As the Reform UK conference begins in Birmingham, what terms do Britons pick to describe the party?Extremist: 39%Should not be near power: 39%Nasty: 33%Dishonest: 31%Only interested in themselves: 29%Has unworkable policies: 27%Unprofessional: 26%Has a clear sense of… pic.twitter.com/IoGwxYOArE
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I think people are missing the profound consequences that such a change might have on British politics.
Put prisoners in disused holiday camps, Ann Widdecombe tells Reform conference
Prisoners should be put in disused holiday camps, Ann Widdecombe has told the Reform UK conference.
I wonder how that will go down with voters in Clacton, Skegness, Boston and Great Yarmouth ?
Interesting though that slightly more 2024 Tories have a negative than positive view of the party. Suggesting most of the 2019 Boris voters who might have voted Reform have already left for it.
Or Clwyd East?
There's an ideal punishment block in Prestatyn with vacant possession:
https://www.rhyljournal.co.uk/news/24542029.pontins-prestatyn-horrendous-state-left-rot/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/20/south-carolina-death-row-prisoner-execution
South Carolina is set to execute a man on death row on Friday, days after the key witness for the prosecution came forward to say he lied at trial and the state was putting to death an innocent man.
Khalil Divine Black Sun Allah, 46, is due to be killed by lethal injection at 6pm. His lawyers filed emergency motions for a delay this week, citing new testimony suggesting he was wrongfully convicted. But the state supreme court ruled Thursday that the execution should proceed.
The last hope for Allah, who was previously known as Freddie Owens, is a grant of clemency from the state’s Republican governor, who has said he would announce a decision just before the execution is set to start.
Allah’s execution would be the first in 13 years in South Carolina and could be the start of a rapid series of executions in the coming months...
Put them in Portmeirion.
The guard required will be a weather balloon.
Be seeing you.
Put them in Portmeirion.
The guard required will be a weather balloon.
Be seeing you.
Jenrick with his push to get the Tories delivering more affordable housing is actually closer to Canadian Conservative leader Poilivre who he has met unlike Trump.
Am heading to a hustings for Essex Conservatives tonight with Jenrick, Cleverly and Badenoch and Doyle Price representing Tugendhat who has another engagement. Will report back later
Closing the stable door after the horse has bolted springs to mind
An Economist-YouGov poll released Wednesday showed much the same thing. Voters by double digits (42-32) expected Harris to win, after saying so by just three points in YouGov polling last month and saying by 19 points that Trump would win back in July.
. . .
A 2012 paper from economists David Rothschild of Microsoft Research and Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan actually found that this question was more predictive of election outcomes than polls of voting intent.
Looking at 60 years of state polls that asked such questions, it found that the presidential candidates people expected to win won those states 81 percent of the time, while the polling leaders won 69 percent of the time."
(Links omitted.)
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/09/19/more-voters-expect-harris-win-heres-why-that-could-actually-matter/
For the record: I haven't read the paper, or even had time to think hard about this argument. But, if I were a serious bettor, I think I would spend some time doing both. Be interesting to know whether a similar pattern could be found in the UK.
Enclosed, full facilities etc, and only just closed under a year ago.
(Starmer Reeves Rayner sounds like a firm of country solicitors. So does Streeting Lammy Cooper, I guess... Maybe it works for any three names put together?)
The nearby, noom-free Harlech Castle, on the other hand...
Poilievre uses a combination of humour and anger which probably works well in Canada but may not be so useful in Britain where we already have humour (Davey) and anger (Farage). Jenrick has also to quickly develop and articulate alternative positions to Labour across the spectrum of policies and I see little signs of the Conservatives having got to grips with the policy implications of their electoral disaster.
Three Mile Island is pretty knackered, and they are paying top dollar.
BREAKING: BLOCKBUSTER MICROSOFT DATACENTER DEAL RESURRECTING THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR PLANT
Microsoft and nuclear plant owner Constellation have agreed to a massive, unprecedented deal to restart the closed Three Mile Island by 2028 to power its datacenters, per the New York Times.
The deal? Microsoft purchasing as much power as possible from its 880 MW reactor over 20 years for prices rumored to be above $100 per MWh.
Most famous for its 1979 meltdown, TMI closed in 2019 because of cheap fossil fuels and tech companies refusing at the time to consider buying its electricity to meet clean energy goals.
https://x.com/energybants/status/1837087635208294640
I am still interested in that Ange trip to NYC that she claims cost basically buttons for staying in a super high end apartment. How often are MP's pulling this trick of coming up with the least possible figure for such a donation in kind?
Yes, the best time to do this would have been before accepting the donation. The next best would have been when the story broke. The best time available to them was now.
And for those of us expecting "mediocre but a lot better than the last lot", Starmer's performance here is pretty much what we might have expected.
Basically, it was a joke with enough truth in it to be mildly amusing. And that is the best we can hope for right now.
Former NYC Covid-19 czar partied while preaching social distancing
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/united-states/former-nyc-covid-19-czar-partied-while-preaching-social-distancing
Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves declared clothing donations as office support
UK deputy prime minister Angela Rayner has refused to say whether an opaque £3,550 donation from Lord Waheed Alli in June was free clothing, despite parliamentary rules saying the nature of any such donations “in kind” should be declared.
https://www.ft.com/content/2a218255-c08e-4091-8c7a-f51dd46795be
It seems they again haven't been totally honest about what these donations were. Again, like the under-estimating the value, is this a common tactic?
Lee Anderson is just the sort of scruffy, nasty little bigot who populated the pubs in the industrial town I grew up in. One of the big advantages of his moving to Reform is we rarely see him on the telly now: he simply preaches to the converted at gatherings of the cult.
The TMI story is perhaps even more remarkable, as it's a four decade old plant, with one of the more notorious histories. And Microsoft are paying big money to keep it operational for another twenty years.
"Nigel in Number Ten in 2029". A bit David Steel-escue.
"Next year we are going to win hundreds of Council seats across the country. That's a fact."
I can't spot a single positive thing in his entire speech.
The one thing it reminds me of is the televised darts tournaments. Where's Sid Waddell?
He's corrected it now, but was he incompetently wrong, or dishonestly so, when he made the first declaration?
How on earth have Labour got into this mess ?
They have acted like z-list celebs from a reality show, anybody offers any sort of freebie, and they happily take it.
On the same subject:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvglxne40p4o
Nuclear power stations to be built in the Flatlands it seems. The picture in the Telegraph is of the wrong site (that's the land formerly used by ICI Fibres and International Harvesters), but hey.
That's an airship factory and now a nuclear power factory in Doncaster. Interesting times.
[Surprised it isn't nearer to Sheffield/Rotherham where the special steels manufacturing is]
.
https://www.ft.com/content/2a218255-c08e-4091-8c7a-f51dd46795be
'Rayner is one of seven cabinet ministers that received donations and gifts from Alli in the run-up to the July 4 general election, including foreign secretary David Lammy, health secretary Wes Streeting, and energy secretary Ed Miliband.
The deputy prime minister has taken three other donations from the entrepreneur in the past year in addition to the £3,550 “donation in kind” in June.
Rayner received £8,500 last October, £8,250 in March and £900 in April, all of which were declared as money “to support me in my capacity as deputy leader of the Labour party”.'
One of seven. £17,650 (tax free?) in half a year plus 10k for the NY junket. Goodies for both Starmer and Rayner argues against personal friendship as the basis for these presents. He has set out to buy the government, who have behaved with all the dignity of everything in your trolley for free shoppers in a supermarket.
This is almost not funny any more, but only almost.
I said yesterday that Cooper was the only non joke GoS holder, and good for her for having apparently held back.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/greedy-cherie-has-a-lack-of-judgment-537763
Apart from that rare negative, isn't the rest of it pretty much good to very good for the local economy?
Just suggestions. I think I'd feel rather safe living near a prison.
But I'm still going to take my three tins of soup with me! I plan to do most of my eating in pubs so I won't need much portable food
I'm considering drinking whisky on camping nights, so I won't have to carry quite so much beer with me and I'll have the space and strength to bear the weight of the soup
Cullen Skink and Scotch sounds like a pretty awesome camping dinner to me
Youre so superior
Indeed, now Reeves and Rayner have admitted they have also been taking lots of freebies the questions will just keep coming as with Lammy, Streeting, Miliband and others
This threatens to become Partygate 2 or Freebiegate 1
Here's the Washington state version: Why did Walla Walla get the state prison, and Pullman got Washington State University?
Walla Walla had the first pick;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walla_Walla,_Washington
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pullman,_Washington
(Could there be a UK equivalent? I have no idea.)