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An R&W Welsh poll finds backing for the 20mph speed limit – politicalbetting.com
An R&W Welsh poll finds backing for the 20mph speed limit – politicalbetting.com
Do Welsh voters support or oppose the new 20mph speed limit on roads where cars mix with pedestrians and cyclists? (16-17 September)Support 46%Oppose 34% pic.twitter.com/Lgwszqjla3
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Haw!
Sad. Yes yes I know he was a quasi-Marxist anti-Semite with a weird Hitler obsession, but I always got the sense he enjoyed life, and REALLY enjoyed being a Londoner. A drinker and a hedonist and a big personality, exactly what London needs. He was a good mayor, even from my rightwing perspective
So much better than the dismal Khan
Safe travels, Red Ken
Kwasi Kwarteng on Newsnight: seems to be disappointed by scrapping of 2030 target.
That could go horribly, horribly wrong.
Eric Holthaus
@EricHolthaus
·
4m
"Brazil could record its highest temperature in history during this winter heatwave."
Read that again. It's still winter in Brazil and they are approaching all-time record hottest temperatures for *any* month in *any* year.
We are in a climate emergency.
Curious too that Mr Brexiteer was initially fine with May's Chequers surrender deal and only resigned to keep his hopes of getting the premiership alive after Davis did.
And let's not forget how he claimed that he stood behind the DUP when May was PM, only to totally shaft them once he was in No10 himself.
People hate Boris not because he beat them, but because he is a liar, a charlatan, who does things for his own self interest despite them causing great harm to the country. And along the gave positions to the likes of Chris Pincher, JRM, and Dorries despite knowing they weren't fit to be anywhere near the corridors of power.
The whole point of great world cities is Pleasure
Pleasures that are artistic, culinary, architectural, sexual, intellectual, musical, literary, conversational, social, political, psychedelical. This is the POINT of great world cities. This is why you tolerate the crowding, the crime, the litter, the pollution, the noise, the hassle - otherwise you'd go live in a fucking redbrick semi in Cheshire or, indeed, a cottage in Provence or a farm in Idaho
All this needs a tankard of beer or a glass of wine to wash it down, or something even stronger. Yet Sadiq Khan is teetotal. He is therefore a disaster: he doesn't *get* London on a fundamental level
He is, however, a perfect MP for somewhere like Tooting. That was his level, and where he should have stayed
He came and his mission was to save the poor and downtrodden ! Jeez they must think their readers are gullible morons !
Meanwhile in Australia it is 14 degrees higher than the September average.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/19/nsw-schools-closed-heatwave-australia-high-fire-danger-total-fire-bans?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
London can and must do better than Khan. Shape up, Labour
But chucking it down with rain here.
The UK’s lead aircraft carrier is two-thirds empty as it leads a major deployment this autumn because of the “slaughter” of RAF fighter jet numbers in recent years.
HMS Queen Elizabeth, the flagship of the Royal Navy, has the capacity to accommodate 36 F-35B Lightning jets and was designed to routinely carry up to 24 planes on operations.
However, the 920ft long vessel is leading an international patrol around Norway and the North Atlantic with only eight fifth-generation fighters on board, meaning it will be two-thirds empty. When the USS Gerald R Ford, the largest American carrier, visited Norway earlier this year she had more than 40 aircraft on board, including dozens of F-18 fighter jets.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/uks-lead-aircraft-carrier-two-thirds-empty-as-raf-fighter-jets-slashed-nfqqw8qrk (£££)
Tory defence cuts go back decades. And that's leaving aside the matter of RAF jets on RN carriers.
https://youtu.be/2oxsQJm3DTs?si=ztcmjsen0A9OMJMs
But I would accept that this is my limit. I am not prime ministerial material. I am too easily distracted too easily bored, and my past life will not bear the scrutiny given to a potential PM. 10 years as a heroin addict is a hard sell, and all the tweeting from brothels could prove "tricky"
Mayor of London, tho? Yeah, I could do that, and do it better than Khan. I would, at least, be funnier. Khan is so relentlessly humourless
https://youtu.be/LPa1RFAivy4?si=HBODv6nkhzbQPt69
On the other hand, he was a total idiot for handing his enemies all the ammo they needed. He was weirdly naive
Josep Maria Garcia, snapped in Barcelona: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartbreaking:_The_Worst_Person_You_Know_Just_Made_A_Great_Point
3 young Spaniards in a stick photo taken in Barcelona: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distracted_boyfriend
El Risitas: Spanish comedian https://amp.knowyourmeme.com/memes/people/spanish-laughing-guy-el-risitas-interview-parodies
The election has begun.
I didn't do quite the sixty meetings in sixty days, but I did about 30 meetings in 90 days, It was like a course of psychological antibotics, and had to be completed
I still drink (obviously) which you are not meant to do. But I have not ever gone back to heroin. I have been clean of heroin since the Spring Equinox of 2002, when I began attending NA meetings (and after a truly weird epiphany in Soho)
50% of voters (and 70% of Conservatives and 55% of Welsh voters) back the government delaying its ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 however, 34% opposed.
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/09/20/6d4f1/1
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-509257/Channel-4-film-attacks-Ken-Livingstones-astonishing-shocking-drinking-habits.html
"German president says country at ‘breaking point’ over migration"
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-migration-president-frank-walter-steinmeier-breaking-point/
"Germany has ‘reached limit’ of its migrant intake, says president
Frank-Walter Steinmeier called for stronger controls on Europe’s borders to help nation, which takes in third of those who reach EU"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/09/20/germany-migrants-reached-limit-president-borders/
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/mass-xl-bully-walk-planned-27752197
"Bring as many kids as possible"
Today Africa has 1.5 billion, of whom half are under the age of 25. In 20 years it will be 2 billion. One continent is overflowing into another.”
https://x.com/zemmoureric/status/1704251818023231639
Always strange how easy it is to lie to yourself once over the edge.
A reminder that time doesn't stand still for any of us... but I think out of any terminal illness Alzheimers/Dementia is probably the worst as it robs the sufferer of so much before eventually taking you to the eternal beyond.
Poor Ken.
Either we accept that Europe will become largely African (in race and culture), or we start towing the boats back and harshly defending the borders
Both "solutions" will lead to quite serious distress, for many innocent humans. But those ARE the choices. Anyone who denies this is a liar and a charlatan: that means most politicians
However the declining European birthrate also means migration will still be needed but controlled migration
It will be interesting to see where Italian voters go next. Will they shrug and say Whatevs and accept no one can stop it, and go back to corrupt but charming social democrats who might govern quite well, or will they swing even further right and elect someone willing to use guns to defend the border?
These awful choices will eventually face most European governments
If Zemmour had been making his pronouncements in 1980, he'd have talked about Bangladesh's runaway population growth. And yet now the total fertility ratio is below 2.
Across Asia, populations are falling.
The same is true of Eastern Europe.
And Latin America has virtually no countries with TFRs above 2, and the first countries are beginning to see absolute population numbers decline.
Africa isn't far behind.
Add in the pressure of climate change on MENA and sub-Saharan Africa, and the failure of so many African societies - see the Sahel coup belt - and you have the recipe for a tsunami of unchecked migration into Old Europe
A terrible reckoning is coming, however you slice it
Italy fertility rate 1.3, Portugal fertility rate 1.4, Germany fertility rate 1.5, Hungary fertility rate 1.6, even France fertility rate only 1.8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_fertility_rate
It's not white educated Catholic Frenchwomen who are suddenly having three or four kids
That is, in fact, what is happening across Africa.
This isn't one of those "oh, there are two sides to every story" and "it depends on how you look at it" things. TFRs are dropping in Africa, just as they have dropped everywhere else in the world.
Truly, he has the versatility to be either of the two both unconvincingly and for a mercifully fairly brief period of time. It is masterful.
It's going to be lonnnngggg 12 months. Lets hope we all make it to the other side. 🙏
Does anyone have good sweet or sweet & sour dip recipes?
Had supper tonight with a friend who can't eat spice easily any more - due to bowel cancer recently treated.
We had Gyoza Dumplings, and I made a sweet and sour (mainly sweet) dip with the following ingredients:
Wine vinegar, maple syrup, peanut butter, lemon curd, small amount of soft brown sugar, and a smidge of mustard for heat, which worked very well.
Does anyone have any other good recipes?
Those lines are the very definition of collapsing (albeit at a multi-decade pace).
(1) Our economy is doing rather better than most places in Europe. Look at our unemployment rate compared to - say - Italy, and tell me you'd want to be in Italy.
(2) We have a large informal economy, and it's very easy to get by without the proper (or indeed any) papers. Compare and contrast with Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark or Switzerland.
(3) What's the language you're most likely to speak as a migrant? English. What language do we speak? English.
(4) We have - candidly - a much more friendly society that is accepting of immigrants than most of Europe, with better race relations. (And there are probably many people from country [x] already here.)
Both have TFRs almost 3 times replacement level for starters still
In the US for example Mormons have a TFR of 3.4, evangelical Protestants of 2.3 (same as Roman Catholics), Jews of 2.0 and Mainline Protestants of 1.9.
Atheists however have a TFR of just 1.6 and agnostics of just 1.3
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/05/12/charted-the-religions-that-make-the-most-babies/
The reason that QNLZ and the Kuznetsov are so fucking big is that they were designed around an utterly ludicrous rate of sortie generation so that "the Americans will take us seriously". The opinion of the US is a source of many sleepless nights in the upper echelons of the British defence establishment. As it turned out, the carriers will never be crewed or equipped to hit that very high sortie rate because the people to enable that just don't exist in anything more than a small fraction of those required.
Roman Catholics and evangelicals have a TFR above replacement level too, not just Mormons.
Muslims also have an above average TFR
https://twitter.com/SheilaLWeir/status/1701172772074926419?t=dwaslDOAM17kVMWeARoMLQ&s=19
Go look at the charts for much of less developed Asia. They're all where most of Africa was 20 years ago, and now they're below replacement.
This thread has been put back to 2035
Only East Asia isn't
The Conservatives seem to be a busted flush. Time for change.