This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
The future of democracy will, I think, be fine, but it's up to us. There are some massive constraints on what any government can do. The first is that they have to get elected, and the second is that in general they would like to be re-elected or at least stick around. The third is our courts and the capacity of organised opinion to use them and make sure the government doesn't break its own laws. Another is a raucous media which freely attacks them all, (of which PB is a tiny and useful fragment).
There are tons of ridiculous populists and extremists around. The current polling is all wonderfully weird, but it has a common thread: we are going to have the next government made up of the best available centrist non-populist party and the centrist party that has messed us around is going to get told where to go.
Compare this with Russia, China, USA, France, etc.
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
Define ‘right’. I would say that the centre-right (Gauke, Rory Stewart, Lidders, Saj etc) have been disenfranchised and the natural One Nation conservatives have nowhere to go - hence the supermajority and so I agree with you.
If Labour end up governing as a a centrist party then you could argue that these people WILL be represented (although whether labour govern as a centrist party remains to be seen - but on balance I think yes)
I think the biggest political mistake was Johnson’s purge of the centrists. (Which is similar to Corbyn / momentum’s purge of the centrists)
Like Labour, I think the conservatives can recover within a Parliament, but only if they have the right leader.
SKS was able to pull Labour back to the centre ground because there was still centre ground Labour MPs to work with.
The equivalent group of centre ground Tory MPs simply don't exist in the Tory party anymore - Johnson purged them including his brother...
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
Being able to pass their programme of legislation in parliament is what comes of having a majority. It's what happens in a majoritarian system. The current government had a majority for almost five years and used it, amongst other things, to change the electoral system, alter the boundaries of our constituencies, and to require photo ID in order to vote.
We have no supermajority requirements in our political system. Passing a bill by a single vote is just as effective as passing it by 200.
Those are indeed the rules.
But just because they've been that way for a long time doesn't make them good rules. As many of us have been, for a long time, pointing out.
On immigration: "How can you make a plan for the economy when you won't say how many people you want in the country "
How indeed.
Who can say how many people they want in the country? It's all a bit Soviet. We must have 67,764,923 people in the country, not one more, not one less. If anyone emigrates we must immediately get another person in. As soon as a baby is born, we must ship a granny off to Dignitas. This obsession with raw numbers is plain dumb.
Not at all. Haven't you noticed it is a huge issue and has resulted in *checks figures* Reform on nearly 20% of the vote.
Plus if they aren't worried then say we're not worried. Don't criticise the Cons for losing control and then have no control by design.
Reform is getting votes for lots of reasons, not least of which is the Tory party is imploding. People are angry about the folk arriving by boat, who are a small number having a minimal impact on overall net migration let alone the total population. Are people really that angry about large numbers of foreign students? Would they rather our universities collapsed and we went without the foreign earnings? We shouldn't be focusing on the numbers, we should be focusing on having an immigration system that works.
Fine. Then say we don't care how many people come here the more the merrier.
Don't criticise the Cons for "losing control of immigration" and then not say how you will control it.
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
Look. People use shorthands all the time, because they are quick and efficient. Explaining, in detail, why each individual conspiracy theory is complete and utter cobblers is time-consuming, annoying and pointless - because the true believers just don't want to know.
So it makes sense to use a shorthand, then anyone who hasn't fallen all the way down the rabbit hole is prompted to consider the issue for a moment themselves and consider the available evidence, instead of wasting your time putting together a detailed case that will be dismissed by someone going, "Yeah, but, that's what they said about..."
And I was convinced by the evidence about Horizon as soon as Private Eye started reporting about it - long before the vicar became involved, so you can take that one and shove it up your arse.
My nomination for best Donald Sutherland movie is split, between "The Great Train Robbery" and "The Eagle has Landed".
In the first flick, DS sports perhaps the most flamboyant sideburns ever eclipsing even Elvis in his prime.
In TEHL Sutherland is highly effective as Irish Republican - German secret agent, based very loosely on career of Frank Ryan, a 1920s IRA activist who fought in the 1930s in Spain for the Loyalists, was captured and incarcerated by the Nationalists, who eventually released him to the Abwehr, at their request. Ryan never worked for the Nazi's in Ireland or Great Britain, his health was too poor, but he's clearly the inspiration for Sutherland's character.
Film also notable for other great performances, most notably (for me anyway) by Jean Marsh as British Union of Fascists sleeper agent.
He had a whole stream of good performances. He was based in the UK in the 60s - which is why Kiefer was born in London - and he's in some telly episodes from the time, including "The Avengers" (Steed, not Tony Stark).
Hustings report: that was fucking awesome. Sat in between Tory and SNP candidates- letting them go at each other and then quoting them back to each other to utterly screw themselves.
That at one point I had to physically move my chair back to create space for Ross finger jabbing towards Logan was just crazy.
Two best bits? On Ross, he was going on about his pledge on Levelling Up money and I pointed out that they’ve scrapped Levelling up to pay for national service. He objected and had people shouting him down in the audience.
And on Logan? The inevitable debate on Independence and he said a majority vote for the SNP was a vote for independence. I pointed out that the polls show they will not win a majority of MPs so by his own argument that will be a vote against independence and he tried to say no it isn’t. At which point he got shouted down by people.
Sky News were there, will be included as part of Matthew Thompson’s package which will go up at some point (he’ll let me know when). That Sky News were there is because I invited them. And why not - couldn’t do me any harm.
Politics. I fucking love politics
Brilliant. PB banter has trained you well. Let us know if, when and where we can see it.
On immigration: "How can you make a plan for the economy when you won't say how many people you want in the country "
How indeed.
Who can say how many people they want in the country? It's all a bit Soviet. We must have 67,764,923 people in the country, not one more, not one less. If anyone emigrates we must immediately get another person in. As soon as a baby is born, we must ship a granny off to Dignitas. This obsession with raw numbers is plain dumb.
Not at all. Haven't you noticed it is a huge issue and has resulted in *checks figures* Reform on nearly 20% of the vote.
Plus if they aren't worried then say we're not worried. Don't criticise the Cons for losing control and then have no control by design.
Reform is getting votes for lots of reasons, not least of which is the Tory party is imploding. People are angry about the folk arriving by boat, who are a small number having a minimal impact on overall net migration let alone the total population. Are people really that angry about large numbers of foreign students? Would they rather our universities collapsed and we went without the foreign earnings? We shouldn't be focusing on the numbers, we should be focusing on having an immigration system that works.
Fine. Then say we don't care how many people come here the more the merrier.
Don't criticise the Cons for "losing control of immigration" and then not say how you will control it.
There is a difference between saying the immigration system is broken and needs fixing via x y and z, and saying we must have x number of people in the country. The first makes sense, the second is just stupid.
I think the hostile audience helped Sunak here. He showed he was willing to stick to his views. Won't shift many votes, but may solidify a bit of support if enough saw it.
Everyone else was dull and waffly, but Rishi keeps on shouting and bickering. I don't think he's made any terrible screw-ups, but the contrast with the others is horrible.
Hustings report: that was fucking awesome. Sat in between Tory and SNP candidates- letting them go at each other and then quoting them back to each other to utterly screw themselves.
That at one point I had to physically move my chair back to create space for Ross finger jabbing towards Logan was just crazy.
Two best bits? On Ross, he was going on about his pledge on Levelling Up money and I pointed out that they’ve scrapped Levelling up to pay for national service. He objected and had people shouting him down in the audience.
And on Logan? The inevitable debate on Independence and he said a majority vote for the SNP was a vote for independence. I pointed out that the polls show they will not win a majority of MPs so by his own argument that will be a vote against independence and he tried to say no it isn’t. At which point he got shouted down by people.
Sky News were there, will be included as part of Matthew Thompson’s package which will go up at some point (he’ll let me know when). That Sky News were there is because I invited them. And why not - couldn’t do me any harm.
Politics. I fucking love politics
And 66-1 is still available on Bet365....
That part of the world was Natland for a very long time before Ruth Davidson shook things up a bit - and it's anti-SNP tactical voting that's liable to save at least some of the Scottish Tories, even if the English ones perform at the lower end of expectations and struggle to win much north of Oxford.
If the LD vote ends up exceeding 10% then their esteemed and splendid candidate will have done well.
I quite like Sunak's fight here, although there is a little tetchiness he needs to watch.
Yep agree. Giving Fiona a bollocking.
Is he really saying he'd unbank people who don't sign up to his conscription scheme? Make the banks do it rather than take the responsibility? What else are the banks going to do? Execute people for murder, because the Tories don't want the state to do it?!
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
Being able to pass their programme of legislation in parliament is what comes of having a majority. It's what happens in a majoritarian system. The current government had a majority for almost five years and used it, amongst other things, to change the electoral system, alter the boundaries of our constituencies, and to require photo ID in order to vote.
We have no supermajority requirements in our political system. Passing a bill by a single vote is just as effective as passing it by 200.
Those are indeed the rules.
But just because they've been that way for a long time doesn't make them good rules. As many of us have been, for a long time, pointing out.
I'm completely down with changing the rules to make them better. But the rules we have are the rules we have and everyone knows what the rules are and so the election is perfectly legitimate. It's really dangerous to start throwing the word illegitimate around.
I think Parliament would be better with a wider range of views represented, which FPTP tends to shut out and marginalise. But I do not regard the current Parliament as illegitimate.
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
It's a theory without evidence, unlike the examples you cite. So I also call bollocks.
I quite like Sunak's fight here, although there is a little tetchiness he needs to watch.
Yep agree. Giving Fiona a bollocking.
Is he really saying he'd unbank people who don't sign up to his conscription scheme? Make the banks do it rather than take the responsibility? What else are the banks going to do? Execute people for murder, because the Tories don't want the state to do it?!
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
You just argued that the burden is on the sceptic to disprove, rather than on the believer to prove. Give your head a wobble, as they say.
Wow… he did go there… “What Keir Starmer is promising you is the same fantasy that Liz Truss did."… PM with the strongest implicit criticism of his predecessor, colleague and fellow candidate in this election…
I quite like Sunak's fight here, although there is a little tetchiness he needs to watch.
Yep agree. Giving Fiona a bollocking.
Is he really saying he'd unbank people who don't sign up to his conscription scheme? Make the banks do it rather than take the responsibility? What else are the banks going to do? Execute people for murder, because the Tories don't want the state to do it?!
I think the hostile audience helped Sunak here. He showed he was willing to stick to his views. Won't shift many votes, but may solidify a bit of support if enough saw it.
I thought Rishi came out best tonight, clear on his achievements on cutting inflation, committed to cutting tax and showing how his visa policies and restrictions on bringing over dependents will reduce immigration
I must correct the characterisation that I am on 'the right'. I have said several times that I am voting for Labour. I have however made a prediction that the next political movement in the UK will be on what people describe as the 'far right'. This is not something I want to happen, I just think it will, because of the likely failure of 'centrism' to take in to account opposing views on matters like immigration and cultural issues, views which a lot of people hold. This, and the fact of 'reactive dynamics', together with other global political shifts, mean that it seems very likely to me that people will start to look to the 'far right' for answers, as the 'left' has run out of road. The concern expressed in the last comment was that, if we have a situation where 40% of people vote for right wing parties, and these positions are barely represented in Parliament, then the situation starts to become worrying for democracy. The reaction to this point is quite revealing, it is just something that people have to just 'suck up'...
I have said before that the best model for dealing with the 'far right' is what has happened in Finland for the last 20 years, the people involved are bought in to the system, and it is somehow made to work.
I only saw the very end. Someone in the audience stated that Russia and Belarus were the only two countries in the world not signed up to the ECHR and Sunak didn't correct him.........
He could have pointed out that there are plenty of civilised countries that are not signed up but didn't.
I quite like Sunak's fight here, although there is a little tetchiness he needs to watch.
Yep agree. Giving Fiona a bollocking.
Is he really saying he'd unbank people who don't sign up to his conscription scheme? Make the banks do it rather than take the responsibility? What else are the banks going to do? Execute people for murder, because the Tories don't want the state to do it?!
If Starmer is going to have some regulator telling landlords which prospective tenant they have to choose then many landlords will say "No thanks" and just sell up.
OK, it may push house prices down a bit. But it will leave a situation where if people aren't able to buy then they'll have no choice whatsoever other than to stay with Mum and Dad.
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
Look. People use shorthands all the time, because they are quick and efficient. Explaining, in detail, why each individual conspiracy theory is complete and utter cobblers is time-consuming, annoying and pointless - because the true believers just don't want to know.
So it makes sense to use a shorthand, then anyone who hasn't fallen all the way down the rabbit hole is prompted to consider the issue for a moment themselves and consider the available evidence, instead of wasting your time putting together a detailed case that will be dismissed by someone going, "Yeah, but, that's what they said about..."
And I was convinced by the evidence about Horizon as soon as Private Eye started reporting about it - long before the vicar became involved, so you can take that one and shove it up your arse.
And you can suck my shiny metal membrum virile.
Your "fallen down the rabbit hole" cliche has the fatal flaw that it's a cliche. You aren't offering me any objective way to distinguish valid conspiracy theories from invalid ones. You personally are right every time, and so right that it justifies infantile "shove it up your arse" talk, but I would prefer a more rigorous and less commentator-dependent test. I read it in Private Eye doesn't count.
I think the hostile audience helped Sunak here. He showed he was willing to stick to his views. Won't shift many votes, but may solidify a bit of support if enough saw it.
I thought Rishi came out best tonight, clear on his achievements on cutting inflation, committed to cutting tax and showing how his visa policies and restrictions on bringing over dependents will reduce immigration
Yes. His job was to do everything possible to keep the tories from disappearing beneath the quicksand.
He successfully flailed about. Your man done gud.
Starmer shoudn't have agreed to all these debates, just the bare minimum.
Wow… he did go there… “What Keir Starmer is promising you is the same fantasy that Liz Truss did."… PM with the strongest implicit criticism of his predecessor, colleague and fellow candidate in this election…
If Starmer was doing that he’d not have put out a dull safe manifesto . Does Sunak really believe the public are going to fall for his guff re Truss .
On immigration: "How can you make a plan for the economy when you won't say how many people you want in the country "
How indeed.
Who can say how many people they want in the country? It's all a bit Soviet. We must have 67,764,923 people in the country, not one more, not one less. If anyone emigrates we must immediately get another person in. As soon as a baby is born, we must ship a granny off to Dignitas. This obsession with raw numbers is plain dumb.
Not at all. Haven't you noticed it is a huge issue and has resulted in *checks figures* Reform on nearly 20% of the vote.
Plus if they aren't worried then say we're not worried. Don't criticise the Cons for losing control and then have no control by design.
Reform is getting votes for lots of reasons, not least of which is the Tory party is imploding. People are angry about the folk arriving by boat, who are a small number having a minimal impact on overall net migration let alone the total population. Are people really that angry about large numbers of foreign students? Would they rather our universities collapsed and we went without the foreign earnings? We shouldn't be focusing on the numbers, we should be focusing on having an immigration system that works.
Fine. Then say we don't care how many people come here the more the merrier.
Don't criticise the Cons for "losing control of immigration" and then not say how you will control it.
There is a difference between saying the immigration system is broken and needs fixing via x y and z, and saying we must have x number of people in the country. The first makes sense, the second is just stupid.
SKS said the Cons had lost control. But refused to say even if he wanted to control it.
Say it's broken fine but he didn't say that he said the Cons had lost control with the implication being that he would control it.
I must correct the characterisation that I am on 'the right'. I have said several times that I am voting for Labour. I have however made a prediction that the next political movement in the UK will be on what people describe as the 'far right'. This is not something I want to happen, I just think it will, because of the likely failure of 'centrism' to take in to account opposing views on matters like immigration and cultural issues, views which a lot of people hold. This, and the fact of 'reactive dynamics', together with other global political shifts, mean that it seems very likely to me that people will start to look to the 'far right' for answers, as the 'left' has run out of road. The concern expressed in the last comment was that, if we have a situation where 40% of people vote for right wing parties, and these positions are barely represented in Parliament, then the situation starts to become worrying for democracy. The reaction to this point is quite revealing, it is just something that people have to just 'suck up'...
I have said before that the best model for dealing with the 'far right' is what has happened in Finland for the last 20 years, the people involved are bought in to the system, and it is somehow made to work.
When I was criticising the right for pushing the idea that the next Labour government would be illegitimate because of its super-massive majority, I was not necessarily including you in that (it can be hard to keep track of every poster's political position), but more commenting on the many interventions to that effect from Conservative politicians and commentators.
If Starmer is going to have some regulator telling landlords which prospective tenant they have to choose then many landlords will say "No thanks" and just sell up.
OK, it may push house prices down a bit. But it will leave a situation where if people aren't able to buy then they'll have no choice whatsoever other than to stay with Mum and Dad.
This appears to be Starmer's solution to lots of things. Have a new quango regulator and nanny state stuff....and he can do this because the Tories have been proposing similar BS.
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
I don't get this argument. I mean I don't want any sort of Labour majority but I recognise there will be one.
And if that majority is 100 or 300, what difference does it make? Starmer will be in exactly the position Blair, Thatcher and many other PMs before them have been in. With a majority large enough that they can enact whatever laws they see fit but always with a weather eye to the next election. They won so they get to run things. Personally I find this preferable to the situation May or even Johnson with his 80 seat majority found themselves in where there is a significant clique within their own party who are able to undermine what the PM and the Cabinet want to do and cause chaos.
I am sure I am gouing to hate much of what Starmer wants to do but that is democracy. He still has to take the vast majority of his party with him which is a moderating factor on his actions. He does not ahve absolute power - if you think he does then see what would happen if he proposed banning pets or compulsory pole dancing for grannies.
What I do think is that the Lords becomes very important as an amending/checking chamber. One of the problems of the last decade has been too many acts that have not been fit for purpose, ill considered and ill written. The Lords can do a great service by making sure that Starmer's new laws and policies are actually coherent, lawful and practical.
I agree with this to a point. I think the moderating factor is that there is hardly anything meaningful in Labour's manifesto, which indeed sets them up for endless fights with the Lords. But as per my other posts, the issue for me is having a situation where there is severe underrepresentation of a significant quantum of political opinion.
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
Look. People use shorthands all the time, because they are quick and efficient. Explaining, in detail, why each individual conspiracy theory is complete and utter cobblers is time-consuming, annoying and pointless - because the true believers just don't want to know.
So it makes sense to use a shorthand, then anyone who hasn't fallen all the way down the rabbit hole is prompted to consider the issue for a moment themselves and consider the available evidence, instead of wasting your time putting together a detailed case that will be dismissed by someone going, "Yeah, but, that's what they said about..."
And I was convinced by the evidence about Horizon as soon as Private Eye started reporting about it - long before the vicar became involved, so you can take that one and shove it up your arse.
The CW story in 2009 was an excellent example of good journalism, and made a strong prima facie case for Post Office shenanigans.
Is there a shred of evidence for this 'ballot stuffing' tale ?
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Wow… he did go there… “What Keir Starmer is promising you is the same fantasy that Liz Truss did."… PM with the strongest implicit criticism of his predecessor, colleague and fellow candidate in this election…
Prepared to trash other Tories and feed Labour attack lines to try and make himself look a bit better. Worst PM and Tory leader ever.
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
Define ‘right’. I would say that the centre-right (Gauke, Rory Stewart, Lidders, Saj etc) have been disenfranchised and the natural One Nation conservatives have nowhere to go - hence the supermajority and so I agree with you.
If Labour end up governing as a a centrist party then you could argue that these people WILL be represented (although whether labour govern as a centrist party remains to be seen - but on balance I think yes)
I think the biggest political mistake was Johnson’s purge of the centrists. (Which is similar to Corbyn / momentum’s purge of the centrists)
Like Labour, I think the conservatives can recover within a Parliament, but only if they have the right leader.
SKS was able to pull Labour back to the centre ground because there was still centre ground Labour MPs to work with.
The equivalent group of centre ground Tory MPs simply don't exist in the Tory party anymore - Johnson purged them including his brother...
Been resisting bringing this up, but I'm going to. Others may remember/know differently, but I'm sure OGH said he had sight of the 2010 Exit Poll at around 21:30 when he was at the BBC about to be interviewed by 5Live or something, but he said he wasn't in a position to do anything with it (I guess pre-smart phone). Perhaps he wouldn't have done anything, but if I remember rightly, he said it with frustration that he couldn't take advantage. I may be wrong.
I only remember this story because I was shocked that the Exit Poll isn't top secret. Perhaps things are different these days with smart phones making betting on this sort of information being much easier.
No, Mike's problem was he couldn't bet on his phone, he'd have to wait until he got in front of his laptop back home in Bedford, which would be around 11.30 pm which left him at a disadvantage.
Average 3G speeds then were about 300 Kbps.
On the spreads IIRC the Lib Dems were around 85 seats and the exit poll showed them going from 62 MPs to 57 MPs and as a buyer of the Lib Dems he couldn't close out his position.
Thanks, so I am right that he would have taken advantage if he could. The exit poll is far more important than any opinion poll you might have early sight of.
No, he would have waited until 10pm like everybody else.
His frustration was that by going to the BBC studios he was left in a worse position than the average punter at 10pm.
No, sorry, that's bollocks. You don't get to see such information and then wait until 10pm like everyone else.
Sporting would cancel Mike's account (and anybody else's account) if they suspect they had early sight of the exit poll.
Plus it is likely to meet the threshold for insider dealing unlike a bet with Ladbrokes of William Hill.
Hang on, sorry, I must have misunderstood your first post. Are you saying Mike didn't see the 2010 exit poll? I must have imagined him saying he did, if so.
He did see the exit poll.
His frustration was that when it became public at 10pm it would move the market he wouldn't be able to bet until later on that night because he was in the BBC studios.
I'd clarify, Sporting would have cancelled Mike's account if they suspected Mike had bet due to early access to the exit poll.
Right, my point was that being ready to bet at 10pm is cheating. I've never played the SPIN markets so I don't know how quickly they move, but I guess that they move pretty quickly after the exit poll (assuming they are not suspended). So either Mike would have had everything ready to go at 10pm on the dot - like I say, cheating - or he wouldn't have been able to do much about his position anyway.
It wasn’t unknown at the time, for the spreads to be suspended five minutes before the exit poll, and repriced five minutes later. They can take down any market at any time at the own discretion, as it’s legally trading rather than betting.
They are usually suspended around 9:30/9:45, then back up around 10:05/10:15
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
There is been little to no exploration of any policies put out by the parties in their manifestos....except National Service....brilliant tactics by the Tories sucking all the oxygen out of any debate by proposing a stupid policy that they came up with 9.50pm on a call to the Telegraph.
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
You just argued that the burden is on the sceptic to disprove, rather than on the believer to prove. Give your head a wobble, as they say.
Yes. Unless the original proposition presents at least a scintilla of evidence, or grounds, capable of belief and capable of evaluation, and is not a mere assertion then a hearer is under no sort of responsibility to take it seriously, or in particular to produce evidence. Taking any other view simply allows space for meaningless assertion to take hold. Twitter gives lovely examples of this time wasting frequently.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
In Russia, I think they just shoot you....in the back.
Hustings report: that was fucking awesome. Sat in between Tory and SNP candidates- letting them go at each other and then quoting them back to each other to utterly screw themselves.
That at one point I had to physically move my chair back to create space for Ross finger jabbing towards Logan was just crazy.
Two best bits? On Ross, he was going on about his pledge on Levelling Up money and I pointed out that they’ve scrapped Levelling up to pay for national service. He objected and had people shouting him down in the audience.
And on Logan? The inevitable debate on Independence and he said a majority vote for the SNP was a vote for independence. I pointed out that the polls show they will not win a majority of MPs so by his own argument that will be a vote against independence and he tried to say no it isn’t. At which point he got shouted down by people.
Sky News were there, will be included as part of Matthew Thompson’s package which will go up at some point (he’ll let me know when). That Sky News were there is because I invited them. And why not - couldn’t do me any harm.
Politics. I fucking love politics
And 66-1 is still available on Bet365....
That part of the world was Natland for a very long time before Ruth Davidson shook things up a bit - and it's anti-SNP tactical voting that's liable to save at least some of the Scottish Tories, even if the English ones perform at the lower end of expectations and struggle to win much north of Oxford.
If the LD vote ends up exceeding 10% then their esteemed and splendid candidate will have done well.
Bearing in mind both the Labour (pro-Putin) and Reform (anti-royal) candidates in this seat have blown up, then he may get close to 10% (though more likely to 5 I suspect).
I must correct the characterisation that I am on 'the right'. I have said several times that I am voting for Labour. I have however made a prediction that the next political movement in the UK will be on what people describe as the 'far right'. This is not something I want to happen, I just think it will, because of the likely failure of 'centrism' to take in to account opposing views on matters like immigration and cultural issues, views which a lot of people hold. This, and the fact of 'reactive dynamics', together with other global political shifts, mean that it seems very likely to me that people will start to look to the 'far right' for answers, as the 'left' has run out of road. The concern expressed in the last comment was that, if we have a situation where 40% of people vote for right wing parties, and these positions are barely represented in Parliament, then the situation starts to become worrying for democracy. The reaction to this point is quite revealing, it is just something that people have to just 'suck up'...
I have said before that the best model for dealing with the 'far right' is what has happened in Finland for the last 20 years, the people involved are bought in to the system, and it is somehow made to work.
I think I really reacted to your use of the words "not be seen as legitimate".
I agree that it would be suboptimal. I agree that we could do better. I agree that people should have their views represented fairly in Parliament.
But to suggest that it wouldn't be legitimate is dangerous. We all need to accept that we won't always get our way, and that the other side is allowed to win from time to time. But increasingly we have people suggesting that the other side is illegitimate when it wins, and it is incredibly corrosive, and I will argue against it (even if it's not what you intended).
There is been little to no exploration of any policies put out by the parties in their manifestos....except National Service....brilliant tactics by the Tories sucking all the oxygen out of any debate by proposing a stupid policy that they came up with 9.50pm on a call to the Telegraph.
Politics is not what it was. There was a time when politicians would offer you free owls. I never got mine, a symptom of national decline?
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
I'm not sure. Being debanked makes one an unperson.
Besides - if Mr S was serious about his scheme, what's wrong (from his point of view) with a few months in Borstal?
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
In Russia, I think they just shoot you....in the back.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Well Starmer tells us he only served in Corbyn's cabinet because he thought Corbyn was so useless he couldn't possibly win a GE. So I think tied on that one.
Sunak did also say if you elect Truss you will get exactly what happened.
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
You just argued that the burden is on the sceptic to disprove, rather than on the believer to prove. Give your head a wobble, as they say.
They do, people who read witless phrases on the internet and think Oooh that sounds clever, I must use that. Sceptic and believer are interchangeable here: a believer in A is a sceptic as to not-A, and vice versa. So why would the burden of proof be on one rather than the other? You seem to be importing poorly understood legal concepts into an area where they don't apply.
On immigration: "How can you make a plan for the economy when you won't say how many people you want in the country "
How indeed.
Who can say how many people they want in the country? It's all a bit Soviet. We must have 67,764,923 people in the country, not one more, not one less. If anyone emigrates we must immediately get another person in. As soon as a baby is born, we must ship a granny off to Dignitas. This obsession with raw numbers is plain dumb.
Not at all. Haven't you noticed it is a huge issue and has resulted in *checks figures* Reform on nearly 20% of the vote.
Plus if they aren't worried then say we're not worried. Don't criticise the Cons for losing control and then have no control by design.
Reform is getting votes for lots of reasons, not least of which is the Tory party is imploding. People are angry about the folk arriving by boat, who are a small number having a minimal impact on overall net migration let alone the total population. Are people really that angry about large numbers of foreign students? Would they rather our universities collapsed and we went without the foreign earnings? We shouldn't be focusing on the numbers, we should be focusing on having an immigration system that works.
Fine. Then say we don't care how many people come here the more the merrier.
Don't criticise the Cons for "losing control of immigration" and then not say how you will control it.
They were quite open that voting for Brexit was always going to mean much more immigration from Asia; it’s just that those leaflets only went to Asian voters.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
May be brutal but tactically correct from Rishi, he had to throw Liz under a metaphorical bus to make clear he inherited inflation at 11% from her and has now cut that to just 2%
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
Look. People use shorthands all the time, because they are quick and efficient. Explaining, in detail, why each individual conspiracy theory is complete and utter cobblers is time-consuming, annoying and pointless - because the true believers just don't want to know.
So it makes sense to use a shorthand, then anyone who hasn't fallen all the way down the rabbit hole is prompted to consider the issue for a moment themselves and consider the available evidence, instead of wasting your time putting together a detailed case that will be dismissed by someone going, "Yeah, but, that's what they said about..."
And I was convinced by the evidence about Horizon as soon as Private Eye started reporting about it - long before the vicar became involved, so you can take that one and shove it up your arse.
And you can suck my shiny metal membrum virile.
Your "fallen down the rabbit hole" cliche has the fatal flaw that it's a cliche. You aren't offering me any objective way to distinguish valid conspiracy theories from invalid ones. You personally are right every time, and so right that it justifies infantile "shove it up your arse" talk, but I would prefer a more rigorous and less commentator-dependent test. I read it in Private Eye doesn't count.
As a first step I'm asking you to accept the possibility of fallibility, which will make it easier for you to revise your opinion when confronted by new evidence, rather than to hold to an idea long past the point at which any reasonable person would conclude that it had been falsified.
This means that if you do, initially, fall for an idea that turns out to be erroneous, you will be able to correct yourself.
If Starmer is going to have some regulator telling landlords which prospective tenant they have to choose then many landlords will say "No thanks" and just sell up.
OK, it may push house prices down a bit. But it will leave a situation where if people aren't able to buy then they'll have no choice whatsoever other than to stay with Mum and Dad.
There are plenty of ways it could be done without having an external regulator. Forcing landlords to accept the first bid at or above the asking price. Forcing them to choose the highest bid at a set point in time or when a set number of bids have been received. Banning inducement payments outside of the deposit. Banning multi-round bidding wars. Banning fictitious bidders.
None of those would affect house prices - the only way we can begin to get those down is to build more.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
Either do the scheme properly or don’t bother at all .
Are the government going to compensate those who would be working at weekends , how is the military going to cope with babysitting an army wannabe. The whole NS is just some sop to those who never had to do it but think it will sort out the youth of today .
There is been little to no exploration of any policies put out by the parties in their manifestos....except National Service....brilliant tactics by the Tories sucking all the oxygen out of any debate by proposing a stupid policy that they came up with 9.50pm on a call to the Telegraph.
Politics is not what it was. There was a time when politicians would offer you free owls. I never got mine, a symptom of national decline?
In all seriousness, the policy platforms are very poor. Labour big centrepiece is PFI reheated, help to buy made permanent, an increase in teacher numbers that is so small it is actually less than the number the Tories hired last year and putting VAT on private schools that will in the grand scheme of things raise bugger all tax. Then running around say no change to Tories on loads of other things. Its no 1997.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
May be brutal but tactically correct from Rishi, he had to throw Liz under a metaphorical bus to make clear he inherited inflation at 11% from her and has now cut that to just 2%
Plus he wanted to make the point about his view on people he disagreed with vs SKS and Jezza.
There is been little to no exploration of any policies put out by the parties in their manifestos....except National Service....brilliant tactics by the Tories sucking all the oxygen out of any debate by proposing a stupid policy that they came up with 9.50pm on a call to the Telegraph.
It really is crackers. Rishi has now given Labour another couple of attack lines, should they want to use them.
9 minutes past the solstice. Start of astronomical summer 🌞🌞
So the nights are drawing in. Wonderful.
You have to bank the plusses that you can. On 21st December I tell myself it's all getting better for the next 6 months. Great. On 21st June I tell myself that summer is not over till at least well into September and there is 3 months to go. And then, I say, autumn is often the best of all. And then it's December again. Snowdrops...and so it goes on.
Which one? The Reform and Labour candidates are both ex-services. Not the Green lady, and the LD website sets off security warnings. THough the Reform chap was REME, and the Labour chap RM.
I think the hostile audience helped Sunak here. He showed he was willing to stick to his views. Won't shift many votes, but may solidify a bit of support if enough saw it.
I thought Rishi came out best tonight, clear on his achievements on cutting inflation, committed to cutting tax and showing how his visa policies and restrictions on bringing over dependents will reduce immigration
Inflation. Rocketed under the Tories. Tax. Risen to record levels under the Tories. And going up further. Immigration. Risen to record levels under the Tories.
I must correct the characterisation that I am on 'the right'. I have said several times that I am voting for Labour. I have however made a prediction that the next political movement in the UK will be on what people describe as the 'far right'. This is not something I want to happen, I just think it will, because of the likely failure of 'centrism' to take in to account opposing views on matters like immigration and cultural issues, views which a lot of people hold. This, and the fact of 'reactive dynamics', together with other global political shifts, mean that it seems very likely to me that people will start to look to the 'far right' for answers, as the 'left' has run out of road. The concern expressed in the last comment was that, if we have a situation where 40% of people vote for right wing parties, and these positions are barely represented in Parliament, then the situation starts to become worrying for democracy. The reaction to this point is quite revealing, it is just something that people have to just 'suck up'...
I have said before that the best model for dealing with the 'far right' is what has happened in Finland for the last 20 years, the people involved are bought in to the system, and it is somehow made to work.
When I was criticising the right for pushing the idea that the next Labour government would be illegitimate because of its super-massive majority, I was not necessarily including you in that (it can be hard to keep track of every poster's political position), but more commenting on the many interventions to that effect from Conservative politicians and commentators.
'Illegitimate' is a very poor choice of words - and it's beyond rich for the Tories to criticise a system which has benefitted them for so long, as soon as its effects turn against them.
But the criticism of FPTP is entirely correct. It's better than no democracy at all, but it's a half arsed, often unfair version of democracy.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
May be brutal but tactically correct from Rishi, he had to throw Liz under a metaphorical bus to make clear he inherited inflation at 11% from her and has now cut that to just 2%
It's not going to do him a shred of good, it just harms the party. Part and parcel of this premiership - it's the Prime Ministerial equivalent of a dirty protest.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
Great idea. Maybe The Dish can propose throwing thousands of 19 year olds in the slammer next time he’s on the telly?
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
May be brutal but tactically correct from Rishi, he had to throw Liz under a metaphorical bus to make clear he inherited inflation at 11% from her and has now cut that to just 2%
What do you mean inherited from Truss? He was the Chancellor!
I heard an interesting conspiracy theory a couple of years ago about the Brexit referendum that allegedly originated with mail workers.
It was that the general shock from the top politicians when the result came in was because the spooks had seen to it that a large amount of remain postal ballots had been inserted into the system (much easier to do with a national referendum than 650 constituencies) to make sure of the result - and despite this they still lost.
Oh, this nonsense reminds me that I never got around to telling you to fuck off for calling for people to be drowned.
So, er, fuck off.
There, glad I got that off my chest.
Charming. Especially, given that I did no such thing.
I got that wrong, and I apologise.
Your conspiracy theory is still nonsense.
Thanks.
In the cold light of day I could have worded it better but appreciate your comment.
Yes it probably is nonsense but amusing nonetheless to think of the security services trying to be James Bond and ending up being Basildon Bond.
You really need to be careful about going down this conspiracy theory route. We in Scotland have had a couple of years head start after the 2014 referendum when idiotic tales were going round that you should use a pen instead of a pencil because the "security services" will erase your Yes vote and replace it with a No vote. This is the stock in trade of those who want to undermine out democracy by undermining our faith in democracy. For example, Russia. They put these stories about to harm us. The same story about pens went about in 2016 at the EU referendum, and a few of us up here were "aye, right, we've seen this one before". Since then all kinds of crap has been said and amplified. They spread because they're interesting, but before forwarding them you should ask whether you have any evidence and whether spreading a false rumour of this nature can be harmful. If the answers are "no" and "yes", please exercise restraint and keep it to yourself. We, and our democracy, have enemies. Don't do their work for them.
There's nothing more logically vacuous than dismissing a theory as a conspiracy theory. The implication is that it is unthinkable and historically unknown for a lot of people to do a bad thing and conspire to cover it up. As in Hur Hur, are you really claiming that a bunch of highly respected establishment figures including numerous distinguished lawyers and headed by a vicar, conspired to put literally hundreds of innocent people in jail? Hur Hur.
The triumph of the conspiracy theory theory was in the second world war, when reports of the shoah were largely discounted because Hur Hur we had this last time round with Belgian atrocities, you always get this exaggerated nonsense in time of war. Ignore.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how stupid supports evil. If you think a thesis is wrong attack it with evidence, not with a useless heuristic about "conspiracy theories."
Look. People use shorthands all the time, because they are quick and efficient. Explaining, in detail, why each individual conspiracy theory is complete and utter cobblers is time-consuming, annoying and pointless - because the true believers just don't want to know.
So it makes sense to use a shorthand, then anyone who hasn't fallen all the way down the rabbit hole is prompted to consider the issue for a moment themselves and consider the available evidence, instead of wasting your time putting together a detailed case that will be dismissed by someone going, "Yeah, but, that's what they said about..."
And I was convinced by the evidence about Horizon as soon as Private Eye started reporting about it - long before the vicar became involved, so you can take that one and shove it up your arse.
And you can suck my shiny metal membrum virile.
Your "fallen down the rabbit hole" cliche has the fatal flaw that it's a cliche. You aren't offering me any objective way to distinguish valid conspiracy theories from invalid ones. You personally are right every time, and so right that it justifies infantile "shove it up your arse" talk, but I would prefer a more rigorous and less commentator-dependent test. I read it in Private Eye doesn't count.
As a first step I'm asking you to accept the possibility of fallibility, which will make it easier for you to revise your opinion when confronted by new evidence, rather than to hold to an idea long past the point at which any reasonable person would conclude that it had been falsified.
This means that if you do, initially, fall for an idea that turns out to be erroneous, you will be able to correct yourself.
But you appear to be unwilling to do this.
SAD!
What? The substantive issue here is much too boring for me to have a view on. Indeed I have forgotten what it is. I hate shit logic for its own sake, and my mission is to pity and nurture the shit logician and try to make them see the error of their ways.
Which one? The Reform and Labour candidates are both ex-services. Not the Green lady, and the LD website sets off security warnings. THough the Reform chap was REME, and the Labour chap RM.
Fred Thomas (Lab) apparently claimed he had seen combat but was unable to back that up and the hustings was abandoned as people stormed out. That's how Johnny tells it anyway
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
The 2019 result was disproportionate as were many others. It’s a feature of non proportional representation systems. The trick is to disapprove when it favours your side.
Sorry but we could be looking at a result that is a whole different scale to anything we have seen before. Wasn't there a poll suggesting over 500 Labour MPs with less than 40% of the vote? And possibly with the Lib Dems as the official opposition?
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
Great idea. Maybe The Dish can propose throwing thousands of 19 year olds in the slammer next time he’s on the telly?
For a change, the infrastructure hasn't been sold off. Colchester glasshouse is still available.
The two things voters will remember most from this campaign: 1. Sunak leaving D-Day celebrations early. 2. Tories betting on the election date.
You couldn’t have designed a worse backdrop.
I see the Tory shill Bruce failed to point out that Sunak was asking people to do NS when he couldn’t be arsed to do a full day at the D Day commemorations.
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
Which one? The Reform and Labour candidates are both ex-services. Not the Green lady, and the LD website sets off security warnings. THough the Reform chap was REME, and the Labour chap RM.
Fred Thomas (Lab) apparently claimed he had seen combat but was unable to back that up and the hustings was abandoned as people stormed out. That's how Johnny tells it anyway
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
Those that don’t take part in the equivalent scheme in Austria can be jailed for three months. In Finland, six months. They are getting off lightly.
Great idea. Maybe The Dish can propose throwing thousands of 19 year olds in the slammer next time he’s on the telly?
Bit of a cockup on the "spare places in the slammer" front.
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
May be brutal but tactically correct from Rishi, he had to throw Liz under a metaphorical bus to make clear he inherited inflation at 11% from her and has now cut that to just 2%
Plus he wanted to make the point about his view on people he disagreed with vs SKS and Jezza.
But Truss is standing for the Conservatives while Jezza has been kicked out of Labour.
Truss will still be Sunak's Right Honourable Friend if they both get reelected.
The two things voters will remember most from this campaign: 1. Sunak leaving D-Day celebrations early. 2. Tories betting on the election date.
You couldn’t have designed a worse backdrop.
Honourable mention also for Ed Davey falling into Lake Windermere.
I can't remember anything that Sir Keir has done, but that's probably how he likes it. The Ming Vase has made it another 50 yards along Downing Street unscathed.
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
I must correct the characterisation that I am on 'the right'. I have said several times that I am voting for Labour. I have however made a prediction that the next political movement in the UK will be on what people describe as the 'far right'. This is not something I want to happen, I just think it will, because of the likely failure of 'centrism' to take in to account opposing views on matters like immigration and cultural issues, views which a lot of people hold. This, and the fact of 'reactive dynamics', together with other global political shifts, mean that it seems very likely to me that people will start to look to the 'far right' for answers, as the 'left' has run out of road. The concern expressed in the last comment was that, if we have a situation where 40% of people vote for right wing parties, and these positions are barely represented in Parliament, then the situation starts to become worrying for democracy. The reaction to this point is quite revealing, it is just something that people have to just 'suck up'...
I have said before that the best model for dealing with the 'far right' is what has happened in Finland for the last 20 years, the people involved are bought in to the system, and it is somehow made to work.
When I was criticising the right for pushing the idea that the next Labour government would be illegitimate because of its super-massive majority, I was not necessarily including you in that (it can be hard to keep track of every poster's political position), but more commenting on the many interventions to that effect from Conservative politicians and commentators.
'Illegitimate' is a very poor choice of words - and it's beyond rich for the Tories to criticise a system which has benefitted them for so long, as soon as its effects turn against them.
But the criticism of FPTP is entirely correct. It's better than no democracy at all, but it's a half arsed, often unfair version of democracy.
I'm no fan of FPTP. And I'm still a big fan of STV. But, having immersed myself in Irish politics (STV) for a while now, I've come to the conclusion that democracy really is a mass-participation system, and the voting system doesn't really make nearly as much difference as I would like to think it would.
Which one? The Reform and Labour candidates are both ex-services. Not the Green lady, and the LD website sets off security warnings. THough the Reform chap was REME, and the Labour chap RM.
Fred Thomas (Lab) apparently claimed he had seen combat but was unable to back that up and the hustings was abandoned as people stormed out. That's how Johnny tells it anyway
Decrying your opponent as a Walt is apt to be effective in a services constituency.
Rishi really good in the debate. Probably too late in the day to save them but if he keeps this new passionate self up in the coming days, could save them a few seats.
Starmer, seriously! Is he deliberately trying to be as boring as humanly possible?
Rishi is gonna come for your bank account and your car if you don’t be a good little toy soldier. And he hates The TRUSS even though she is a candidate in his own party.
Beyond bizarre.
May be brutal but tactically correct from Rishi, he had to throw Liz under a metaphorical bus to make clear he inherited inflation at 11% from her and has now cut that to just 2%
What do you mean inherited from Truss? He was the Chancellor!
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
Define ‘right’. I would say that the centre-right (Gauke, Rory Stewart, Lidders, Saj etc) have been disenfranchised and the natural One Nation conservatives have nowhere to go - hence the supermajority and so I agree with you.
If Labour end up governing as a a centrist party then you could argue that these people WILL be represented (although whether labour govern as a centrist party remains to be seen - but on balance I think yes)
I think the biggest political mistake was Johnson’s purge of the centrists. (Which is similar to Corbyn / momentum’s purge of the centrists)
Like Labour, I think the conservatives can recover within a Parliament, but only if they have the right leader.
SKS was able to pull Labour back to the centre ground because there was still centre ground Labour MPs to work with.
The equivalent group of centre ground Tory MPs simply don't exist in the Tory party anymore - Johnson purged them including his brother...
That's also though because while the Labour stay-and-fighters worked with the Corbyn leadership under sufferance, they never drank the Kool-Aid and bought into it all. You had people who left or were effectively pushed out - around as many as centrist Tory MPs, possibly even more.
But those who remained were pretty clear about what they thought was wrong with Corbynism and many worked damn hard to organise to take the party back. Including those who sympathised with some of Corbynism's ideas and themes but thought it was dreadfully wrong on certain points and were clear about that. Which is what has allowed them to rebuild pretty quickly.
Compare that to Conservative MPs, whereby you can pretty much, with a tiny number of exceptions, split them into those who left/were purged, and the appeasers who constantly tried to tailor their views and throw more and more meat the right, until we got here and it looks .
You can't find that many genuine Tory moderates anymore because many of those who were that, changed their views when they thought the populist right were on the rise. The most obvious example being Liz Truss, who was quite evidently always a bit odd, but has from a Cameroon postergirl with a libertarian streak to hanging around with Steve Bannon.
Or look at the election of Truss herself after she'd gone down that route - the number of ostensibly moderate MPs who knew she'd be a disaster but publicly backed her when they decided she'd probably beat Sunak. Or Sunak himself who was supposed to be Mr Sensible after the chaos that came before - but whose first move was to appoint Braverman. Or the MPs who knew Boris was unfit to lead the country but voted for him anyway.
There aren't the moderates because many of the moderates sold their souls and their principles.
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
Rishi really good in the debate. Probably too late in the day to save them but if he keeps this new passionate self up in the coming days, could save them a few seats.
Starmer, seriously! Is he deliberately trying to be as boring as humanly possible?
Squeeze Reform and the LDs, get other polls to push Labour down to Yougov levels and you could get something like Labour 36%, Tories 27%, Reform 13%, LDs 10% ie closer to a Brown 2010 defeat for Rishi than Major 1997.
Result - Tories over 200 seats again and Labour majority down to about 50
The two things voters will remember most from this campaign: 1. Sunak leaving D-Day celebrations early. 2. Tories betting on the election date.
You couldn’t have designed a worse backdrop.
Honourable mention also for Ed Davey falling into Lake Windermere.
I can't remember anything that Sir Keir has done, but that's probably how he likes it. The Ming Vase has made it another 50 yards along Downing Street unscathed.
This election is getting me worried about the future of democracy. It seems likely that Labour will get a disproportionate majority which is a serious distortion of their share of the vote. The 'right' on the other hand will be severely underrepresented in Parliament relative to their eventual share of the vote (probably circa 40%). The driving force for Labour in power will be passing legislation they want, which they will effectively be able to do with no opposition. I suppose this is the 'supermajority' fear that the conservatives are trying to play to , but it seems to me like a big danger for democracy, because the position of the party in power will not be seen as legitimate.
The 2019 result was disproportionate as were many others. It’s a feature of non proportional representation systems. The trick is to disapprove when it favours your side.
Sorry but we could be looking at a result that is a whole different scale to anything we have seen before. Wasn't there a poll suggesting over 500 Labour MPs with less than 40% of the vote? And possibly with the Lib Dems as the official opposition?
Maths tells only part of the story. Our system is to have 650 local by-elections on the same day, with the person who gets the most votes being the winner - as we all know. For one (moderate, centrist, sane) party to come top in 500 out of 650 of these elections is an astonishing achievement and is not a statistical freak; and in our system the moment this is done (if it is - it probably won't) they are not there to please themselves but to please us if they wish to stay there.
9 minutes past the solstice. Start of astronomical summer 🌞🌞
So the nights are drawing in. Wonderful.
You have to bank the plusses that you can. On 21st December I tell myself it's all getting better for the next 6 months. Great. On 21st June I tell myself that summer is not over till at least well into September and there is 3 months to go. And then, I say, autumn is often the best of all. And then it's December again. Snowdrops...and so it goes on.
Autumn is far from "Best of all". Drizzle, winter jackets taken out of the wardrobe to be used every day for the next 5 months, humidity jumps through the roof, central heating turned on. No more evenings outside at the pub ... and term starts again. The only savng grace is colourful leaves and it not being as cold as January!
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
Comments
There are tons of ridiculous populists and extremists around. The current polling is all wonderfully weird, but it has a common thread: we are going to have the next government made up of the best available centrist non-populist party and the centrist party that has messed us around is going to get told where to go.
Compare this with Russia, China, USA, France, etc.
The equivalent group of centre ground Tory MPs simply don't exist in the Tory party anymore - Johnson purged them including his brother...
But just because they've been that way for a long time doesn't make them good rules.
As many of us have been, for a long time, pointing out.
Don't criticise the Cons for "losing control of immigration" and then not say how you will control it.
So it makes sense to use a shorthand, then anyone who hasn't fallen all the way down the rabbit hole is prompted to consider the issue for a moment themselves and consider the available evidence, instead of wasting your time putting together a detailed case that will be dismissed by someone going, "Yeah, but, that's what they said about..."
And I was convinced by the evidence about Horizon as soon as Private Eye started reporting about it - long before the vicar became involved, so you can take that one and shove it up your arse.
Let us know if, when and where we can see it.
Fingers crossed for the 99/1 surprise.
Everyone else was dull and waffly, but Rishi keeps on shouting and bickering. I don't think he's made any terrible screw-ups, but the contrast with the others is horrible.
If the LD vote ends up exceeding 10% then their esteemed and splendid candidate will have done well.
I think Parliament would be better with a wider range of views represented, which FPTP tends to shut out and marginalise. But I do not regard the current Parliament as illegitimate.
So I also call bollocks.
And shame on you for the Holocaust comparison.
@faisalislam
Wow… he did go there… “What Keir Starmer is promising you is the same fantasy that Liz Truss did."… PM with the strongest implicit criticism of his predecessor, colleague and fellow candidate in this election…
I have said before that the best model for dealing with the 'far right' is what has happened in Finland for the last 20 years, the people involved are bought in to the system, and it is somehow made to work.
He could have pointed out that there are plenty of civilised countries that are not signed up but didn't.
It never made sense, and will never happen
OK, it may push house prices down a bit. But it will leave a situation where if people aren't able to buy then they'll have no choice whatsoever other than to stay with Mum and Dad.
Your "fallen down the rabbit hole" cliche has the fatal flaw that it's a cliche. You aren't offering me any objective way to distinguish valid conspiracy theories from invalid ones. You personally are right every time, and so right that it justifies infantile "shove it up your arse" talk, but I would prefer a more rigorous and less commentator-dependent test. I read it in Private Eye doesn't count.
He successfully flailed about. Your man done gud.
Starmer shoudn't have agreed to all these debates, just the bare minimum.
Say it's broken fine but he didn't say that he said the Cons had lost control with the implication being that he would control it.
Is there a shred of evidence for this 'ballot stuffing' tale ?
Beyond bizarre.
I agree that it would be suboptimal. I agree that we could do better. I agree that people should have their views represented fairly in Parliament.
But to suggest that it wouldn't be legitimate is dangerous. We all need to accept that we won't always get our way, and that the other side is allowed to win from time to time. But increasingly we have people suggesting that the other side is illegitimate when it wins, and it is incredibly corrosive, and I will argue against it (even if it's not what you intended).
Besides - if Mr S was serious about his scheme, what's wrong (from his point of view) with a few months in Borstal?
Sunak did also say if you elect Truss you will get exactly what happened.
https://x.com/JohnnyMercerUK/status/1803892494255497292?s=19
This means that if you do, initially, fall for an idea that turns out to be erroneous, you will be able to correct yourself.
But you appear to be unwilling to do this.
SAD!
None of those would affect house prices - the only way we can begin to get those down is to build more.
Are the government going to compensate those who would be working at weekends , how is the military going to cope with babysitting an army wannabe. The whole NS is just some sop to those who never had to do it but think it will sort out the youth of today .
Tax. Risen to record levels under the Tories. And going up further.
Immigration. Risen to record levels under the Tories.
Yes. These are Sunak's achievements.
But the criticism of FPTP is entirely correct.
It's better than no democracy at all, but it's a half arsed, often unfair version of democracy.
https://x.com/DavidHerdson/status/1803765675535597721?s=19
"Impressive. You've actually managed to get pour more sewage into your message than into that sea."
The two things voters will remember most from this campaign: 1. Sunak leaving D-Day celebrations early. 2. Tories betting on the election date.
You couldn’t have designed a worse backdrop.
Duke of Marlborough hails his ‘friend’ Nigel Farage as only person who can stop UK from being dragged into war
Speaking at Royal Ascot on Thursday, the Duke of Marlborough hailed Nigel Farage and said he “could end up in the same league” as Britain’s wartime prime minister.
The Duke, who is also known as Jamie Blandford or Jamie Churchill, attended the horse racing festival with a turquoise Reform rosette on the inside of his morning coat.'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/06/20/winston-churchills-great-nephew-backs-reform-uk/
https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/corps-regiments-and-units/adjutant-generals-corps/provost/military-provost-staff/mctc/
Truss will still be Sunak's Right Honourable Friend if they both get reelected.
I can't remember anything that Sir Keir has done, but that's probably how he likes it. The Ming Vase has made it another 50 yards along Downing Street unscathed.
Starmer, seriously! Is he deliberately trying to be as boring as humanly possible?
But those who remained were pretty clear about what they thought was wrong with Corbynism and many worked damn hard to organise to take the party back. Including those who sympathised with some of Corbynism's ideas and themes but thought it was dreadfully wrong on certain points and were clear about that. Which is what has allowed them to rebuild pretty quickly.
Compare that to Conservative MPs, whereby you can pretty much, with a tiny number of exceptions, split them into those who left/were purged, and the appeasers who constantly tried to tailor their views and throw more and more meat the right, until we got here and it looks .
You can't find that many genuine Tory moderates anymore because many of those who were that, changed their views when they thought the populist right were on the rise. The most obvious example being Liz Truss, who was quite evidently always a bit odd, but has from a Cameroon postergirl with a libertarian streak to hanging around with Steve Bannon.
Or look at the election of Truss herself after she'd gone down that route - the number of ostensibly moderate MPs who knew she'd be a disaster but publicly backed her when they decided she'd probably beat Sunak. Or Sunak himself who was supposed to be Mr Sensible after the chaos that came before - but whose first move was to appoint Braverman. Or the MPs who knew Boris was unfit to lead the country but voted for him anyway.
There aren't the moderates because many of the moderates sold their souls and their principles.
https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240502-macron-doesn-t-rule-out-troops-for-ukraine-if-russia-breaks-front-lines
LOL
Result - Tories over 200 seats again and Labour majority down to about 50