Jonathan Reynolds was born on 28 August 1980 in Houghton-le-Spring to Keith and Judith Reynolds. He moved to Manchester in 1998, studying Politics and Modern History at the University of Manchester and BPP Law School (Manchester). After leaving university Reynolds worked for the council and (former MP) James Purnell, before beginning training as a solicitor. Reynolds served on Labour's National Executive Committee from 2003 to 2005. In 2007, he was elected to Tameside Council for the ward of Longdendale.
Reynolds worked for four years as a political assistant for the previous Stalybridge and Hyde MP James Purnell and was selected to replace Purnell after a controversial selection process. Reynolds is a member of the Co-operative Party and Unite the Union.
So never been in business, never been in the private sector, never been in government.
Perhaps he's watched a few episodes of The Apprentice.
Maybe involved in running the Student Union when at Uni? Seems the type. Can't say his predecessor showed any great insight into business either.
I'd say that one of the better insights into business is the understanding that a failed business loses money so that when a successful business makes profits it shouldn't be assumed to be a bad guy that needs to be punished with extra taxes.
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
On electronic voting in the US: I accept that it is possible, given current technology. I do not think that it would be possible to get the high level of trust that it needs to be successful, given the current bitter divisions in the US.
(I'll leave it to those better informed about the UK than I to judge whether that high level of trust is possible in your nation.)
Before my time but a site search for peak + Johnson shows someone called IshmaelZ posting "Hartlepool = peak Johnson" in May 2021. And this
"I still think we are round about peak Johnson. Wallpapergate still has the potential to turn into a lying to the house, breaching ministerial code, resigning sort of issue. Cummings still has things to say on the 26th. SKS looks vulnerable where Johnson wants him securely in place. Vaccine gratitude wears off. A high peak is still a peak."
Wouldn’t know bout that. The guy was an obnoxious prick whose posts I ignored
Didn't think that at all. For instance, he was unusual for a rightwinger in accepting the importance of slavery in the UK economy, for much the same reasons as me - and I had had to do with my own eyes from helping with historical research.
How nice for you but he certainly was extremely unpleasant to me. Repeatedly. Including making extremely personal comments about me and my wife. He’s a piece of shit. Still, as long as you’re okay.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
What I'm not sure about is how deep the contempt for the Conservatives goes in eg the Red Wall seats.
There was an opportunity to build a broader coalition including more of the midlands and north, and promises were made, which were then casually pissed on by senior Tories.
For me the contempt is deep enough that I may never vote Conservative again, having been usually LD/Indy or Conservative in national elections. For Labour this may have been my first time; I cannot recall voting Lab previously.
I don't know how deep this is for other people, and I would not trust my own judgement on this to be objective.
Vote for change vote for England winning the Euros .
It’s in the stars . Starmer will bask in Euro glory and the public will know already that life will be better under Labour.
Its the hope that kills you....
Keep the faith . I’m convinced England are going to win. New government with a huge football fan as PM and also a fellow Arsenal fan !
Turkey / Netherlands are beatable, but Spain have looked a cut above and France have been quite poor, but still better than England (and a better balanced team).
If we could get that good 15 minutes from today's game into a full game.
If anyone was worried about their postal vote on time it could be a lot, lot worse:
It should have been a simple transfer. Instead the businessman Stuart James lost almost all of his £1 million pot after a catalogue of failures by a pension firm and two of the UK’s biggest banks.
A big reason for his loss was the fact that his life savings were not sent electronically, or via a secure bank transfer. They were sent by cheque: a simple piece of paper that was transported, not by a specially arranged courier, but by Royal Mail.
This precious cargo was intercepted, pocketed by thieves and quickly deposited before being moved on to destinations still mainly unknown. More than six months later, having lost £30,000 in legal fees and unpaid interest, James is still without most of his carefully saved pension pot.
ISTR a story from the 1980s or so, where criminals were intercepting cheques for the Inland Revenue, then altering them to 'Mr Inlandi Revenuei' or somesuch before depositing them. No idea if it was true or not.
A bank which allowed such an account name to be opened would have been answering questions themselves I hope.
On electronic voting in the US: I accept that it is possible, given current technology. I do not think that it would be possible to get the high level of trust that it needs to be successful, given the current bitter divisions in the US.
(I'll leave it to those better informed about the UK than I to judge whether that high level of trust is possible in your nation.)
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
What's wrong with that? It was a very important place, prov ided a lot of the economic surplus for people to go to Eton and uni and so on and so forth. Some key postwar mercantile maritime designs. Doxford engines, SD14 Liberty Ship replacement from Austin and Pickersgill, skilled workforce, and so on.
On electronic voting in the US: I accept that it is possible, given current technology. I do not think that it would be possible to get the high level of trust that it needs to be successful, given the current bitter divisions in the US.
(I'll leave it to those better informed about the UK than I to judge whether that high level of trust is possible in your nation.)
Electronic voting is already used in the US, in various states and forms:
The lists of problems are expectedly long. But any machine that uses closed-source software should be nowhere near elections.
It’s not just actual security - it’s credibility.
There are so many people involved in an election and a count, including many volunteers, that a genuine coverup is basically (and visibly, except to the irredeemably dense/paranoid) impossible to falsify.
Everyone punching a number into an electronic box does not feel as secure. And tbh it probably isn’t.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
I take it you are a Nissan Refusenik?
Nissan is in Washington.
Nissan Motor Manufacturing Ltd is a British subsidiary car manufacturing plant in Sunderland. It is owned and operated by the European division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_UK
For @TSE even if it isn't, it's the postcode that counts.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
What's wrong with that? It was a very important place, prov ided a lot of the economic surplus for people to go to Eton and uni and so on and so forth. Some key postwar mercantile maritime designs. Doxford engines, SD14 Liberty Ship replacement from Austin and Pickersgill, skilled workforce, and so on.
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
What's wrong with that? It was a very important place, prov ided a lot of the economic surplus for people to go to Eton and uni and so on and so forth. Some key postwar mercantile maritime designs. Doxford engines, SD14 Liberty Ship replacement from Austin and Pickersgill, skilled workforce, and so on.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
What's wrong with that? It was a very important place, prov ided a lot of the economic surplus for people to go to Eton and uni and so on and so forth. Some key postwar mercantile maritime designs. Doxford engines, SD14 Liberty Ship replacement from Austin and Pickersgill, skilled workforce, and so on.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons. Whereas more than 60 per cent of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet is thought to have been privately educated.
The Tory parliamentary party is a bit posher now though after so many redwall MPs lost their seats. 'Almost half (46 per cent) of current Conservative MPs and 15 per cent of Labour MPs attended independent schools, compared with 41 per cent and 14 per cent respectively in 2019, the Sutton Trust said.' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/most-state-educated-mps-ever-in-house-of-commons/
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
I take it you are a Nissan Refusenik?
Nissan is in Washington.
Nissan Motor Manufacturing Ltd is a British subsidiary car manufacturing plant in Sunderland. It is owned and operated by the European division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_UK
For @TSE even if it isn't, it's the postcode that counts.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
At the end of last month, an event happened that has passed relatively unheralded: the last coal train in Britain ran (*) to the last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which itself will close later this year. (The power station still have a massive stockpile of coal to burn through, which you can see from the adjacent dual carriageway.)
King Coal is dead.
I remember when I was a kid, seeing (what seemed like) vast trains of HAA coal hoppers going into Spondon B and Willington power stations. It's hard to believe that this era is at end. A good thing, though, given climate change. But I will still mourn it.
Coal helped build the railways. Now coal is at an end, but the railways continue. And just a year before the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington railway, built to transport coal.
(Incidentally, I think my dad's company helped build the large horizontal pipes in the BBC picture - if they're part of the gas desulphurisation system, which I think they are. The pipes are truly massive.)
(*) To a power station, at least. And probably the last of all.
No. British Industry is dead.
King Coal is alive and well and giving far cheaper eleftricity for places like India and China to undercut our industry and take it over.
[World] "Coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to 8.3 billion tonnes, setting a new record, according to the IEA’s mid-year Coal Market Update, which was published today. In 2023 and 2024, small declines in coal-fired power generation are likely to be offset by rises in industrial use of coal, the report predicts, although there are wide variations between geographic regions.
China, India and Southeast Asian countries together are expected to account for 3 out of every 4 tonnes of coal consumed worldwide in 2023"
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
I take it you are a Nissan Refusenik?
Nissan is in Washington.
Nissan Motor Manufacturing Ltd is a British subsidiary car manufacturing plant in Sunderland. It is owned and operated by the European division of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_UK
For @TSE even if it isn't, it's the postcode that counts.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
I don't have a feeling that anyone lining themselves up to lead the rejuvenation of the Tories has given it a fraction of the thought of e.g. the Keith Joseph/Margaret Thatcher duo.
England have never lost a penalty shootout under Starmer.
They’ve also never won a game under Starmer, the rugby team lost, all the Brits are out of the singles at Wimbledon and Emma Radacanu did the dirty on poor Andy Murray, all under Starmer.
"Escape from Keir's Britain with the experts' definitive emigration guide: The best places for sunshine, big houses, high wages, no crime and top-notch healthcare - plus the hotspot with NO income tax"
Jonathan Reynolds was born on 28 August 1980 in Houghton-le-Spring to Keith and Judith Reynolds. He moved to Manchester in 1998, studying Politics and Modern History at the University of Manchester and BPP Law School (Manchester). After leaving university Reynolds worked for the council and (former MP) James Purnell, before beginning training as a solicitor. Reynolds served on Labour's National Executive Committee from 2003 to 2005. In 2007, he was elected to Tameside Council for the ward of Longdendale.
Reynolds worked for four years as a political assistant for the previous Stalybridge and Hyde MP James Purnell and was selected to replace Purnell after a controversial selection process. Reynolds is a member of the Co-operative Party and Unite the Union.
So never been in business, never been in the private sector, never been in government.
Perhaps he's watched a few episodes of The Apprentice.
Maybe involved in running the Student Union when at Uni? Seems the type. Can't say his predecessor showed any great insight into business either.
Just looking through Badenoch's wiki page and noticed this name:
In January 2023, Badenoch, as Equalities Minister, appointed Joanne Cash as a Commissioner to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) board. Badenoch said that Cash had "a track record of promoting women's rights and freedom of expression". The Labour Party criticised the appointment as, after being approved for the appointment, Cash had donated money to Badenoch's campaign as a candidate for leadership of the Conservative Party in the summer of 2022 and Badenoch had not declared this. The Guardian said that Badenoch had not broken any rules by making the appointment. The EHRC said it has "robust procedures in place to manage conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest, including requiring any board members to recuse themselves from discussion where there may be conflicts. These procedures will be applied in this case too". A government’s Equality Hub spokesperson said the appointment "was made following a full and open competition, which involved a public application process and interviews with an expert panel".
PB veterans might remember Joanne Cash as one of the infamous 'Tatler Tories'
Rwanda was not a workable policy, it was a political gimmick and quite an expensive one at that. The right wing press may be trying to put the boot in, but I suspect Starmer will not leave that flank open for long
It's certainly going to create more 'work' if its immediate abolition now leads to a flood of people crossing the channel. The sensible thing to do would have been to keep it up and until he had an alternative, and equally firm, plan in place.
My guess is SKS will now do a lot of instinctively left-wing things now he's safely in office because the bloke ain't exactly a deep thinker.
the only ppl who cared about the Rwanda policy were Mail readers/GB News viewers.
O/T Bloody hell, just found out that on 15th June I placed a £10 bet on Lab getting 33.00-34.99% at odds of 110-1. Sorry to boast but I'd genuinely forgotten about those bets. I think the party was averaging about 45% in the polls.
England have never lost a penalty shootout under Starmer.
They’ve also never won a game under Starmer, the rugby team lost, all the Brits are out of the singles at Wimbledon and Emma Radacanu did the dirty on poor Andy Murray, all under Starmer.
Am I doing this right?
I was looking at the athletics squad for the Olympics today, the depth of British Athletics isn't in the greatest of shapes, lots of events nobody made the qualifying time / distance or only one did.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
Nothing wrong with Sunderland, I've been there by both the Tyne & Wear Metro, and direct trains to/from London.
I do hope you can come back and get on the Tanfield heritage railway. It’s ace.
Oh, is there one? I hadn't realised the Arch was back in use.
Yes, it’s ace. We took my father in law on it for Father’s Day a few weeks ago. We had fish and chips on it It stops at Causey Arch for a photo op. Deffo back in use and worth a trip.
Before my time but a site search for peak + Johnson shows someone called IshmaelZ posting "Hartlepool = peak Johnson" in May 2021. And this
"I still think we are round about peak Johnson. Wallpapergate still has the potential to turn into a lying to the house, breaching ministerial code, resigning sort of issue. Cummings still has things to say on the 26th. SKS looks vulnerable where Johnson wants him securely in place. Vaccine gratitude wears off. A high peak is still a peak."
Wouldn’t know bout that. The guy was an obnoxious prick whose posts I ignored
Didn't think that at all. For instance, he was unusual for a rightwinger in accepting the importance of slavery in the UK economy, for much the same reasons as me - and I had had to do with my own eyes from helping with historical research.
Ishmaelz was very clever and amusing poster whose thoughts were very worthwhile. Barring a couple of minor ding dongs he was very nice to me, which I was grateful for. However, he was also extremely volative, and could be very vituperative toward posters, often the same ones repeatedly. He was also an inveterate snob - clearly he was a viscount or something and just itching to tell us. And if you got into an argument with him you were two posts off him telling you he was an expert in the topic under discussion so that should be the end of it. Your views aligning with him on something (as mine did sometimes) shouldn't blind you to his foibles.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
What I'm not sure about is how deep the contempt for the Conservatives goes in eg the Red Wall seats.
There was an opportunity to build a broader coalition including more of the midlands and north, and promises were made, which were then casually pissed on by senior Tories.
For me the contempt is deep enough that I may never vote Conservative again, having been usually LD/Indy or Conservative in national elections. For Labour this may have been my first time; I cannot recall voting Lab previously.
I don't know how deep this is for other people, and I would not trust my own judgement on this to be objective.
If the Tories, fundamentally, weren’t full of sneering disdain for working-class people in the midlands and the north, and had actually made a serious attempt to fulfil Johnson’s promises and spent some money up here they might have been in power for years.
But they are, and they didn’t, and now they won’t be trusted again for years.
I mean, I always knew it was post-Brexit bollocks, but a lot of people were prepared to give them a chance, as 2019 showed.
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
Nothing wrong with Sunderland, I've been there by both the Tyne & Wear Metro, and direct trains to/from London.
I do hope you can come back and get on the Tanfield heritage railway. It’s ace.
Oh, is there one? I hadn't realised the Arch was back in use.
Yes, it’s ace. We took my father in law on it for Father’s Day a few weeks ago. We had fish and chips on it It stops at Causey Arch for a photo op. Deffo back in use and worth a trip.
Thanks. Their website is screwed at the moment but I will bear than in mind.
At the end of last month, an event happened that has passed relatively unheralded: the last coal train in Britain ran (*) to the last coal-fired power station, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, which itself will close later this year. (The power station still have a massive stockpile of coal to burn through, which you can see from the adjacent dual carriageway.)
King Coal is dead.
I remember when I was a kid, seeing (what seemed like) vast trains of HAA coal hoppers going into Spondon B and Willington power stations. It's hard to believe that this era is at end. A good thing, though, given climate change. But I will still mourn it.
Coal helped build the railways. Now coal is at an end, but the railways continue. And just a year before the 200th anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington railway, built to transport coal.
(Incidentally, I think my dad's company helped build the large horizontal pipes in the BBC picture - if they're part of the gas desulphurisation system, which I think they are. The pipes are truly massive.)
(*) To a power station, at least. And probably the last of all.
No. British Industry is dead.
King Coal is alive and well and giving far cheaper eleftricity for places like India and China to undercut our industry and take it over.
[World] "Coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to 8.3 billion tonnes, setting a new record, according to the IEA’s mid-year Coal Market Update, which was published today. In 2023 and 2024, small declines in coal-fired power generation are likely to be offset by rises in industrial use of coal, the report predicts, although there are wide variations between geographic regions.
China, India and Southeast Asian countries together are expected to account for 3 out of every 4 tonnes of coal consumed worldwide in 2023"
"Amir, 23, a bean-seller from Kurdistan, said migrants had given Sir Keir a nickname that roughly translates as a man who works for refugees or workers.
He said: “We are calling him ‘Party Krekaran’ because we have heard that this guy is really helpful to the refugees.”
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons. Whereas more than 60 per cent of Rishi Sunak’s cabinet is thought to have been privately educated.
The Tory parliamentary party is a bit posher now though after so many redwall MPs lost their seats. 'Almost half (46 per cent) of current Conservative MPs and 15 per cent of Labour MPs attended independent schools, compared with 41 per cent and 14 per cent respectively in 2019, the Sutton Trust said.' https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/most-state-educated-mps-ever-in-house-of-commons/
O/T Bloody hell, just found out that on 15th June I placed a £10 bet on Lab getting 33.00-34.99% at odds of 110-1. Sorry to boast but I'd genuinely forgotten about those bets. I think the party was averaging about 45% in the polls.
At this moment of well-deserved punting triumph, consider the plight of less fortunate punters AND also erring psephologists.
AND donate a modest fraction (suggested: 99.46%) to the PB Fund for Misfortunate Punters and Misinformed Pundits. For your convenience, simply forward me your betting slip (or whatever) and I'll make sure your winnings are put to good misuse!
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though, albeit a prominent OE in the Prince of Wales in the crowd as FA President
In feel good news Biniam Girmay (Eritrea) gets his second TdF stage win
In very bad news indeed Norwegian cyclist André Drege 25 dies on a descent in the tour of Austria. Cycling is looking as dangerous as 1980s F1, and you can't fix the problem so easily.
It's the online voting one that worries me, I really don't think people are thinking of the complexities, or the advantages of a low tech option as we have now. Nor do I think it would appreciably affect turnout - it is not hard to vote now, if someone would be put off by what is there they would would find another reason to be put off.
Votes at 16 I am in the majority opposing, but it is a manifesto promise and simple to do, so it will happen, but it is interesting how it became an article of faith in some parties despite lacking clear public support.
Thinking further about online voting since the discussion here a couple of days ago. Online is how people want to do things now. I think that need/desire can be addressed safely.
The biggest additional challenge IMO for voting systems beyond anything else you might want to do securely online is the fact everyone votes at once. The main safeguard against system performance issues, at least initially, is to ensure alternative ways of voting are always available, even if the system goes down. I would ramp up slowly across several elections possibly starting with certain local elections, probably using the Government Gateway.
This risk managed implementation of very big systems is part of my day job FWIW. I don't see any obvious show stoppers with a cautious rollout of online voting. Going to paper isn't an option where I work but getting it wrong would have serious consequences. I don't work for Fujitsu.
Here's my question to anyone serious about online voting - how do you know that the result you get is correct?
Each elector has an account where they can check if they voted. The system itself would have a record of who voted available to authorised people. Who votes in the current system is public data according to a post here a couple of days ago. I have privacy concerns about this but it can be implemented if that's what you want. The system can be audited.
In general you don't want people to know what choices voters made. I don't know if a paper ballot can be traced to an individual for investigations. If so you could implement something similar in an online system. On the other hand if you never want anyone to know how an elector voted, but do want to validate that a particular vote was actually made, you could possibly implement the vote itself in blockchain
There's stuff to work out but none of it looks insurmountable if people decide they want to vote online.
I should add that an online voting system would be massively simpler than other necessarily secure systems such as banking or medical records, and therefore easier to manage, including the risks. Each constituency is self contained and is set up each time for a single election with a maximum of 80 000 accounts, which don't change for the lifetime of the election, who can make one single transaction, identical for everyone with a single choice field, for a total, probably, of a couple of thousand transactions.
Compare that with a banking system where someone from Oklahoma might make a transaction in Vietnam across several barely compatible systems with time dependencies, rollbacks etc. Or a medical history system with endless variety of treatments and observations where patients move from place to place and multiple organisations are involved.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
Nothing wrong with Sunderland, I've been there by both the Tyne & Wear Metro, and direct trains to/from London.
I do hope you can come back and get on the Tanfield heritage railway. It’s ace.
Oh, is there one? I hadn't realised the Arch was back in use.
Yes, it’s ace. We took my father in law on it for Father’s Day a few weeks ago. We had fish and chips on it It stops at Causey Arch for a photo op. Deffo back in use and worth a trip.
Thanks. Their website is screwed at the moment but I will bear than in mind.
You’re right. The website is awful but we booked via a third party who ran events on the same line. If you make it do let me know what you think.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though
No walls on the pitch. Important detail re poshness vs oikishness, which I thought you'd have sussed by now.
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
Nothing wrong with Sunderland, I've been there by both the Tyne & Wear Metro, and direct trains to/from London.
I do hope you can come back and get on the Tanfield heritage railway. It’s ace.
Oh, is there one? I hadn't realised the Arch was back in use.
Yes, it’s ace. We took my father in law on it for Father’s Day a few weeks ago. We had fish and chips on it It stops at Causey Arch for a photo op. Deffo back in use and worth a trip.
Thanks. Their website is screwed at the moment but I will bear than in mind.
You’re right. The website is awful but we booked via a third party who ran events on the same line. If you make it do let me know what you think.
Thanks. Won't be for some time anyway (I also want to go to the Shildon place).
Just logged into SkyBet and Ladbrokes and Betfair and found unexpected extra large balances in the hundreds of pounds to withdraw. Presumably from late settling bets I'd half-forgotten.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though, albeit a prominent OE in the Prince of Wales in the crowd as FA President
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Just logged into SkyBet and Ladbrokes and Betfair and found unexpected extra large balances in the hundreds of pounds to withdraw. Presumably from late settling bets I'd half-forgotten.
There must be a long German word for this.
Ah, think it's the voteshare bets settling following the last seat being declared and thus the election officially "concluding".
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though
No walls on the pitch. Important detail re poshness vs oikishness, which I thought you'd have sussed by now.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though, albeit a prominent OE in the Prince of Wales in the crowd as FA President
[ignore - wrong PoW]
No the King went to Gordonstoun, the Prince of Wales to Eton. Though Eton would have suited the King more, while Harry would have preferred Gordonstoun which is more into action and sport and less academic and less arts focused
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
What I'm not sure about is how deep the contempt for the Conservatives goes in eg the Red Wall seats.
There was an opportunity to build a broader coalition including more of the midlands and north, and promises were made, which were then casually pissed on by senior Tories.
For me the contempt is deep enough that I may never vote Conservative again, having been usually LD/Indy or Conservative in national elections. For Labour this may have been my first time; I cannot recall voting Lab previously.
I don't know how deep this is for other people, and I would not trust my own judgement on this to be objective.
If the Tories, fundamentally, weren’t full of sneering disdain for working-class people in the midlands and the north, and had actually made a serious attempt to fulfil Johnson’s promises and spent some money up here they might have been in power for years.
But they are, and they didn’t, and now they won’t be trusted again for years.
I mean, I always knew it was post-Brexit bollocks, but a lot of people were prepared to give them a chance, as 2019 showed.
Well, they fucked it.
I mean the basic problem there is that fundamentally they couldn't do that without either raising taxes in a way that would've annoyed traditional Tory voters and their MPs and/or proved to be fiscally incontinent at a time when there are lots of demands on the public purse.
Boris could briefly pull it off because he doesn't mind big fibs and fantasies, and part of the Tory Party believes he's some kind of magic elf to whom the normal rules of political gravity don't apply.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleaguei am v aurprised that sje is that high on yhe list.s treated voters like “mugs”.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Hasn't pretty much every word she's said since she was sacked been seen as laying the groundwork for a leadership bid?
Suella Braverman has said that the Conservatives “deserved” their historic election defeat, in an intervention that will be seen as laying the groundwork for her leadership bid.
Writing in The Telegraph, the former home secretary accuses Rishi Sunak of pursuing an “idiotic strategy” and suggests that some of her colleagues treated voters like “mugs”.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though
Short sighted. I think they won the first fa cup?
No, Wanderers v Royal Engineers and Wanderers won
Wanderers were a bunch of public school boys and the winning goal was scored by an old Harrovian. The 11th lord kinnaird, an OE, also played.
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
80% of the Cabinet went to a comprehensive as did 63% of MPs overall, indeed there are now a higher percentage of OEs amongst living British Oscar winners or Olympic gold medallists than in the House of Commons
Not surprising, given policies on selling off school playing fields for non-posh schools.
No OEs in tonight's England football squad though
No walls on the pitch. Important detail re poshness vs oikishness, which I thought you'd have sussed by now.
Just logged into SkyBet and Ladbrokes and Betfair and found unexpected extra large balances in the hundreds of pounds to withdraw. Presumably from late settling bets I'd half-forgotten.
There must be a long German word for this.
Sorta like finding change under the sofa cushions?
Again think of other PBers less fortunate AND more chickenshit than yourself!
Looking at the Labour target list is also very revealing - 72 more seats available to them on swings of 5% or less, the vast bulk of which are held by the Conservatives.
All of the LD seats bar two are outside of Labour's top 120 targets. We all know how damaging Reform defections were to the Conservatives, but if anything demonstrates the full extent of the anti-Tory tactical switching between Lab and LD that occurred as well, that is surely it.
Indeed but given Labour are over 400 seats now it is hard to see them gaining many more seats. Indeed in the general election after their 1997 landslide in 2001 Labour only gained 2 seats, Dorset South from the Tories and Ynys Mon from Plaid although they held almost all the seats they had won in 1997
Well we don't know, do we? Politics is becoming a more complicated, multi-cornered fight, and it only takes a small swing from either of the two right-wing parties to Labour for more Conservative defences to start to fall over. There are 24 Conservative seats available to Labour on a direct Con-Lab swing of under 2%, and more Con defections to Reform, although only half as useful to Labour, would make the situation even worse for the Tories.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
More Labour gains from the Tories is the least likely outcome next time, more LD or Reform gains from the Tories maybe but not Labour gains. Reform also has a lot of Labour seats in its target list as does the Greens
Comments
Democracy needs to be seen to be carried out in full view of everyone.
Personally, I don't want elections run by "professionals" from Fujitsu.
If it ain't broke...
There was an opportunity to build a broader coalition including more of the midlands and north, and promises were made, which were then casually pissed on by senior Tories.
For me the contempt is deep enough that I may never vote Conservative again, having been usually LD/Indy or Conservative in national elections. For Labour this may have been my first time; I cannot recall voting Lab previously.
I don't know how deep this is for other people, and I would not trust my own judgement on this to be objective.
First time in history that there are more people in the cabinet who were born in Sunderland (@bphillipsonMP and @jreynoldsMP) than went to Eton.
Result
https://x.com/PMCallaghan/status/1809654778550485357
Imagine boasting/proud about being from Sunderland.
If we could get that good 15 minutes from today's game into a full game.
He's very boring.
2 sets of rival supporters united by their love of England!
#PakvsInd #ENGSUI #comeonengland #england
https://x.com/HarjapBhangal/status/1809659744950288488
https://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/defence/labour#UKParliament
He would have thumped you for saying that, while shouting something uncomplimentary about southerners.
How he survived living in Wales for sixty years I'll never know.
There are so many people involved in an election and a count, including many volunteers, that a genuine coverup is basically (and visibly, except to the irredeemably dense/paranoid) impossible to falsify.
Everyone punching a number into an electronic box does not feel as secure. And tbh it probably isn’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motor_Manufacturing_UK
For @TSE even if it isn't, it's the postcode that counts.
Djokovic mimicked a penalty.
The Tory parliamentary party is a bit posher now though after so many redwall MPs lost their seats. 'Almost half (46 per cent) of current Conservative MPs and 15 per cent of Labour MPs attended independent schools, compared with 41 per cent and 14 per cent respectively in 2019, the Sutton Trust said.'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/07/05/most-state-educated-mps-ever-in-house-of-commons/
https://mapit.mysociety.org/area/2542.html
My grandfather said it left my great-grandfather very anti-Japanese.
Never met him but I have his medals.
King Coal is alive and well and giving far cheaper eleftricity for places like India and China to undercut our industry and take it over.
[World] "Coal consumption in 2022 rose by 3.3% to 8.3 billion tonnes, setting a new record, according to the IEA’s mid-year Coal Market Update, which was published today. In 2023 and 2024, small declines in coal-fired power generation are likely to be offset by rises in industrial use of coal, the report predicts, although there are wide variations between geographic regions.
China, India and Southeast Asian countries together are expected to account for 3 out of every 4 tonnes of coal consumed worldwide in 2023"
https://www.iea.org/news/global-coal-demand-set-to-remain-at-record-levels-in-2023
I’ve even cycled past it a few times. That will tick a box for you
Am I doing this right?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/moldova-europe-least-visited-country/
In January 2023, Badenoch, as Equalities Minister, appointed Joanne Cash as a Commissioner to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) board. Badenoch said that Cash had "a track record of promoting women's rights and freedom of expression". The Labour Party criticised the appointment as, after being approved for the appointment, Cash had donated money to Badenoch's campaign as a candidate for leadership of the Conservative Party in the summer of 2022 and Badenoch had not declared this. The Guardian said that Badenoch had not broken any rules by making the appointment. The EHRC said it has "robust procedures in place to manage conflicts of interest or perceived conflicts of interest, including requiring any board members to recuse themselves from discussion where there may be conflicts. These procedures will be applied in this case too". A government’s Equality Hub spokesperson said the appointment "was made following a full and open competition, which involved a public application process and interviews with an expert panel".
PB veterans might remember Joanne Cash as one of the infamous 'Tatler Tories'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/election/article-1276098/Curse-Tatler-Tory-A-listers-failed-make-Westminster.html
But they are, and they didn’t, and now they won’t be trusted again for years.
I mean, I always knew it was post-Brexit bollocks, but a lot of people were prepared to give them a chance, as 2019 showed.
Well, they fucked it.
Industry can still be supported in this country if governments want.
However they prefer to subsidise wealth consumption and tax wealth creation.
AND donate a modest fraction (suggested: 99.46%) to the PB Fund for Misfortunate Punters and Misinformed Pundits. For your convenience, simply forward me your betting slip (or whatever) and I'll make sure your winnings are put to good misuse!
In very bad news indeed Norwegian cyclist André Drege 25 dies on a descent in the tour of Austria. Cycling is looking as dangerous as 1980s F1, and you can't fix the problem so easily.
In general you don't want people to know what choices voters made. I don't know if a paper ballot can be traced to an individual for investigations. If so you could implement something similar in an online system. On the other hand if you never want anyone to know how an elector voted, but do want to validate that a particular vote was actually made, you could possibly implement the vote itself in blockchain
There's stuff to work out but none of it looks insurmountable if people decide they want to vote online.
I should add that an online voting system would be massively simpler than other necessarily secure systems such as banking or medical records, and therefore easier to manage, including the risks. Each constituency is self contained and is set up each time for a single election with a maximum of 80 000 accounts, which don't change for the lifetime of the election, who can make one single transaction, identical for everyone with a single choice field, for a total, probably, of a couple of thousand transactions.
Compare that with a banking system where someone from Oklahoma might make a transaction in Vietnam across several barely compatible systems with time dependencies, rollbacks etc. Or a medical history system with endless variety of treatments and observations where patients move from place to place and multiple organisations are involved.
Of course, if Labour does badly and loses a lot of support then that could go in the other direction to the Conservatives - but it could just as easily go to other parties, which would halve its net benefit to Con.
The more viable parties there are competing under FPTP, the more complex and unpredictable the electoral outcomes get. More random candidates will win individual seats on small fractions of the vote, even if they are utterly repellent to two-thirds or more of the voters in the constituency, and more extreme and perverse national outcomes will also occur. Indeed, an extreme and perverse outcome is essentially what we've just had with this election: Labour, as the single strongest party against a split opposition, has won two thirds of the seats with a third of the popular vote. If, in future, we have one truly dominant party against a collection of smaller parties, as happened in Scotland in 2015, then we'll end up with a gigantic governing bloc and very little opposition - try Baxtering this GE result, but taking enough extra share from the second largest party to top Labour's vote up to 40%, and see what happens. Indeed, look at what's already happened to Reform and the Greens - 21% of the popular vote between them and a grand total of 9 seats to show for it.
Crap voting system plus multi-party dynamics = inequitable and extreme results. Sooner or later, and probably sooner, it's going to throw up a truly indefensible and damaging outcome. Not that the party which ends up controlling 80% of the Commons, and has no effective Parliamentary counter left, will do anything about it.
There must be a long German word for this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UYrLfxvfhM
(not suitable for children)
Boris could briefly pull it off because he doesn't mind big fibs and fantasies, and part of the Tory Party believes he's some kind of magic elf to whom the normal rules of political gravity don't apply.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBt8AoLBCoo
Again think of other PBers less fortunate AND more chickenshit than yourself!
In December 2019 the PB narrative was "how many terms will Johnson win? I wonder who will be his Chancellor after his unprecedented 2036 victory?"
And today we have "Starmer has f***** up already, I can't see him lasting until Thursday".