FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Over the period 2005 to 2019 covered by the scandal there were of course Labour and LD Business Secretaries, Lord Mandelson and Vince Cable as well as Tory Business Secretaries. What they knew and when, if anything
Pretty sure it has been conclusively proven on here that it was all Keir Starmers fault.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
The difference may be huge but not matter. It really is quite hard to game an outcome that isn't a Labour Majority government.
The limits of a Con comeback can best be demonstrated with the fact that, take this average, assume a 5pt swing in polls (cutting Lab lead by 10pts), assume 50% Reform squeeze, and no progressive tactical voting, the result: Con 245 Lab 339 LD 18 Nat 28
I agree that anything but a Labour led government looks impossible, but NoM is not. A handful of circumstances is required, including: A major Labour scandal; a successful media anti-Labour campaign; Reform implosion; a short period of Tory Rwanda 'success'; SNP starting to up its game; well timed tax cut; Labour left start making noises, Burgon appears on telly; Labour make a serious tactical campaign mistake following T May's example.
Result: Labour only (!) gain 115 seats giving them 317.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
I think it's in our self-interest to reward people for changing their behaviour from a destructive one to a constructive one.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Understand that. I just don't think that they were in any sense honourable men. Realists? Yes Cynics? Yes. Utter bastards with whom business had to be done? Yes. Honourable? No.
Trouble is that sometimes, you need a dishonourable person to break the logjam. Honourable people honourably calling for peace don't get near enough to the levers of power to make peace happen. The Spanish democratic transition rested on dishonest people not being called out, because the end was worth the means.
The dishonourable man redeeming themselves by one great good act is an archetype, and such people do need to be celebrated. In a parallel universe, it could have been Boris's epitaph. But he only had the dishonesty, not the ability to do great things with it.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
Courage in NI existed - Trimble and Hume knew that the Peace Process could well destroy their parties and careers. As happened - the voters moved to the more extreme parties as the violence died away.
Adams was probably the worst - despised by many in the *PIRA* as sociopathic shit.
Talking of politicians, what happened to the Wee Gobshite (as his friends termed him)?
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
The extreme polling gives some interesting psychological side plots.
Do Tories do better as if they are getting booted out anyway, they get some sympathy vote? Do Labour do better as voters want to be on the winning side? Is the gap between the parties so big that even anti-Tory voters ignore tactical voting?
And most realistically, do the Tories decide for another roll of the dice and change leader thinking it can't be worse than this.
Worth noting that the polling on what people expect the outcome to be is closer than the normal polling - so it's not necessarily filtered through to the general population quite how far under water the Tories are in the polls.
The Tories obviously have to pretend that they still have a chance of winning, and the media have an interest in maximising the degree of doubt in the result - so the public might be expected to think that the contest is closer than it is (or than they think it should be).
There could be an element of voters not wanting to leave anything to chance in terms of defeating the Tories, and preventing absolutely any re-run of the Truss Debacle.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
As an MP he is up to his eyeballs in security and safety training.
I'm sure we will see more detail, which I look forward to seeing.
Personally I'd rather see no more of William Wragg in this context. The story seems more hopeless than malign, although perhaps the dickpics cross it over the line.
He is standing down as an MP anyway and it looks like he was blackmailed although clearly he should not have given the numbers
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
If the UK was able to pronounce (publicly anyway) Stalin a good and honourable ally for four years I’d imagine there probably aren’t many things that wouldn’t be countenanced. Hitler would never have recanted anyway, as you imply the more interesting hypothetical might be if the July 20th plot had succeeded and the Allies had had to deal with a different set of German nationalists and ‘patriots’.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Funny, when it comes to giving up violence, no one ever credits this rum blossom..
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
It is nuts, but FPTP has always favoured parties whose votes are geographically concentrated. Until the SNP swept the board in 2015, I don't think most of us realised quite how strong that effect was.
Whatever the other virtues of FPTP, that's a flaw in the system.
I am not a conservative or Reform supporter but they do deserve representation. Exclusion from.the political process leads to radicalisation and that is bad for everybody.
Of course; that's the argument for PR.
The problem is that as soon as one of the two parties in the FPTP cartel get their mitts on power, the argument loses its persuasiveness for them.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
So in your view, one 'good' act should outweigh any bad that someone does? That someone who has killed, tortured, and threatened people should be absolved because they say they won't do it any more?
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
The only way the Tories fall as low as 25 seats is probably if Farage becomes Reform leader and takes them up to level pegging with the Tories on voteshare or even overtaking them. At that point Reform also win some seats
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
That shouldn't be a problem, since they always inform you that they might record your calls.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Indeed and yet you go back to the Cameron opposition years he was going to clamp down on it after the Ian Greer scandal.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
You could also join the civil service. Look at how they managed to implement their equality and diversity policies whilst the government carried out its 'war on woke'.
From observation I think that the smartest people work in the civil service and local government; they end up with massive influence and remain largely faceless and unknown in the public sphere.
And if you look at the latest pay and terms demand from the PCS Union if they even get half of it through then their terms and conditions will be outstanding.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
You’re sueing them, and they’re *still* sending you emails?
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
The extreme polling gives some interesting psychological side plots.
Do Tories do better as if they are getting booted out anyway, they get some sympathy vote? Do Labour do better as voters want to be on the winning side? Is the gap between the parties so big that even anti-Tory voters ignore tactical voting?
And most realistically, do the Tories decide for another roll of the dice and change leader thinking it can't be worse than this.
If we look at last night's Local election in Cornwall, we may see a bit of that:
Looe West, Pelynt, Lansallos & Lanteglos (Cornwall) Council By-Election Result:
I don't know any local angle, but it does look as if there may well have been a drift away from tactical voting. Or possibly it may just be that Tactical Voting unwinds with incumbency, being a phenomena to unseat rather than re-elect. That may not be true in Scotland because of other factors.
I think too that there won't be a Tory wipeout at the Locals. The anger at Tory failure and incompetence is mostly over national issues so likely to bypass many local contests. Relatively good outcome in the Locals doesn't mean that Sunaks date with Nemesis is nor coming.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
So in your view, one 'good' act should outweigh any bad that someone does? That someone who has killed, tortured, and threatened people should be absolved because they say they won't do it any more?
No. My opinion is I give credit to people for good things they do, it is not to do with absolution, the terrible things someone has done are still terrible things they have done.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
If the UK was able to pronounce (publicly anyway) Stalin a good and honourable ally for four years I’d imagine there probably aren’t many things that wouldn’t be countenanced. Hitler would never have recanted anyway, as you imply the more interesting hypothetical might be if the July 20th plot had succeeded and the Allies had had to deal with a different set of German nationalists and ‘patriots’.
“Nebe decided to try experimenting by murdering Soviet psychiatric patients, first with explosives near Minsk, and then with automobile exhaust at Mogilev.[12] The idea of using gas was partly inspired by an incident in Nebe's past. One night after a party, Nebe had driven home drunk, parked in his garage, and fallen asleep with the engine running, nearly dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust fumes.[24] To conduct the experiments, he ordered the SS chemist Albert Widmann, a member of the criminal-technical institute of the RKPA, to come to Minsk with 250 kilograms (550 lb) of explosives and exhaust hoses….”
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
As an MP he is up to his eyeballs in security and safety training.
I'm sure we will see more detail, which I look forward to seeing.
Personally I'd rather see no more of William Wragg in this context. The story seems more hopeless than malign, although perhaps the dickpics cross it over the line.
He is standing down as an MP anyway and it looks like he was blackmailed although clearly he should not have given the numbers
Irrespective of who one might be the moral of this story is do not take and distribute intimate photographs and do not hand over your address book to disreputable players. Hang on have the Conservative party just SOLD their membership list to a third party?
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
That shouldn't be a problem, since they always inform you that they might record your calls.
I think the ‘might’ is the get out there. Pretty sure if you wanted them to locate a crucial (to you) part of a conversation that would be a day they weren’t recording for training purposes.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
So in your view, one 'good' act should outweigh any bad that someone does? That someone who has killed, tortured, and threatened people should be absolved because they say they won't do it any more?
It's difficult, and it's not dignified.
But suppose that peace could be bought between Russia and Ukraine by letting Putin flee to Somewhere comfortable. With all the cash he can loot. No comeuppance, no justice. But sustainable peace. Would that be a price worth paying?
It's not my question to answer, of course. Thank goodness, because letting bad guys get away vs. continued war is a horrible choice to have to make. But sustained peace tends to require that people don't get their just deserts.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
The only way the Tories fall as low as 25 seats is probably if Farage becomes Reform leader and takes them up to level pegging with the Tories on voteshare or even overtaking them. At that point Reform also win some seats
Some is a handful. 6 Refuk seats based on Refuk 21, Tory 18, Labour 44
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
You’re sueing them, and they’re *still* sending you emails?
This could be fun 🍿
The number of people who think that the story about the hole and digging means they should hire this to fix the problem….
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Be careful when placing your bets on which is to be the next scandal. Lobbying is not the only contender, although it might be easier for ITV's scriptwriters.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Forgive my dumbass question but how do you tape a call? Does it involve expensive equipment or can this be done on your smartphone, assuming this is the phone you are using?
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
The only way the Tories fall as low as 25 seats is probably if Farage becomes Reform leader and takes them up to level pegging with the Tories on voteshare or even overtaking them. At that point Reform also win some seats
Yes, I'm not saying it is likely, Hyufd, but just that it is possible at the extereme end.
Your little hypothetical scenario illustrate how it may happen, though probably won't.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
So in your view, one 'good' act should outweigh any bad that someone does? That someone who has killed, tortured, and threatened people should be absolved because they say they won't do it any more?
No. My opinion is I give credit to people for good things they do, it is not to do with absolution, the terrible things someone has done are still terrible things they have done.
I agree.
I think that if the 1944 plot to kill Hitler in the Wolf's Lair had succeeded, the Allies would have still insisted on Unconditional Surrender and Allied Occupation. The roots of WW2 were set because the Versailles treaty of 1919 was so unsatisfactory. I don't think any new German leader could agree to that.
I recently read "The Peacemakers" and it is a fascinating account of the horse trading of the Versailles treaty. Well worth it for any history or politics buff. So many world conflicts were set in motion by that conference, though perhaps some were inevitable.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Forgive my dumbass question but how do you tape a call? Does it involve expensive equipment or can this be done on your smartphone, assuming this is the phone you are using?
Sneak into their offices overnight wearing a balaclava and bug the flowerpots by the customer service desks.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Indeed and yet you go back to the Cameron opposition years he was going to clamp down on it after the Ian Greer scandal.
When you consider the shrinking backgrounds to politicians - more and more Spads and activists, less and less people who reached anything in outside careers - it’s not surprising.
These people have little idea of how the world works. Hell, pitching their ideas on PB would be a step up*.
A bunch of lobbyists waving brochures of ready made policies sounds like water on the desert to such people.
*one way to monetise PB would be for OGH to select a sub group of posters. Get them to sign NDAs. Pay them to comment on ideas in a private version of the forum - the up and downs of your policy will be found out in 5 minutes.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
It can but it shows once again what a truly remarkable figure Mandela was. It requires something like that, someone who can inspire and lead to grace and forgiveness. I don't currently see anyone of that ilk in Israel and, even if there was, I am not detecting much inclination on the part of the population to vote for them.
I should say, closer to home, Martin McGuiness and the late Dr Rev Ian Paisley deserve honourable mentions in this context as well.
McGuiness and Paisley honourable?
They were the two men most responsible for the orgy of violence NI endured for nearly 30 years. That they only ended it when they could get their mitts on power makes them grade "A" *****! Not fit to lick Mandela's boots.
True, but both had seen that they were perpetuating an endless cycle of violence.
You don't make peace by talking to your friends, you do it by talking to your enemies.
Yes, but you should not laud people for doing the right thing only after they have tried every other alternative, and caused thousands of people fear, pain or death.
Why not? People are not 100% good or evil. They have done evil things but McGuiness and Paisley also did a surprising and great thing too that has changed lots of lives for the better since. Happy to give them plenty of credit for that.
People are indeed not 100% good or evil. But these gentlemen are far, far nearer the evil end of that scale than the 'good' end. If Hitler had recanted at the end and gone for peace, say in 1944, should we have said: "Well, that's all okay then?"
Well they weren't Hitler either. Had a mid level Nazi successfully overthrown Hitler, renounced the Nazi state and started a peace process, yes that person should have got a fair amount of credit.
So in your view, one 'good' act should outweigh any bad that someone does? That someone who has killed, tortured, and threatened people should be absolved because they say they won't do it any more?
It's difficult, and it's not dignified.
But suppose that peace could be bought between Russia and Ukraine by letting Putin flee to Somewhere comfortable. With all the cash he can loot. No comeuppance, no justice. But sustainable peace. Would that be a price worth paying?
It's not my question to answer, of course. Thank goodness, because letting bad guys get away vs. continued war is a horrible choice to have to make. But sustained peace tends to require that people don't get their just deserts.
Yes, allowing Putin flee in the name of 'peace' would be good. But the difference is that no-one should see him as being 'hounorable'. Quite the opposite.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Careful.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Dickpics. Have these men tried old-fashioned courtship methods?
Having people either laugh at you or go "eugh!" is not a good start. Not a good ending either, if it comes to it.
For gay men that possibly counts as old-fashioned courtship methods.
Also some people have an in built ick about actual physical intimacy and prefer a stand off approach. Finally the prevalence of SM practices suggest some folks like being made to feel less than wholesome.
I had - mistakenly I now see - assumed women were involved. I see that young Wragg is part of a Tory grouping which has produced such luminaries as Crispin Blunt, charged with rape, and Imran Ahmad-Khan, jailed for sexual assault. He is also Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee and accused whips of using blackmail against Tory MPs wanting Johnson ousted.
You'd have thought he'd have learnt from all that to be a bit more careful.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Careful.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Make your own recording.
Interesting. A friend, when reporting a crime (vote theft) had to get his “statement” re-written to reflect what he actually said.
The first version (he showed me a copy) was simply weird.
We now know what has long been suspected. There has been a long, protracted cover-up at the highest levels. It certainly goes to Board level and probably higher. Governments have been involved. All we need to establish now is the extent. In short, we need the Baker question asked.
No problem. Vennels is up soon. Ask her, and then the prosecutions can begin.
There is no need to wait until the Inquiry concludes. The evidence is out there. It's a legal matter now.
Will be the usual , "lessons will be learned" and the culprits all promoted r in plum jobs elesewhere with perhaps a few minions thrown to the lions. These buggers always look after their own.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
On William Wragg, I don't think the content of the messages, or the pictures, is of anything but prurient interest. The fact is that he gave out the phone numbers of colleagues he worked with, without their consent, to a third party.
If I'd done that in my job (Civil Service), regardless of any defence I put forward, I'd have been unceremoniously sacked for gross misconduct.
Dickpics. Have these men tried old-fashioned courtship methods?
Having people either laugh at you or go "eugh!" is not a good start. Not a good ending either, if it comes to it.
For gay men that possibly counts as old-fashioned courtship methods.
Also some people have an in built ick about actual physical intimacy and prefer a stand off approach. Finally the prevalence of SM practices suggest some folks like being made to feel less than wholesome.
We now know what has long been suspected. There has been a long, protracted cover-up at the highest levels. It certainly goes to Board level and probably higher. Governments have been involved. All we need to establish now is the extent. In short, we need the Baker question asked.
No problem. Vennels is up soon. Ask her, and then the prosecutions can begin.
There is no need to wait until the Inquiry concludes. The evidence is out there. It's a legal matter now.
Will be the usual , "lessons will be learned" and the culprits all promoted r in plum jobs elesewhere with perhaps a few minions thrown to the lions. These buggers always look after their own.
You're right Malc (hope you are well and the weather is good up there)
Lessons will be learned. Kick the can down the road. Forget about it. Trebles all round.
It is only the little people who get punished. Those with their snouts in the trough carry on troughing.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
On William Wragg, I don't think the content of the messages, or the pictures, is of anything but prurient interest. The fact is that he gave out the phone numbers of colleagues he worked with, without their consent, to a third party.
If I'd done that in my job (Civil Service), regardless of any defence I put forward, I'd have been unceremoniously sacked for gross misconduct.
He has already said he won't be a candidate at the next general election. If his constituents wants a recall petition for a by election before that that is up to them
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
The extreme polling gives some interesting psychological side plots.
Do Tories do better as if they are getting booted out anyway, they get some sympathy vote? Do Labour do better as voters want to be on the winning side? Is the gap between the parties so big that even anti-Tory voters ignore tactical voting?
And most realistically, do the Tories decide for another roll of the dice and change leader thinking it can't be worse than this.
If we look at last night's Local election in Cornwall, we may see a bit of that:
Looe West, Pelynt, Lansallos & Lanteglos (Cornwall) Council By-Election Result:
I don't know any local angle, but it does look as if there may well have been a drift away from tactical voting. Or possibly it may just be that Tactical Voting unwinds with incumbency, being a phenomena to unseat rather than re-elect. That may not be true in Scotland because of other factors.
I think too that there won't be a Tory wipeout at the Locals. The anger at Tory failure and incompetence is mostly over national issues so likely to bypass many local contests. Relatively good outcome in the Locals doesn't mean that Sunaks date with Nemesis is nor coming.
I think you're reading a big story about tactical voting generally into a single data point - a local council by-election caused by the death of a very longstanding councillor who was a former Mayor of Looe and, one assumes from the scale of her victory last time, a well-known and popular local figure in a fairly small town.
There are so many local factors in play in local council by-elections, and such widely divergent results and swings, that it's folly to draw wider conclusions. At best, council by-elections are straws in the wind for constituency betting and you might be able to say something if averaging quite a few from around the country over an extended period. But more than that is a mug's game.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
He lives and works in central London, where there’s an Old Compton St full of gay men to find that doesn’t involve sending compromising pictures of yourself to others.
I now suspect by default, that these stories are the result of explicit targeting of individuals by foreign state actors.
Very probably.
Might get a better idea of which particular foreign power if the serving government minister, broadcaster, and chair of an APPG were all identified.
I was looking at Wragg's APPG interests. They include Antigua and Barbuda, and Thailand. Curiously both of those groups have Wragg as the vice-chair and Graham Brady as the chair...mirroring the 1922 Committee where Brady is chair and Wragg is one of the vice chairs.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Careful.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Make your own recording.
Interesting. A friend, when reporting a crime (vote theft) had to get his “statement” re-written to reflect what he actually said.
The first version (he showed me a copy) was simply weird.
Oh, some years back I received a friendly visit from a Community Police Officer. He was very nice, and we had a agreeable discussion in which we agreed about the main points he was interested in.
A year or so later i was shown a statement he had allegedly written about the meeting. It was a work of fiction.
Bear in mind that this is Gloucestershire Police we are talking about here. My own view is that the CPO was not the author of the inaccurate statement, but draw your own conclusions.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
The extreme polling gives some interesting psychological side plots.
Do Tories do better as if they are getting booted out anyway, they get some sympathy vote? Do Labour do better as voters want to be on the winning side? Is the gap between the parties so big that even anti-Tory voters ignore tactical voting?
And most realistically, do the Tories decide for another roll of the dice and change leader thinking it can't be worse than this.
If we look at last night's Local election in Cornwall, we may see a bit of that:
Looe West, Pelynt, Lansallos & Lanteglos (Cornwall) Council By-Election Result:
I don't know any local angle, but it does look as if there may well have been a drift away from tactical voting. Or possibly it may just be that Tactical Voting unwinds with incumbency, being a phenomena to unseat rather than re-elect. That may not be true in Scotland because of other factors.
I think too that there won't be a Tory wipeout at the Locals. The anger at Tory failure and incompetence is mostly over national issues so likely to bypass many local contests. Relatively good outcome in the Locals doesn't mean that Sunaks date with Nemesis is nor coming.
In terms of local angles, I don't know much, but (1) I think electoral patterns in Cornwall have been quite idiosyncratic for some time now, and (2) more importantly, Andrew Teale's (as ever) excellent coverage of this and the other local by-elections that happened yesterday makes clear that the deceased Lib Dem councillor had been in place a long time, and was pretty popular, so some of what's happening here looks like a personal vote ceasing to be a factor.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Careful.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Make your own recording.
Interesting. A friend, when reporting a crime (vote theft) had to get his “statement” re-written to reflect what he actually said.
The first version (he showed me a copy) was simply weird.
Oh, some years back I received a friendly visit from a Community Police Officer. He was very nice, and we had a agreeable discussion in which we agreed about the main points he was interested in.
A year or so later i was shown a statement he had allegedly written about the meeting. It was a work of fiction.
Bear in mind that this is Gloucestershire Police we are talking about here. My own view is that the CPO was not the author of the inaccurate statement, but draw your own conclusions.
In the case of my friend, the first version made him out to be an aggressive, illiterate racist. He was a Lib Dem and the kind of person who would get upset if someone called First Australians, Aborigines.
Given that they were trying to avoid recording the crime of vote theft - one policeman tried to tell him it wasn’t an actual crime - we drew our own conclusions.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
An attack on an aid convoy of foreign nationals is exactly what the flotilla massacre of 2010 was. Israeli armed forces murdered 10 unarmed aid workers, wounding dozens more, and the Israeli Home Front Defence Minister declared there were no innocents among the dead.
The response to this week's attack on the vehicles including from Biden will have been gamed out.
They probably want certain aid groups and shall we say those with military experience from certain foreign countries out of the way.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
I’m sure Casino meant to say ‘put the gloves on’ rather than take them off; at least, I hope he did!
The tragedy is that the country’s international reputation is being trashed to try and save the career of its PM, who probably faces jail when this whole story ends, anyway, and for a strategy that won’t work on its own terms, has sown the discord that will fuel another generation of conflict, and still has the capacity to spiral into a wider conflict.
A part of the problem is that a chunk of Israeli society has reacted to decades of Death To Israel by believing that the answer is Death To Them. That the answer is to become like their opponents. Then to surpass them. To be perfectly ruthless.
That spiral doesn’t end.
Indeed. After the events in October last year, I opined that one option Israel has was *not* to react militarily. Hold back, and be the victim. Strengthen their borders, but not go into Gaza. I also said they would not do so, for several reasons:
*) Jew have been the victim in the past, and it has not saved them. And make no mistake: this was not an attack on Israel, or Zionism, but Jews.
*) Morally they had the eight to react militarily (the question is then the scale of that reaction)
*) Netanyahu's internal political needs (and indeed his mindset) would not allow it.
Would Israel be in a 'better' place if they had not gone into Gaza? Would Hamas have staged other attacks? Would the missiles be coming over? Probably. Would the hostages have been released? Probably not. But their enemies abroad would be much weaker.
Netanyahu is critically damaging Israel and, by extension, Jews worldwide.
My opinion is that if Israel hadn't responded militarily to the October 7th attack then the message to its own citizens would have been that the state was not willing or able to protect them. One way or another I think that would presage the end of Israel.
The conduct of the war appears to fall short of the standards that Israel should expect of itself. I do think that there's a difference in intent and scale when compared to, say, Russia in Ukraine or Syria.
The clearest failing is in not providing food, water and security to the Palestinian civilians in areas under its control. That is a direct Israeli responsibility as the occupying power.
Other people round the world are committing war crimes: Russia in Ukraine, Syria in Syria, Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh, everyone in Yemen, etc. Some of those should be attracting more attention from the global community!
I don't know whether Israel is acting better or worse. I think Assad's actions against his own people in Syria (aided by Putin) are worse than Israel's actions in Gaza. Azerbaijan has killed far fewer in Artsakh, but the end result (so far) has been a more significant act of ethnic cleansing. However, that shouldn't excuse Israel. War crimes are wrong and, contrary to the views of some here, not necessary. We should hold everyone to the standard of not doing war crimes.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Be careful when placing your bets on which is to be the next scandal. Lobbying is not the only contender, although it might be easier for ITV's scriptwriters.
Data theft is another runner in the next scandal stakes.
Ransomware gang did steal residents' confidential data, UK city [Leicester] council admits ... The leaked files include scans of residents' identification documents such as passports and driving licenses, bank statements, and various official council forms for matters regarding rent, social housing, and more. https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ransomware_gang_did_in_fact/
On 'lobbying' I would observe that the battle over many areas of government policy is largely won or lost on social media. Whatever it is that you are trying to achieve, you can just make up a simple story / narrative that appeals to instinctive notions of 'right vs wrong', cook up some 'evidence base' via an 'independent' consultancy or university, write a PR based article to be published in a sympathetic newspaper by a 'journalist', then send off a load of twitter/tik tok/ facebook etc posts kicking off a public frenzy until the change becomes irresistable. It is a pretty simple formula and doesn't really require any special qualifications.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Careful.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Make your own recording.
Interesting. A friend, when reporting a crime (vote theft) had to get his “statement” re-written to reflect what he actually said.
The first version (he showed me a copy) was simply weird.
Oh, some years back I received a friendly visit from a Community Police Officer. He was very nice, and we had a agreeable discussion in which we agreed about the main points he was interested in.
A year or so later i was shown a statement he had allegedly written about the meeting. It was a work of fiction.
Bear in mind that this is Gloucestershire Police we are talking about here. My own view is that the CPO was not the author of the inaccurate statement, but draw your own conclusions.
In the case of my friend, the first version made him out to be an aggressive, illiterate racist. He was a Lib Dem and the kind of person who would get upset if someone called First Australians, Aborigines.
Given that they were trying to avoid recording the crime of vote theft - one policeman tried to tell him it wasn’t an actual crime - we drew our own conclusions.
It can be hard to tell what exactly is really going on in such cases, M, and it would be unwise to attribute to conspiracy what can be perfectly well explained as incompetence.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
It is nuts, but FPTP has always favoured parties whose votes are geographically concentrated. Until the SNP swept the board in 2015, I don't think most of us realised quite how strong that effect was.
Whatever the other virtues of FPTP, that's a flaw in the system.
I suggest many people are still ignorant of the distorting effects of FPTP. I'd bet the average voter presumes the SNP has more MPs than the LibDems because they got more votes.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Shows the level of dross that are MP's nowadays, this guy is obviously as thick as mince. Is it any wonder the Tories are circling the drain with idiots like this as senior members.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Your thinking seems to be, "It's very risky, so why do it?" The obvious answer is, "Because it's very risky". Some people get a thrill out of that.
On succumbing to the subsequent blackmail, people often panic and succumb to blackmail - that's why blackmailers do it.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Shows the level of dross that are MP's nowadays, this guy is obviously as thick as mince. Is it any wonder the Tories are circling the drain with idiots like this as senior members.
This William Wragg story looks like it’s going to explode !!
I'm just baffled why anyone would do what is alleged. Giving out private details of friends and acquaintances to a unknown third party because you think the third party can compromise you - wtf?
He had already announced himself as a stand-down at the next Election, BTW.
And sending naked photos of himself to someone, as an elected politician with risks that are obvious. Where do the parties get these people from?
Remember the post I've made many times
No one sane wants to be an MP, there are easier ways to make more money and easier ways to make the changes you wish to make...
Work for a lobbyist. Get a grant of the govt to then lobby the govt for the policy you want. You get the change you want with no accountability and you get well paid for it.
That is the next scandal. Or rather it's already happening. But we aren't paying enough attention. Yet. Unaccountable lobbyists are the overmighty union barons or over-indulged City of our time.
Utility companies wave hello.
How's this for a funny one? I'm suing A Certain Company because they repeatedly attempted to swindle me. They've just applied to dismiss the case. The only reason they give is that they do not consider it to have merit. The real reason (and I am not making this up) is as they made clear when asking me for yet another extension for their reply is they have lost the paperwork...
I hope you are taping your calls with them.
It's all been by email.
But yes, future calls will be taped.
Afaik if you intend that your recording might have some future utility you have to inform the other party that the conversation is being taped?
Probably, but I've no qualms about doing that.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
Careful.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Make your own recording.
Interesting. A friend, when reporting a crime (vote theft) had to get his “statement” re-written to reflect what he actually said.
The first version (he showed me a copy) was simply weird.
Oh, some years back I received a friendly visit from a Community Police Officer. He was very nice, and we had a agreeable discussion in which we agreed about the main points he was interested in.
A year or so later i was shown a statement he had allegedly written about the meeting. It was a work of fiction.
Bear in mind that this is Gloucestershire Police we are talking about here. My own view is that the CPO was not the author of the inaccurate statement, but draw your own conclusions.
I had fun with Gloucestershire police several years ago where a police sergeant obviously took a fancy to my ex who was living there, took her story without question or bothering to take any actual evidence from her which would have closed things down straight away, made me travel there from somewhere else I was visiting in the UK to meet him at 11pm after his shift started and tried to give me a caution.
About a year later I received an email from him saying I had a warrant out for my arrest as I didn’t attend court on the matter I had been charged with (wasn’t told I was being charged).
Eventually after a load of correspondence with the CPS where I sent them downloads of my phone etc showing messages to and from my ex I had the warrant and the charges dropped. I also demonstrated that the Sergeant was lying about trying to contact me and letting me know I was being charged as could prove absolutely no attempt to contact me by phone or email and yet mysteriously he had successfully contacted me to tell me there was a warrant for my arrest.
It could have been an absolute nightmare if I had unwittingly travelled to the UK in that period as I would have been arrested on landing which would have been very embarrassing and cause a massive issue.
A few years later my ex contacted me and we made friends and when we discussed it all she said that she had withdrawn her accusation but the Sergeant refused to let it go, said it was out of her hands, and he kept offering to visit her to check up in her (a very beautiful French woman) which I guess he did for all complainants.
Whenever I see a headline about a police officer from Gloucestershire in trouble I check if it was him as he is the sort of thick misguided twat the police desperately need to root out.
Dickpics. Have these men tried old-fashioned courtship methods?
Having people either laugh at you or go "eugh!" is not a good start. Not a good ending either, if it comes to it.
For gay men that possibly counts as old-fashioned courtship methods.
Also some people have an in built ick about actual physical intimacy and prefer a stand off approach. Finally the prevalence of SM practices suggest some folks like being made to feel less than wholesome.
I had - mistakenly I now see - assumed women were involved. I see that young Wragg is part of a Tory grouping which has produced such luminaries as Crispin Blunt, charged with rape, and Imran Ahmad-Khan, jailed for sexual assault. He is also Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee and accused whips of using blackmail against Tory MPs wanting Johnson ousted.
You'd have thought he'd have learnt from all that to be a bit more careful.
Do you mean that Lesson Should Have Been Learned?
The more I hear, the more I am convinced I could do better than 95% of MPs. And I find that fairly frightening.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Your thinking seems to be, "It's very risky, so why do it?" The obvious answer is, "Because it's very risky". Some people get a thrill out of that.
On succumbing to the subsequent blackmail, people often panic and succumb to blackmail - that's why blackmailers do it.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
An MP or activist gets labelled as senior to make the scandal appear worse. So bog standard leaflet monkeys get called “senior Tory/Labour/Lib Dem figure” not because they are but because it juices up what is being written about. Nobody is going to tut tut over their crumpets unless they think those involved are at the top of the food chain.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Shows the level of dross that are MP's nowadays, this guy is obviously as thick as mince. Is it any wonder the Tories are circling the drain with idiots like this as senior members.
The Guardian/BBC coverage I have seen is treating the story in two parts; a without much comment part in which casual sharing of intimate pics with people you have never met is the ordinary stuff of the Mr Knightleys and Mr Darcys de nos jours, and a part where giving someone a phone contact detail of a person who is a public servant is a major moral breach of the common code.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Your thinking seems to be, "It's very risky, so why do it?" The obvious answer is, "Because it's very risky". Some people get a thrill out of that.
On succumbing to the subsequent blackmail, people often panic and succumb to blackmail - that's why blackmailers do it.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
That’s what senior MPs are now.
The job pays about what people get about 5 years into a good job in London.
Dickpics. Have these men tried old-fashioned courtship methods?
Having people either laugh at you or go "eugh!" is not a good start. Not a good ending either, if it comes to it.
For gay men that possibly counts as old-fashioned courtship methods.
Also some people have an in built ick about actual physical intimacy and prefer a stand off approach. Finally the prevalence of SM practices suggest some folks like being made to feel less than wholesome.
I had - mistakenly I now see - assumed women were involved. I see that young Wragg is part of a Tory grouping which has produced such luminaries as Crispin Blunt, charged with rape, and Imran Ahmad-Khan, jailed for sexual assault. He is also Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Select Committee and accused whips of using blackmail against Tory MPs wanting Johnson ousted.
You'd have thought he'd have learnt from all that to be a bit more careful.
Do you mean that Lesson Should Have Been Learned?
The more I hear, the more I am convinced I could do better than 95% of MPs. And I find that fairly frightening.
The Beeblebrox Paradox. That they have chosen to run for office and you haven't is in itself an indication that you would do the job better.
You get that everywhere, but I do wonder if the Westminster effect; the gothic high drama of the chamber, exaggerates the degree to which UK politics attracts histrionic gamblers.
On William Wragg, I don't think the content of the messages, or the pictures, is of anything but prurient interest. The fact is that he gave out the phone numbers of colleagues he worked with, without their consent, to a third party.
If I'd done that in my job (Civil Service), regardless of any defence I put forward, I'd have been unceremoniously sacked for gross misconduct.
He has already said he won't be a candidate at the next general election. If his constituents wants a recall petition for a by election before that that is up to them
No it isn't.
Firstly, he's not been convicted of a criminal offence and given a custodial sentence (and is unlikely to be), and hasn't been suspended for 10+ sitting days by Parliament (he might be, but it may take a while). So there can be no recall petition.
Secondly, if either of those things did happen, there would be a recall petition whether his constituents want it or not. They don't have to sign it, but if 10% did, there would be a by-election.
Anyway, too close to a General Election for it to happen, I suspect. He might resign as I'd imagine he's not wildly popular among colleagues just now, although there will be more pressure not to as it'd be a nailed on Lib Dem gain - the ask will be for him to make himself scarce and shut up. And maybe buy a Nokia 440 so he's not tempted by apps and sexting.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
Neither a genuinely free market nor any other sort of libertarianism is even close to the Overton window now; nor will it be.
Take one tiny example: How many people would vote now for a banking system in which a non-wealthy retail depositor had no protection from the state against their bank becoming insolvent (currently £85K). None.
We now know what has long been suspected. There has been a long, protracted cover-up at the highest levels. It certainly goes to Board level and probably higher. Governments have been involved. All we need to establish now is the extent. In short, we need the Baker question asked.
No problem. Vennels is up soon. Ask her, and then the prosecutions can begin.
There is no need to wait until the Inquiry concludes. The evidence is out there. It's a legal matter now.
Will be the usual , "lessons will be learned" and the culprits all promoted r in plum jobs elesewhere with perhaps a few minions thrown to the lions. These buggers always look after their own.
You're right Malc (hope you are well and the weather is good up there)
Lessons will be learned. Kick the can down the road. Forget about it. Trebles all round.
It is only the little people who get punished. Those with their snouts in the trough carry on troughing.
Hello Taz, All well, hope you are same. Not so nice today and supposed to be bad gales at weekend, lovely earlier in week. I have been doing all the gloss painting this week , nearly finished downstairs. Not my favourite task and still upstairs and then will be walls to be done. Have busy month ahead, off to Bulgaria mid April, Scottish National , then Paris and finally Bruce Springsteen in Sunderland.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Shows the level of dross that are MP's nowadays, this guy is obviously as thick as mince. Is it any wonder the Tories are circling the drain with idiots like this as senior members.
The Guardian/BBC coverage I have seen is treating the story in two parts; a without much comment part in which casual sharing of intimate pics with people you have never met is the ordinary stuff of the Mr Knightleys and Mr Darcys de nos jours, and a part where giving someone a phone contact detail of a person who is a public servant is a major moral breach of the common code.
Funny how there's so much shame in some (supposed) idiot giving your number to somebody without your permission and then you receive a message saying "Hi this is Abigail. I'm lonely and I'm horny. See my pics". So much shame that the government minister, APPG chair, and broadcaster etc. don't want to identify themselves.
Imagine if they got a call at home from a scammer pretending to be from BT.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
Erasmus was down to an absurd demand for contributions.
The EU didn’t want us in the secondary programs - they made that quite clear.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
Neither a genuinely free market nor any other sort of libertarianism is even close to the Overton window now; nor will it be.
Take one tiny example: How many people would vote now for a banking system in which a non-wealthy retail depositor had no protection from the state against their bank becoming insolvent (currently £85K). None.
Which is an extreme position
But many would say that we need failure to mean failure.
I want Thames Water to fail, the bond holders and shareholders to get wiped out. To send a message. To encourage the others.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
Erasmus was down to an absurd demand for contributions.
The EU didn’t want us in the secondary programs - they made that quite clear.
I think nobody in europe will give the tories an easy ride. That party is not trusted in europe after the way they negotiated brexit. I suspect the eu will lavish labour with sweet deals. The eu has an interest in a pro-eu stance improving life for Brits.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
Apart from setting me to wonder at what point he picked up expertise in Antiguan shipping, I do wonder why he is nor even contesting his seat. Clearly he sees no future in the PCP.
There are lot standing down, and it looks like a tsunami is about to take out a lot of other experienced MPs. It is likely that the next Parliament will have the least percapita Westminster experience of any in a long time. That may be a good thing of course.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
Broadly agree- I simply don't see how this sticks when it's already unpopular and the demographics are so against it. If there were visible concrete benefits, that would be different, but there aren't. We're aleady at MOE for rejoin even if the cost is adopting the Euro.
One Archeresque twist in the tale, though. It's pretty clear that Starmer is going to do TCA with actual co-operation, his successor likely being the one to move to single customs and market union. Actual rejoin (2040ish?) being a Conservative policy- something about how, if we're following the rules, Britain should be making them...
That's if there is a recognisable Conservative party in 2040.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
There's the minor issue of what benefits do we get from rejoining and at what price ?
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Your thinking seems to be, "It's very risky, so why do it?" The obvious answer is, "Because it's very risky". Some people get a thrill out of that.
On succumbing to the subsequent blackmail, people often panic and succumb to blackmail - that's why blackmailers do it.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
That’s what senior MPs are now.
The job pays about what people get about 5 years into a good job in London.
So that’s what you get.
Maybe we should cast the net for our MPs a little wider than people who consider £90 000 plus allowances a starting salary.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
Neither a genuinely free market nor any other sort of libertarianism is even close to the Overton window now; nor will it be.
Take one tiny example: How many people would vote now for a banking system in which a non-wealthy retail depositor had no protection from the state against their bank becoming insolvent (currently £85K). None.
Which is an extreme position
But many would say that we need failure to mean failure.
I want Thames Water to fail, the bond holders and shareholders to get wiped out. To send a message. To encourage the others.
Agree. And I note that the describe a free market/libertarian position in a very specific instance as 'extreme'. Which confirms the suggestion that it is way outside the Overton window. A hallmark of libertarianism is 'caveat emptor'.
Incidentally, the Thames bond/share holders will, at the bottom of the indirect paper trail, include pensioners and future pensioners of modest means.
FPT - my sense is Israel won't take the gloves off until all the hostages are released and Hamas are destroyed. And since the hostages are basically the only leverage Hamas still has they won't release them.
Israel is (still) very, very angry. They have little respect for the Palestinians anyway - who they probably hold collectively culpable for Hamas being ensconced in Gaza in the first place - and it blinds them to any recklessness in their actions. And they don't care because they don't think they should have been there in the first place, and now they've attacked them they will experience their full unchained wrath in all its hideous glory and any amd all consequences are entirely on them.
Unfortunately, this has now gotten so severe that it's changed my mind on the issue. Dropping targeted ordinance on aid workers on a safe route and engineering famine as a weapon of war is not ok. And I talk as someone who holds no candle whatsoever for the Palestinians or the assortment of Islamists, Marxists and socialist workers who associate with them. They've lost their sense of proportion. They've lost their friends. Yes, there is antisemitism around but that's not a free pass to rebut any and all criticism of their state policy and military actions, particularly when it comes from their friends.
Israel might not care but they need to be made to care for their own sake: when you have clear splits at the top of the Tory party, Biden dropping ultimatums and calling for a ceasefire and even Trump telling you to pack it in you know you have a problem.
I still find it difficult to believe that an aid convoy of foreign nationals would be deliberately targeted by the Israelis at the top level, precisely because of the international reaction they would know it would bring.
I’m sure there have also been a number of war crimes committed by Ukranians in the last couple of years, but it doesn’t mean their overall aims are not just or that we should stop supporting them.
War is horrible, but also something that thankfully few of us in the West have experienced in our lives. But for some people in the world, most obviously the Ukranians and Israelis at the moment, it’s an existential threat.
Of course, it might just be that the Israelis have ceased to care what anyone else thinks, and are going to make life utter Hell for Hamas-controlled areas until they surrender and hand over their hostages and weapons. We already know that the Russians and Hamas don’t care what the rest of the world thinks about their behaviour, and see local civilians as fair game in their wars despite international agreements and understandings on such things.
An attack on an aid convoy of foreign nationals is exactly what the flotilla massacre of 2010 was. Israeli armed forces murdered 10 unarmed aid workers, wounding dozens more, and the Israeli Home Front Defence Minister declared there were no innocents among the dead.
The response to this week's attack on the vehicles including from Biden will have been gamed out.
They probably want certain aid groups and shall we say those with military experience from certain foreign countries out of the way.
In this case the aid group was one the Israelis themselves had selected to cooperate with in the delivery of aid.
I think your last two paragraphs are fanciful.
FWIW, the impression I have is that once the rules of engagement have been set by the politicians, there's a substantial amount of autonomy allowed to the military on the spot. Which is not in any way to absolve the politicians of responsibility; I just think you're implying a level of control which doesn't exist
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
Erasmus was down to an absurd demand for contributions.
The EU didn’t want us in the secondary programs - they made that quite clear.
I think nobody in europe will give the tories an easy ride. That party is not trusted in europe after the way they negotiated brexit. I suspect the eu will lavish labour with sweet deals. The eu has an interest in a pro-eu stance improving life for Brits.
I don’t think many in Europe care which party they are dealing with.
If the U.K. tried to full rejoin, maybe they would be interested. But the various factions in Europe would need to agree on terms - which would be the full standard entry terms, including joining the Euro. In fact, to prevent another Brexit, they might well demand joining the Euro at the same time as rejoin.
Ask yourself what the political value of concessions is to European politicians.
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
Broadly agree- I simply don't see how this sticks when it's already unpopular and the demographics are so against it. If there were visible concrete benefits, that would be different, but there aren't. We're aleady at MOE for rejoin even if the cost is adopting the Euro.
One Archeresque twist in the tale, though. It's pretty clear that Starmer is going to do TCA with actual co-operation, his successor likely being the one to move to single customs and market union. Actual rejoin (2040ish?) being a Conservative policy- something about how, if we're following the rules, Britain should be making them...
That's if there is a recognisable Conservative party in 2040.
The EFTA/EEA route is the one, not the EU. I don't think the Euro is going to be sellable at least for this generation.
The William Wragg story has me gobsmacked. Why anyone sends compromising pictures to strangers goodness knows, but if you are an MP? Honestly. And then when being blackmailed for telephone numbers you think by supplying them it will not make things worse? Really? And then the reaction? Today it is a middling story. Once upon a time this would have been huge. A senior MP succumbing to blackmail. We have reached the point of scandals where this is trivial by comparison.
Your thinking seems to be, "It's very risky, so why do it?" The obvious answer is, "Because it's very risky". Some people get a thrill out of that.
On succumbing to the subsequent blackmail, people often panic and succumb to blackmail - that's why blackmailers do it.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
That’s what senior MPs are now.
The job pays about what people get about 5 years into a good job in London.
So that’s what you get.
Maybe we should cast the net for our MPs a little wider than people who consider £90 000 plus allowances a starting salary.
On William Wragg, I don't think the content of the messages, or the pictures, is of anything but prurient interest. The fact is that he gave out the phone numbers of colleagues he worked with, without their consent, to a third party.
If I'd done that in my job (Civil Service), regardless of any defence I put forward, I'd have been unceremoniously sacked for gross misconduct.
He has already said he won't be a candidate at the next general election. If his constituents wants a recall petition for a by election before that that is up to them
No it isn't.
Firstly, he's not been convicted of a criminal offence and given a custodial sentence (and is unlikely to be), and hasn't been suspended for 10+ sitting days by Parliament (he might be, but it may take a while). So there can be no recall petition.
Secondly, if either of those things did happen, there would be a recall petition whether his constituents want it or not. They don't have to sign it, but if 10% did, there would be a by-election.
Anyway, too close to a General Election for it to happen, I suspect. He might resign as I'd imagine he's not wildly popular among colleagues just now, although there will be more pressure not to as it'd be a nailed on Lib Dem gain - the ask will be for him to make himself scarce and shut up. And maybe buy a Nokia 440 so he's not tempted by apps and sexting.
So if Parliament suspends him and enough of his constituents signed the recall petition there would be a by election.
However as there will be a general election in a few months where he won't even be a candidate there is no real need for one anyone
Electoral calculus says this gives 500 labour seats. 55 tory seats and ZERO Reform seats.... that is nuts
EC was never intended as anything other than the crudest of benchmarks, but it is a rough guide of sorts and when you have polling leads of this size, the message is clear.
If you are thinking of placing bets on this, you need to consider the likely impact of two large probabilities - swingback and tactical voting. They work in opposite directions, and you could get both, or neither, or one without the other. The difference they make is likely to be huge. I would say that at the extremes the Tories could be down to 25 seats, or finish on a relatively satisfactory 175.
The Betfair betting markets appear by and large to have factored this in.
Having spent my 62 years under mainly Conservative administrations I cannot imagine the Conservatives on 25 seats. A bad night for me would be Cons on 175 which is at the top of your range and a good night with a 25 seat majority.
The evidence points to your scenario, but that is so unbelievable I can't countenance it. Even when catastrophe looms they pull something out of the hat. Take last years locals, poor, but not the disaster forecast.
No one has voted yet and of those who vote most are not doing terribly badly, so in the privacy of the voting booth won't we reflect on our palatial home our prestige cars and Labour's VAT on school fees and think, nah, I'll give Rishi another punt.
In this election, I think for the first time, the number of Millenials registered to vote exceeds the number of Boomers. Turnout will be key, but Millenials have not trended Tory over time in the way that previous generations did. I see this with my own son, now 30, engaged, and a homeowner with a professional career. He is doing well and in previous generations would likely be trending Tory, but absolutely no sign of that happening at all. He is appalled at the Culture War stuff.
Even Cameron lost under 35s in 2015.
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Looking at the Data tables I don't think that true.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
It is true.
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
Yes, the Tories are doing less badly with Leavers than Remainers, but that is just polishing a turd. They are doing badly with both!
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
If the 34% the Tories are on with Leavers was their national rating we would be heading for a hung parliament potentially.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
That is the Tories problem in a nutshell. Their vote is a declining demographic of retired C2DE Leavers. A demographic that is not philosophically sympathetic to a libertarian freebooting change in direction.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Free market libertarian non Brexit supporting voters are probably even fewer, less than 10% of the electorate certainly.
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
I think the rejoin project looks like this:
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
The swing seats now are largely redwall and Leave seats, so Labour can't afford to go straight back to the EEA and full FOM any more than the Tories can. It would take at least a decade or two for those seats to even come close to accepting FOM again.
Rejoin may well require the Euro and even many who voted Remain in 2016 would reject that
Comments
The Conservatives are now more likely to win white working class Leavers than middle class Remainers too
Result: Labour only (!) gain 115 seats giving them 317.
The dishonourable man redeeming themselves by one great good act is an archetype, and such people do need to be celebrated. In a parallel universe, it could have been Boris's epitaph. But he only had the dishonesty, not the ability to do great things with it.
They record calls anyway so in a sense the point is moot.
https://www.lewissilkin.com/en/insights/covert-recordings-does-use-in-court-justify-the-risk
Adams was probably the worst - despised by many in the *PIRA* as sociopathic shit.
Talking of politicians, what happened to the Wee Gobshite (as his friends termed him)?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Paisley_Jr
Yup, nothing surprising there.
The Tories obviously have to pretend that they still have a chance of winning, and the media have an interest in maximising the degree of doubt in the result - so the public might be expected to think that the contest is closer than it is (or than they think it should be).
There could be an element of voters not wanting to leave anything to chance in terms of defeating the Tories, and preventing absolutely any re-run of the Truss Debacle.
Lab have a comfortable lead in C2DE as well as ABC1, and are not far behind in 2016 Leavers, with only 34% of 2016 Leavers supporting Con in the latest YouGov.
The problem is that as soon as one of the two parties in the FPTP cartel get their mitts on power, the argument loses its persuasiveness for them.
as low as 25 seats is probably if Farage becomes Reform leader and takes them up to level pegging with the Tories on voteshare or even overtaking them. At that point Reform also win some seats
Indeed and yet you go back to the Cameron opposition years he was going to clamp down on it after the Ian Greer scandal.
Bloke on the left is obviously the youngest and healthiest REFUK voter in the country.
This could be fun 🍿
Looe West, Pelynt, Lansallos & Lanteglos (Cornwall) Council By-Election Result:
🔶 LDM: 44.8% (-16.6)
🌳 CON: 30.7% (+0.5)
🌹 LAB: 18.9% (+10.5)
🌍 GRN: 5.6% (New)
Liberal Democrat HOLD.
Changes w/ 2021.
I don't know any local angle, but it does look as if there may well have been a drift away from tactical voting. Or possibly it may just be that Tactical Voting unwinds with incumbency, being a phenomena to unseat rather than re-elect. That may not be true in Scotland because of other factors.
I think too that there won't be a Tory wipeout at the Locals. The anger at Tory failure and incompetence is mostly over national issues so likely to bypass many local contests. Relatively good outcome in the Locals doesn't mean that Sunaks date with Nemesis is nor coming.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Nebe
“Nebe decided to try experimenting by murdering Soviet psychiatric patients, first with explosives near Minsk, and then with automobile exhaust at Mogilev.[12] The idea of using gas was partly inspired by an incident in Nebe's past. One night after a party, Nebe had driven home drunk, parked in his garage, and fallen asleep with the engine running, nearly dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from the exhaust fumes.[24] To conduct the experiments, he ordered the SS chemist Albert Widmann, a member of the criminal-technical institute of the RKPA, to come to Minsk with 250 kilograms (550 lb) of explosives and exhaust hoses….”
But suppose that peace could be bought between Russia and Ukraine by letting Putin flee to Somewhere comfortable. With all the cash he can loot. No comeuppance, no justice. But sustainable peace. Would that be a price worth paying?
It's not my question to answer, of course. Thank goodness, because letting bad guys get away vs. continued war is a horrible choice to have to make. But sustained peace tends to require that people don't get their just deserts.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=18&LAB=42&LIB=10&Reform=21&Green=6&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=17&SCOTLAB=35&SCOTLIB=7.5&SCOTReform=2&SCOTGreen=1&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=33&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019nbbase
Yougov has the Tories on 22% with C2DEs but 21% with ABC1s.
The Conservatives as you say are on 34% with Leavers but just 12% with Remainers.
So Brexit vote is a far bigger determinant of voting intention now than class, indeed if anything the Conservatives now do at least as well if not better with working class than middle class voters
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/explore/issue/Voting_Intention
After slew of AWS deals signed under MoUs, CDDO says current approach might weaken its position
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/uk_cddo_admits_cloud_spending_lock_issues_exclusive/
Be careful when placing your bets on which is to be the next scandal. Lobbying is not the only contender, although it might be easier for ITV's scriptwriters.
Your little hypothetical scenario illustrate how it may happen, though probably won't.
I think that if the 1944 plot to kill Hitler in the Wolf's Lair had succeeded, the Allies would have still insisted on Unconditional Surrender and Allied Occupation. The roots of WW2 were set because the Versailles treaty of 1919 was so unsatisfactory. I don't think any new German leader could agree to that.
I recently read "The Peacemakers" and it is a fascinating account of the horse trading of the Versailles treaty. Well worth it for any history or politics buff. So many world conflicts were set in motion by that conference, though perhaps some were inevitable.
Peacemakers Six Months that Changed The World https://amzn.eu/d/280oCzH
These people have little idea of how the world works. Hell, pitching their ideas on PB would be a step up*.
A bunch of lobbyists waving brochures of ready made policies sounds like water on the desert to such people.
*one way to monetise PB would be for OGH to select a sub group of posters. Get them to sign NDAs. Pay them to comment on ideas in a private version of the forum - the up and downs of your policy will be found out in 5 minutes.
ABC1 voters are more likely to turn out to vote too.
A couple of years ago i was interviewed under caution and it was of course recorded. Later, I asked for a copy and got a supposed transcript. It was highly selective and seriously misleading.
Make your own recording.
You'd have thought he'd have learnt from all that to be a bit more careful.
The first version (he showed me a copy) was simply weird.
The fact is that he gave out the phone numbers of colleagues he worked with, without their consent, to a third party.
If I'd done that in my job (Civil Service), regardless of any defence I put forward, I'd have been unceremoniously sacked for gross misconduct.
Lessons will be learned. Kick the can down the road. Forget about it. Trebles all round.
It is only the little people who get punished. Those with their snouts in the trough carry on troughing.
It is the Conservatives dire rating with Remainers which will give Starmer a majority.
Working class pensioners are also more likely to vote than middle class under 30s
There are so many local factors in play in local council by-elections, and such widely divergent results and swings, that it's folly to draw wider conclusions. At best, council by-elections are straws in the wind for constituency betting and you might be able to say something if averaging quite a few from around the country over an extended period. But more than that is a mug's game.
Might get a better idea of which particular foreign power if the serving government minister, broadcaster, and chair of an APPG were all identified.
I was looking at Wragg's APPG interests. They include Antigua and Barbuda, and Thailand. Curiously both of those groups have Wragg as the vice-chair and Graham Brady as the chair...mirroring the 1922 Committee where Brady is chair and Wragg is one of the vice chairs.
Antigua is known for its shipping registry.
NEW: William Wragg initially tried to cover his tracks on Weds as his name (privately) got connected to the WhatsApp honeytrap scandal
Wragg had previously assured a victim that the scammer, “Charlie,” had worked for him. He went back to the victim and said he’d made a mistake
.https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/liz-truss-popcon-comedian-ed-gamble-tfl-ban-hotdog-poster-national-trust-scone-b1149157.html
They really are mad aren't they?
A year or so later i was shown a statement he had allegedly written about the meeting. It was a work of fiction.
Bear in mind that this is Gloucestershire Police we are talking about here. My own view is that the CPO was not the author of the inaccurate statement, but draw your own conclusions.
If the Conservatives want to win back voters who are interested in free enterprise, dynamic business, personal responsibility and freedom then there is a potential pool of voters. It isn't one that combines with its current Brexit nativism.
Given that they were trying to avoid recording the crime of vote theft - one policeman tried to tell him it wasn’t an actual crime - we drew our own conclusions.
The response to this week's attack on the vehicles including from Biden will have been gamed out.
They probably want certain aid groups and shall we say those with military experience from certain foreign countries out of the way.
I don't know whether Israel is acting better or worse. I think Assad's actions against his own people in Syria (aided by Putin) are worse than Israel's actions in Gaza. Azerbaijan has killed far fewer in Artsakh, but the end result (so far) has been a more significant act of ethnic cleansing. However, that shouldn't excuse Israel. War crimes are wrong and, contrary to the views of some here, not necessary. We should hold everyone to the standard of not doing war crimes.
Ransomware gang did steal residents' confidential data, UK city [Leicester] council admits
...
The leaked files include scans of residents' identification documents such as passports and driving licenses, bank statements, and various official council forms for matters regarding rent, social housing, and more.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/04/ransomware_gang_did_in_fact/
On succumbing to the subsequent blackmail, people often panic and succumb to blackmail - that's why blackmailers do it.
It clearly wasn't wise of William Wragg, but none of it is a particularly deep psychological mystery.
What is a bit of a mystery is how a 36 year old who's been in Parliament nine years, has never had a government job, and announced he'd be standing down at the next election some 18 months ago now, gets described as a "senior MP". The bar on that title has been lowered considerably over the years!
How a likely Labour government performs on the economy will in any case affect the Tory voteshare in opposition far more than what they decide to do in opposition
Malc
About a year later I received an email from him saying I had a warrant out for my arrest as I didn’t attend court on the matter I had been charged with (wasn’t told I was being charged).
Eventually after a load of correspondence with the CPS where I sent them downloads of my phone etc showing messages to and from my ex I had the warrant and the charges dropped. I also demonstrated that the Sergeant was lying about trying to contact me and letting me know I was being charged as could prove absolutely no attempt to contact me by phone or email and yet mysteriously he had successfully contacted me to tell me there was a warrant for my arrest.
It could have been an absolute nightmare if I had unwittingly travelled to the UK in that period as I would have been arrested on landing which would have been very embarrassing and cause a massive issue.
A few years later my ex contacted me and we made friends and when we discussed it all she said that she had withdrawn her accusation but the Sergeant refused to let it go, said it was out of her hands, and he kept offering to visit her to check up in her (a very beautiful French woman) which I guess he did for all complainants.
Whenever I see a headline about a police officer from Gloucestershire in trouble I check if it was him as he is the sort of thick misguided twat the police desperately need to root out.
The more I hear, the more I am convinced I could do better than 95% of MPs. And I find that fairly frightening.
Hopefully later today there will be satellite pictures of the airbase so some independent confirmation can be provided.
🎜 You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone 🎝
The job pays about what people get about 5 years into a good job in London.
So that’s what you get.
You get that everywhere, but I do wonder if the Westminster effect; the gothic high drama of the chamber, exaggerates the degree to which UK politics attracts histrionic gamblers.
SKS fans (and Sunak fans if there are any) please explain where has your boys have been for the last 6 months
Apart from cheering on Genocide from the sidelines and ignoring International law Obvs
Firstly, he's not been convicted of a criminal offence and given a custodial sentence (and is unlikely to be), and hasn't been suspended for 10+ sitting days by Parliament (he might be, but it may take a while). So there can be no recall petition.
Secondly, if either of those things did happen, there would be a recall petition whether his constituents want it or not. They don't have to sign it, but if 10% did, there would be a by-election.
Anyway, too close to a General Election for it to happen, I suspect. He might resign as I'd imagine he's not wildly popular among colleagues just now, although there will be more pressure not to as it'd be a nailed on Lib Dem gain - the ask will be for him to make himself scarce and shut up. And maybe buy a Nokia 440 so he's not tempted by apps and sexting.
is even close to the Overton window now; nor will it be.
Take one tiny example: How many people would vote now for a banking system in which a non-wealthy retail depositor had no protection from the state against their bank becoming insolvent (currently £85K). None.
Have busy month ahead, off to Bulgaria mid April, Scottish National , then Paris and finally Bruce Springsteen in Sunderland.
1) kick out the tories and the right and realign, join erasmus and other secondary programmes 2) customs union and security agreement, 3) single market for 10 years beginning in labour's second term, as old age thins out the eu hating boomer cohort and make a reversion impossible, 4) rejoin - probably in around 15 years.
Will the eu loving millenial cohort taking centre stage in this period, I don't see how anybody can prevent this. If Trump becomes president, it might go even faster.
Imagine if they got a call at home from a scammer pretending to be from BT.
The EU didn’t want us in the secondary programs - they made that quite clear.
But many would say that we need failure to mean failure.
I want Thames Water to fail, the bond holders and shareholders to get wiped out. To send a message. To encourage the others.
There are lot standing down, and it looks like a tsunami is about to take out a lot of other experienced MPs. It is likely that the next Parliament will have the least percapita Westminster experience of any in a long time. That may be a good thing of course.
One Archeresque twist in the tale, though. It's pretty clear that Starmer is going to do TCA with actual co-operation, his successor likely being the one to move to single customs and market union. Actual rejoin (2040ish?) being a Conservative policy- something about how, if we're following the rules, Britain should be making them...
That's if there is a recognisable Conservative party in 2040.
You noticeably pass over this.
Just a thought...
Incidentally, the Thames bond/share holders will, at the bottom of the indirect paper trail, include pensioners and future pensioners of modest means.
I think your last two paragraphs are fanciful.
FWIW, the impression I have is that once the rules of engagement have been set by the politicians, there's a substantial amount of autonomy allowed to the military on the spot. Which is not in any way to absolve the politicians of responsibility; I just think you're implying a level of control which doesn't exist
This gives an at least plausible account of how it's organised.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes
If the U.K. tried to full rejoin, maybe they would be interested. But the various factions in Europe would need to agree on terms - which would be the full standard entry terms, including joining the Euro. In fact, to prevent another Brexit, they might well demand joining the Euro at the same time as rejoin.
Ask yourself what the political value of concessions is to European politicians.
I wouldn’t.
However as there will be a general election in a few months where he won't even be a candidate there is no real need for one anyone
Rejoin may well require the Euro and even many who voted Remain in 2016 would reject that