's almost irrelevant what people wish, in reality they are voting with their wallets or rather not doing so.
Indeed. As with so many things.
People don't want to leave the house with a pocket full of coins but they do want change for their folding money if they buy something. So the shopkeeper has to lug a sack of coins from the bank every morning which end up in a jar next to the purchaser's bedside to be returned to the bank in a year or three. The disappearance of local bank branches will eventually put a stop to this expensive circulation of little bits of almost worthless metal.
It's a bit like those funny red-and-plate-glass urinals you still see occasionally on street corners. Back in the day when they had pay phones in them there was usually a queue outside and that's what made them economical. As soon as the queue disappeared they were used for other purposes and suddenly weren't so popular.
Cash - particularly paper cash - became so enormously popular in the first place, because it was more convenient than the alternatives. So it's no surprise that it should be supplanted by electronic transactions.
However, we will pay a high price for this immediate convenience in loss of privacy. The banks in Ireland want six months of bank statements with a mortgage application, so that they can pore over every detail of my spending and judge me for it. Only they won't get a person to do it, just some faceless algorithm, with which there will be no reasoning, and no right of appeal.
I haven't even made a mortgage application yet, but I know that the bank is there, peering over my shoulder every time I make a purchase that isn't in cash. I'll happily carry around as much weight of coins as it takes not to have to second guess every single transaction.
To bring back a previous thread - there was a late 70s and into the 80s 'sci-fi' series called 'Survivors' (based on people surviving a pandemic...). Part of the later episodes plot line was getting people to re-trust in 'paper money' rather than direct swaps/barter. It was surprisingly intelligent for the time.
(Also, ignore the 2000s remake which was awful outside of some moments in the pilot)
The aristocracy still features quite strongly in German society so I wouldn't be surprised.
People from republics (Americans, French, Germans) are often obsessed with our monarchy, just as people from desert countries are besotted by water features, or Russians and Scandanavians love winters in Egypt and Thailand respectively.
The grass is always greener ...
Loving the royal family does not mean that it is a model they want tto have in their own country. Many Germans follow the Royal family for the tabloid stuff, as they do with Beyonce or Elon Musk. Only a tiny percentage of Germans actually want a retern to the Kaiserreich, and quite a lot of those who do belong to an organisation that has recently been officially categorised as enemies of the constitution.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
I'd be surprised. Activity is currently very low, although it can't be discounted entirely. Sad, because it is a perfect night (or will be, once the moon has set). https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
The last time the government dabbled in this mass-contact 'emergency' systems, we got the NHS Covid App – a piece of software every man and his dog had to scurry to delete because it committed its users to ten days of incarceration merely for walking within 150 yards of a covidian.
The ones you should really feel sorry for are those poor benighted fishermen labouring under the Orwellian oppression of the gale warnings they are forced to listen to twice a day. And don't get me started on the utter evil of lighthouses. How dare they shine their lights in people's eyes just to warn them of hazards to shipping. The whole world has turned into a police state!!
I did not consent for people to ring my phone number!
I have never consented to anyone sounding their horn if I am about to walk out on front of their car. How dare they!
There’s a perfect Matt cartoon on the subject tomorrow.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
I'd be surprised. Activity is currently very low, although it can't be discounted entirely. Sad, because it is a perfect night (or will be, once the moon has set). https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
And yet this morning on the radio they were saying that activity was high and the Aurora should be visible across most of England tonight.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
I'd be surprised. Activity is currently very low, although it can't be discounted entirely. Sad, because it is a perfect night (or will be, once the moon has set). https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
This was from Stanage Edge, 2015:
None of that colour was visible to the naked eye, although the light pillars could be seen changing slowly. The orange glow low on the horizon didn't help.
Should have had a foreground in the picture, though. Aurora pictures need one.
The aristocracy still features quite strongly in German society so I wouldn't be surprised.
People from republics (Americans, French, Germans) are often obsessed with our monarchy, just as people from desert countries are besotted by water features, or Russians and Scandanavians love winters in Egypt and Thailand respectively.
The grass is always greener ...
So how come the vast majority of democracies are republics, and not monarchies?
The majority of dictatorships are republics.
These last two posts are simply a result of there being more republics than democracies.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
I'd be surprised. Activity is currently very low, although it can't be discounted entirely. Sad, because it is a perfect night (or will be, once the moon has set). https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
This was from Stanage Edge, 2015:
None of that colour was visible to the naked eye, although the light pillars could be seen changing slowly. The orange glow low on the horizon didn't help.
Should have had a foreground in the picture, though. Aurora pictures need one.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
I'd be surprised. Activity is currently very low, although it can't be discounted entirely. Sad, because it is a perfect night (or will be, once the moon has set). https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
And yet this morning on the radio they were saying that activity was high and the Aurora should be visible across most of England tonight.
Yes, they've been going on about it this evening on Radio 4 too. I have no idea why they are treating it as anything other than a past event.
The electromagnetic storm had already gone by 9 this morning, as can be seen by the magnetometer trace, so anyone looking for a repeat tonight is very likely to be disappointed.
Evening all. After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening. I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second. Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity. Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second. Anyone else see anything?
I'd be surprised. Activity is currently very low, although it can't be discounted entirely. Sad, because it is a perfect night (or will be, once the moon has set). https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
This was from Stanage Edge, 2015:
None of that colour was visible to the naked eye, although the light pillars could be seen changing slowly. The orange glow low on the horizon didn't help.
Should have had a foreground in the picture, though. Aurora pictures need one.
Impressive photo.
Presumably the orange glow was Sheffield?
More likely Huddersfield, I reckon, or possibly Stocksbridge. The M62 is lit up, too.
These days the glow should be mostly white, which might help. Not sure.
There should be more chances coming up to solar maximum, so it is probably worth sorting out an alert system if you want to catch them next time. You have to be reasonably mad to drive to a dark hill at 2am though!
This Infosys situation re the emergency alert contract absolutely stinks.
So Sunak was the new bright light? This is every bit as bad as Boris.
The tories deserve to be booted out for a hundred years. Disgusting, revolting, sleaze-ridden, utterly corrupt.
I do not expect rational discussion from someone who is so vengeful and full of hubris
It is an excellent means of communication, especially locally for all kinds of emergencies, and by trialling it it assists it in sorting out technical issues
Your hatred is getting the better of you
The alert was somewhat Orwellian. Authoritarian and intrusive.
Giving you information is authoritarian and intrusive?
What information? I got an extremely loud and distressing siren pumped to my phone and watch when I was chilling out on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody asked me for my permission to do this
Loud and distressing siren? A few seconds irritation is that big a deal?
Yes. You don't know what I was doing at the time.
Why didn't the government write to people to ask them before it did this?
Wouldn’t texting have been more use? It was phone related after all…
A text would have been mildly annoying but yes, far, far superior to this!
But the actual system had to be tested. That was the entire point of the test!
At what stage did the government ask me whether I wanted to be part of its test? Or indeed when did it ask me whether it could use my phone and watch to issue a very loud and unpleasant alarm?
Ah I see you need to be consulted on whether you want a text message....the rest of us dont have to be consulted if we want cash to continue....something you want no consultation needed.....message received and why we think you are a womens lady parts
When does the world beating UK evacuation of Brits start in Sudan ?
Don't be a berk. When people made similarly snide comments about Libya it turned out that UK special forces had arrived in the country before the complaints even started. You can be certain that there is a lot more going on than any of us are aware. Just hope that everyone can safely leave.
I'm always astonished where British people get to. What is anyone doing in Sudan?
There’s around 10x the number of US citizens there, reportedly.
When does the world beating UK evacuation of Brits start in Sudan ?
Don't be a berk. When people made similarly snide comments about Libya it turned out that UK special forces had arrived in the country before the complaints even started. You can be certain that there is a lot more going on than any of us are aware. Just hope that everyone can safely leave.
I'm always astonished where British people get to. What is anyone doing in Sudan?
There’s around 10x the number of US citizens there, reportedly.
Probaly a lot of those in sudan are aid workers...they tend to overstay because the are doing good and think the opressors will take that into account
Comments
… A source familiar with the situation told Axios that the firing was not part of the settlement agreement.
A slew of material was uncovered during pre-trial discovery that implicated Carlson. More information could be out there that could be legally damaging for Fox as it stares down more defamation cases.
A former Fox News producer Abby Grossberg, who is suing the network for allegedly trying to manipulate her testimony during pre-trial discovery for the Dominion case, said in a legal filing just before the trial that there were Fox News tapes showing Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies admitting they had no evidence to support their claims about Dominion election fraud.
In private text messages with other Fox News hosts, Carlson pressed to get a fellow Fox News reporter fired for accurately fact-checking a tweet from Donald Trump that praised Fox News' coverage about the voting machines and referenced Dominion Voting Systems.
Carlson did not immediately respond to an Axios request for comment...
Trying to defend these gains won't be easy - the anti-development Residents were insurgents then but run the Council now (often with the LDs) and it'll be interesting to see how they are viewed four years on.
That was the main interest in but this time it will be all about Labour and the extent to which they can begin to roll back the Conservative advances in local councils in the Midlands and North which paved the way for the big constituency gains in the 2019 General Elections. A generation of growing Conservative strength may yet be undone in a single night in some areas.
In a little more detail, Bolton is the only Conservative-led among the Metropolitan Boroughs which are all-up this time. They have a minority administration with just 23 of 60 seats and while Labour might struggle from 19 to take overall control I wouldn't be surprised.
Dudley, Solihull and Walsall are the three Conservative-controlled authorities which are third-up this year. The Conservatives have a 20-seat majority (46-26) on Dudley and 24 seats are up for grabs. It's hard to see control changing - Labour would need to win 11 of the 13 Conservative seats up this time to take control.
Solihull has the Conservatives facing the Greens as the main opposition - Labour lost their last two councillors to defections in October 2021 - and while the majority might be reduced it would be a big surprise if the Conservatives lost control this time.
In Walsall, the Conservatives have a majority of 16 but are defending 13 of their 38 seats so could conceivably lose that majority but again it's a big stretch.
My expectation management would start with those four councils - IF Labour wins all four, Starmer is well on his way to No.10 - if the Conservatives keep all four, Sunak should be safe for another five years. I suspect neither will happen.
That Time Tucker Carlson Called Me the C-Word
For Fox News, Carlson’s history of foul sexist comments is a plus, not a liability.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/tucker-carlson-c-word-joan-walsh/
What punishments should we mete out to @turbotubbs and @Casino_Royale for starting this off?
For CR, I can write a 500 page report on the DfE and make him read it twice a day every day for twelve months.
But for turbotubbs, it's going to be a bit more complicated.
(Seriously, these discussions are incredibly tedious. Can I please strongly advise everyone to drop it before they get bad tempered too?)
Do you think shops should or should not be required by law to accept cash payments?
All Britons
✅They should be: 73%
❌They should not be: 16%
18 to 24-year-olds
✅61%
❌25%
65+ year-olds
✅85%
❌10%
https://twitter.com/YouGov/status/1640716350791491585
(Edit - those figures are interesting, but seriously let's not go there.)
I truly do have my finger on the pulse of the nation.
Last time, in terms of actual votes cast, the Conservatives finished just under five points ahead of Labour (31.4 to 26.6) with the LDs on just under 17%, the Greens on 9% and UKIP on 4.5% with 11.5% reserved for Independents, Residents and the like. No two sets of locals are the same - in 2019 there were 8,411 seats contested - this time it's 8,092.
As for point two, if you look at the numbers (and this is incredibly simplistic and negates churn), the Conservatives lost 4.5 million votes between 1992 and 1997 - Labour gained 2 million, just over 2 million can be put down to turnout. In 1992, the Conservatives polled just over 14 million votes so if we argue (and this is really stretching it) 2 million switched directly that would be 14% so comparable to where we are now.
I wouldn't rely on that - there were switches from Conservative to Liberal Democrat and Referendum and LD losses (about 750,000 in total) to Labour and others so that's me trying to over-simplify a much more complex story.
I agree with you Leon, Slow Horses is great fun.
We are all up to date on Montalbano and young Montalbano? I think Italians do good police procedurals. They are good at both types of detective mysteries, those solved by taking you on a journey through ratiocination and those solved by a flash of insight. Though pace is slow, Lento slow in Italian crime series the camera often looks on from afar making good use of sets and locations.
After binge watching Inspector Ricciardi, set in 1930s Italy like an Italian Babylon Berlin, I have started watching the equally very atmospheric Don’t Leave Me. the melodrama hungry camera dwells on peoples faces a lot, this makes the actors work and show their skills. I would recommend both. 🙂
1) Boris Johnson thought those Turkish posters were racist
2) He didn't expect or want Leave to win
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/boris-johnson-brexit-vote-weve-got-no-plan-7s7nc9xsw
That's not making things up, it's an opinion based on your own words. People will disagree but its still opinion.
Also, either you are against hyperbole or you aren't. You've described an alert sent to mobile phones as 'somewhat orwellian', then whinge about an exagerration? Seriously now.
So would you like to withdraw your description as somewhat orwellian or do you want to withdraw your concern about hyperbolic language?
Edit: Being serious though, since it's no fun winding people up too much when they are the only ones getting annoyed, I'm not sure how many people didn't already think those things even on his own side - certainly some felt he was always a believer, but not all his backers did, they probably thought him a good convert.
Even after 200,000 miles, a Teslas battery degrades just 12%.
https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1650590945040015375
Is given a lesson himself,
His puns, I’ve decided,
Shall all be derided
And banned as an ‘azard to ‘ealth
The local elections cycles are increasingly all over the place.
He'll save every one of us
Lots of people on here do this and take newspaper stories or political books as gospel. Trust me, once you have seen things you know about or were present for reported through those channels, you realise it’s all bollocks and stop taking any of it at face value.
I’m trying to get through the first episode but it’s very, very tough going.
He could sit back and have the time of his life being Prime Minister - unfortunately, he was undone by a microscopic virus which turned his jolly time at No.10 into a never ending crisis. He may have aspired to be Churchill but Covid-19 wasn't Hitler. Instead of being upbeat, optimistic and relentlessly positive about Britain, he was forced to constrain us in a way no leader had since (oddly enough) Churchill (go look at the restrictions on freedom and the extension of Stare control imposed by the Emergency Powers Act of May 1940).
He couldn't turn levitas into gravitas and despite his own brush with mortality couldn't or wouldn't constrain his own gregarious extrovert nature in the way everyone else had to.
Perhaps being Mayor of London, all show and image but with no real power, was the role to which he was far more suited.
Have you noticed all the actors are interchangeable from series to series? Young Livia is in Don't Leave Me and Stella, the Bank Manager from Moltalbano is the love interest in Ricciardi .
Luca Zingretti is great in Olivetti, if you haven't seen it
And whilst Covid did do for him in several ways, the rest of his Premiership wasn't exactly a model of effective government, was it?
Covid casts the biggest of shadows over Johnson - a world without Covid, a world without lockdowns or vaccines or test and trace is such a different world it's quite hard to conceive. Would Johnson have gone gung-ho on a Thatcherite agenda of tax and spending cuts? Yet as is often said here, he calls himself a liberal conservative so a contradiction but more perhaps campaigner and showman than administrator.
He would dominate the political stage though and those who raised him up in 2019 would doubtless (as we know for they are still in the shadows) be loyal to him. Starmer can stand against the equally boring technocrat Sunak but against Johnson in a campaign, he'd have as much chance as Kinnock against Thatcher in the 80s.
I do agree he would be the architect of his own undoing.
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1650562767080882176
Thanks to whichever PBer reminded us to top up on our bets last week.
https://twitter.com/stphnfwlr/status/1650606853473050636
It's a bit like those funny red-and-plate-glass urinals you still see occasionally on street corners. Back in the day when they had pay phones in them there was usually a queue outside and that's what made them economical. As soon as the queue disappeared they were used for other purposes and suddenly weren't so popular.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/calcwork23.py?seat=Ceredigion Preseli
So I'm thinking let's do the same for coins.
Except you have to photograph each coin individually, so paying for anything with a load of 5ps is just really irritating.
The grass is always greener ...
And not even TM's biggest fans would say that she was a great campaigner, or that 2017 was anything other than an omnishambles. What created the Boris Triumph was both the votes Labour lost (2.5 million) and where they lost them.
Sudanese Armed Forces and Rapid Support Forces agree ceasefire, says Blinken
Secretary of state says US supports plans to set up committee to negotiate peace deal after three-day pause in hostilities
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/24/sudanese-armed-forces-and-rapid-support-forces-agree-ceasefire-says-blinken
Will at least give a chance to evacuate.
Quebec has historically had a few 4 way marginals.
However, we will pay a high price for this immediate convenience in loss of privacy. The banks in Ireland want six months of bank statements with a mortgage application, so that they can pore over every detail of my spending and judge me for it. Only they won't get a person to do it, just some faceless algorithm, with which there will be no reasoning, and no right of appeal.
I haven't even made a mortgage application yet, but I know that the bank is there, peering over my shoulder every time I make a purchase that isn't in cash. I'll happily carry around as much weight of coins as it takes not to have to second guess every single transaction.
It always seems to be a certain age group.
But if we have nothing, and until we have better, a crude calculation that Blair gained about 14% of the 1992 conservatives is a good place to start. Thanks.
what leaps out from your post is the understanding we know what has sometimes happened before, levels of apathy and levels of tactical vote, might happen again, but also might not happen again. And the difference between those two models could be huge.
Tories lost 4.5M votes, Labour gained just 2M really does point to 1997 result, ridiculously big majority for Labour, built not on huge number of Tory to Lab switchers, like we are currently looking for and measuring Starmer failing against, instead built upon a lot of sitting on hands from 1992 Conservatives. And We know Elections where tactical voting is large versus when it doesn’t happen much, can make a huge difference, versus modelling which places national swing across every seat. So outside of playing with numbers is to work out the mood for tactical voting, and the apathetic mood too, in order to project seat numbers and shares of vote.
If Lab Lib & Grn not put off voting for each other where they know it really can deprive the Tories, they are all motivated to hurt Tories, seat projections could be a long way out. And the amount of don’t knows or vowing today to vote reform, where suspicion is will swing back to be Tory votes in the GE, might just stay at home instead, that also could make mockery of both polling and seat projections built on swingback modelling.
Psephology literally means counting pebbles. But to be good at it is more than 50% psychology and less than 50% just counting in my opinion. It’s a science for picking up the actual moods which can matter so much.
And probably cannot even be done today, like you can’t harvest crops till they are grown. As per Mike Smithsons header last week, we probably cannot be sure what moods are in play outside of the raw polling numbers, until at least two weeks from the actual polling.
After failing to do so in Lapland at New Year, I'm fairly sure I saw the Northern Lights this evening.
I'd gone out looking for them. High levels of auroral activity and a reasonably clear evening. I picked the West Pennine Moors as a likely dark spot. Middle daughter, always up for an adventure, came with me. But it was in the car on the way there, about 9.30, on the A666, there was a flash of green light lit up the sky for a second.
Once up in the moors, nothing. A nice night, and we saw what might have been a satellite, but no more activity.
Still, I can say I've seen them now, if only for a second.
Anyone else see anything?
(Also, ignore the 2000s remake which was awful outside of some moments in the pilot)
https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/
Last night was a bit mental but it was mostly cloudy here so I didn't even try.
I have seen them from the Peak District and even flickering overhead from a prehistoric hill fort in Nottinghamshire. But they were never coloured to my eye - only in a long exposure with a camera. The only time I've seen colour was from Blair Atholl in Perthshire where there is literally no artificial light at all for many miles to the north.
None of that colour was visible to the naked eye, although the light pillars could be seen changing slowly. The orange glow low on the horizon didn't help.
Should have had a foreground in the picture, though. Aurora pictures need one.
Presumably the orange glow was Sheffield?
Biden 47%
Trump 43%
De Santis 45%
Biden 45%
https://twitter.com/GiancarloSopo/status/1650471615937884160?s=20
The electromagnetic storm had already gone by 9 this morning, as can be seen by the magnetometer trace, so anyone looking for a repeat tonight is very likely to be disappointed.
The NOAA have a forecast for the "Oval" (ie where aurora might be visible overhead)
https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/auroral-activity/auroral-oval.html
Way north of us and at low probability.
These days the glow should be mostly white, which might help. Not sure.
There should be more chances coming up to solar maximum, so it is probably worth sorting out an alert system if you want to catch them next time. You have to be reasonably mad to drive to a dark hill at 2am though!
Is that an observation, a metaphor, or a euphemism ?