War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter. Doesn’t work too well if there’s a war on though.
This is all because ABC only fact-checked one side, made mistakes as they did so, and let a load of untruths from the other candidate go totally unchallenged.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
That's the very last thing we need, and what scares me the most.
I can see situations when I'm forced to defend or even vote Labour to stop it.
It's also quite funny. Our media - both old and new - are part of the problem, and often part of the elite. The travails of the country are not just caused by politicians, but the media as well.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
If you build it, will they come? Insect community responses to habitat establishment at solar energy facilities in Minnesota, USA
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0f72 Global declines in insect populations have important implications for biodiversity and food security. To offset these declines, habitat restoration and enhancement in agricultural landscapes could mutually safeguard insect populations and their pollination services for crop production. The expansion of utility-scale solar energy development in agricultural landscapes presents an opportunity for the dual use of the land for energy production and biodiversity conservation through the establishment of grasses and forbs planted among and between the photovoltaic solar arrays ('solar-pollinator habitat'). We conducted a longitudinal field study across 5 years (2018–2022) to understand how insect communities responded to newly established habitat on solar energy facilities in agricultural landscapes by evaluating (1) temporal changes in flowering plant abundance and diversity; (2) temporal changes in insect abundance and diversity; and (3) the pollination services of solar-pollinator habitat by comparing pollinator visitation to agricultural fields near solar-pollinator habitat with other agricultural field locations. We found increases over time for all habitat and biodiversity metrics: floral rank, flowering plant species richness, insect group diversity, native bee abundance, and total insect abundance, with the most noticeable temporal increases in native bee abundance. We also found positive effects of proximity to solar-pollinator habitat on bee visitation to nearby soybean (Glycine max) fields. Bee visitation to soybean flowers adjacent to solar-pollinator habitat were comparable to bee visitation to soybeans adjacent to grassland areas enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, and greater than bee visitation to soybean field interior and roadside soybean flowers. Our observations highlight the relatively rapid (<4 year) insect community responses to grassland restoration activities and provide support for solar-pollinator habitat as a feasible conservation practice to safeguard biodiversity and increase food security in agricultural landscapes...</i>
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Educated women want to use their education.
I'm not sure I'd assume that. The issue is that in large swathes of the country, house prices mean they don't have a choice.
I don't want to make people into stay at home mums (or dads) if they actually want to go back to work (although I don't really get why people want to have kids and then spend no time with them). What I really dislike is that we're setting up a society where that is the only option, unless you are stinking rich.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Educated women want to use their education.
I'm not sure I'd assume that. The issue is that in large swathes of the country, house prices mean they don't have a choice.
I don't want to make people into stay at home mums (or dads) if they actually want to go back to work (although I don't really get why people want to have kids and then spend no time with them). What I really dislike is that we're setting up a society where that is the only option, unless you are stinking rich.
Absolutely. The number of people, male or female, who love their job enough to do it over whatever else might fill their time is pretty small - that's why they have to pay you to do it - though unfortunately seems to include most policymakers and pundits. I'm lucky enough to have a job which I find interesting and which isn't stressful. Is it a good way to earn a living? Sure. Would it be top of my list of things to do, given a free choice? Of course not.
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Educated women want to use their education.
I'm not sure I'd assume that. The issue is that in large swathes of the country, house prices mean they don't have a choice.
I don't want to make people into stay at home mums (or dads) if they actually want to go back to work (although I don't really get why people want to have kids and then spend no time with them). What I really dislike is that we're setting up a society where that is the only option, unless you are stinking rich.
I’m not sure either! I’ve worked with plenty of degree-holding women who didn’t, apparently ‘need’ to work but who did, but they tended to be older, and therefore to have older children and/or have paid for their houses. Or, of course, they were single!
The Aussies know the weather is coming, and are pushing hard to get the runs. That six puts them ahead on the DLS, but they need to get to 20 overs before the rain.
Catching up with the Saturday Rawnsley. This seems about right (though TBF he's mainly repeating what I said the other day ):
Cabinet members with initiatives they’re itching to take are chafing against the restraints imposed by Rachel Reeves’ powerful bailiwick because it is blocking any announcements with a cost implication before the budget at the end of October.
There’s plenty to commend about the candour of the chancellor and the prime minister when they ask for patience because a better Britain won’t be built in a day. But after committing too many avoidable own goals, the government could now do with some quick wins. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/28/keir-starmer-no-10-ministers
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Educated women want to use their education.
I'm not sure I'd assume that. The issue is that in large swathes of the country, house prices mean they don't have a choice.
I don't want to make people into stay at home mums (or dads) if they actually want to go back to work (although I don't really get why people want to have kids and then spend no time with them). What I really dislike is that we're setting up a society where that is the only option, unless you are stinking rich.
I’m not sure either! I’ve worked with plenty of degree-holding women who didn’t, apparently ‘need’ to work but who did, but they tended to be older, and therefore to have older children and/or have paid for their houses. Or, of course, they were single!
I'd be interested in what @viewcode says on this exchange and Kemi's comments on how maternity pay has 'gone too far' (my characterisation).
As I see it that will probably damage Kemi from the point of view of the National Conservatives (aka NatCons, the intellectualised version of part of Mogg's PopCon agenda, one aspect of which @viewcode featured in his recent piece), who have a bee in their bonnet about fertility rates amongst natives from the UK - mirroring to an extent a UK version of the factors behind JD Vance's comments about the existential threat posed by single cat-ladies.
We perhaps aren't in the 'chained to the kitchen sink' territory that 2nd Wave feminists used to shout about, but is this a push in that direction from Kemi?
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
White South African billionaire has opinion on brown people, the opinion will not surprise you.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Which in turn is because your favourite country thinks it has the right to murder Palestinians.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
Various Consertive-tinged media going for Labour's Fabulous Four weakens the possibility of a De Minimus argument here, perhaps.
Do Reform have clean hands holding their dog whistle, the world wonders?
"Beer Parties exist throughout the world, especially in Eastern Europe. Already in the last 1990 East German general election, the electoral list of the "German Beer Drinkers' Union" (Deutsche Biertrinker Union) had been presented in the constituency of Rostock, which had only obtained 2,534 votes and no elected persons, in addition to a handful of votes in five other local elections in the German federal states. Another well-known example was the Polish Beer-Lovers' Party, which started as a prank and won 2.97% of the vote and 16 seats in the Sejm after Poland's 1991 parliamentary elections, even joining the government of Hanna Suchocka with its own minister.[9] Such parties are satirical as a general rule, though they can develop more serious platforms, as was the case for the Polish Beer-Lover's Party."
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
That’s not a fine line at all, I thought you did ethics for a living?
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Serious question - does Jenrick identify as a Nat Con? I've been surprised by some who do, who I would (my opinion) expect to know better than to tangle up religion with their political identity in the UK. Ultimately imo it won't be effective here for cultural reasons.
Far right Freedom party looks to have come first in Austria yes but the centre right OVP may prefer coalition with the centre left SPO who are projected to come 3rd than with them
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Serious question - does Jenrick identify as a Nat Con? I've been surprised by some who do, who I would (my opinion) expect to know better than to tangle up religion with their political identity in the UK. Ultimately imo it won't be effective here for cultural reasons.
If I knew what you meant by that definition, particularly with reference to religion, then I could hazard a guess.
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Serious question - does Jenrick identify as a Nat Con? I've been surprised by some who do, who I would (my opinion) expect to know better than to tangle up religion with their political identity in the UK. Ultimately imo it won't be effective here for cultural reasons.
Jenrick's wife is Jewish and they are bringing up their children in that faith
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
That’s not a fine line at all, I thought you did ethics for a living?
MPs come under the aegis of misconduct in a public office, it's a fine line for them.
For the record I have never bet on an embargoed poll.
It has cost me money, once I was planning on putting more money on the Tories as the largest party at GE2015 as I was about to do so an embargoed poll from ComRes dropped showing the Tories were doing better in the marginals.
So who controls the rain in Bristol, which arrived four balls after the 20-over minimum for a match to be declared? Is there an Australian cloud-seeding plane up there?
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
Far right Freedom party looks to have come first in Austria yes but the centre right OVP may prefer coalition with the centre left SPO who are projected to come 3rd than with them
Also yet another dismal failure of the strategy of mainstream centre-right parties co-opting language of populist right. Few have been as accommodating as the ÖVP have been of the FPÖ, yet this is the end result (as it has been pretty much everywhere).
Far right Freedom party looks to have come first in Austria yes but the centre right OVP may prefer coalition with the centre left SPO who are projected to come 3rd than with them
The OVP and SPO combined are right on the cusp of a Parliamentary majority (92 in the Nationalrat). Current projection has them on 92 with the Freedom Party on 57, NEOS on 17 and the Greens on 17. There's always the issue of rounding in proportional elections so it may be 183 or 184 seats in the Nationalrat.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
Why are you being so dramatic about it - she has one opinion that you don't agree with and she is 'unfit to be leader'? Do you expect to agree with every opinion?
It's not dramatic, it shows she's got poor judgement on one of the biggest issues of our era and for my generation and the one that follows.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
From the summary of Laura K's programme, here's the key difference between Jenrick and Kemi:
Jenrick says he'd introduce a legally binding cap on migration in the tens of thousands "or lower"
Badenoch says some people have brought views that "have no place here" - and also says some cultures are less valid than others
Both are expressing an immigration-skeptic viewpoint. But Kemi just says something fruity, cultural, and potentially annoying to the sensitive, about immigration. She says nothing about what she would do - what policies she would put in place to support her (perhaps valid) views. Jenrick - what do we need to do? Get net migration below 100,000. How would you do it? Legally-binding migration cap. Now, it may be bollocks, as bollocks as Boris' manifesto, but at least he has committed, so it will be exposed as a u-turn if abandoned. Kemi has given nothing except some punchy commentary. That's a Spectator writer, not a PM.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
Far right Freedom party looks to have come first in Austria yes but the centre right OVP may prefer coalition with the centre left SPO who are projected to come 3rd than with them
Also yet another dismal failure of the strategy of mainstream centre-right parties co-opting language of populist right. Few have been as accommodating as the ÖVP have been of the FPÖ, yet this is the end result (as it has been pretty much everywhere).
This is going to happen across Europe, you simply need the ability to extrapolate. Europeans have had enough of migration/asylum and they've made it plain they will now vote the far right into power unless mainstream parties deal with it. So, unless you want the far right in power, you have to get very tough on migration/asylum
From the summary of Laura K's programme, here's the key difference between Jenrick and Kemi:
Jenrick says he'd introduce a legally binding cap on migration in the tens of thousands "or lower"
Badenoch says some people have brought views that "have no place here" - and also says some cultures are less valid than others
Both are expressing an immigration-skeptic viewpoint. But Kemi just says something fruity, cultural, and potentially annoying to the sensitive, about immigration. She says nothing about what she would do - what policies she would put in place to support her (perhaps valid) views. Jenrick - what do we need to do? Get net migration below 100,000. How would you do it? Legally-binding migration cap. Now, it may be bollocks, as bollocks as Boris' manifesto, but at least he has committed, so it will be exposed as a u-turn if abandoned. Kemi has given nothing except some punchy commentary. That's a Spectator writer, not a PM.
Or alternatively, all Jenrick is talking about is numbers....... Not bothering with the thorny but necessary subject of who is most likely to be able to integrate into UK society.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
The trick is to find a way of spending the summer in the UK, and the winter somewhere hotter, either the Middle East or Southern Hemisphere.
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Serious question - does Jenrick identify as a Nat Con? I've been surprised by some who do, who I would (my opinion) expect to know better than to tangle up religion with their political identity in the UK. Ultimately imo it won't be effective here for cultural reasons.
Jenrick's wife is Jewish and they are bringing up their children in that faith
Far right Freedom party looks to have come first in Austria yes but the centre right OVP may prefer coalition with the centre left SPO who are projected to come 3rd than with them
They might have to do a 3 party coalition with the Greens as well.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
They won’t occupy. They will just make Gaza an unliveable wasteland
It already was anyway largely, the West Bank however was perfectly liveable in
I don’t think the Israelis care any more. After October 7 they want to expel all Palestinians because they see them as an existential threat to Jews (and the October 7 attackers made it very clear they wanted to kill every Jew they encountered)
The logic is pretty brutal if you’re an Israeli. Israel can only continue if “Palestine” is extinguished. Hence Gaza. At the same time Israel is now securing its northern border with Lebanon and maybe even taking out the Iranian leadership: might as well get it all done in one go
This all makes perfect sense IF your overwhelming concern is the survival of Israel as a Jewish ethno-state. It is also horrendously cruel
It is also disastrous, if they kill lots of Palestinians, many of them innocent of any terrorist links and add lots of innocent Lebanese to the death toll too they will be creating generations of pro Hamas and pro Hezbollah terrorists who weren't there before.
We also need to remember 30% of the population of Lebanon are Christian and 6% of Palestinians are Christian too, they should be naturally pro Israel but won't be if all their churches are bombed and their families driven from their homes
Cut the crap, as long as Hamas and Hezbollah exist there will always be more people joining Hamas and Hezbollah.
As long as they exist, those regions will be blockaded and impoverished and as long as people are impoverished the only way out of poverty or to have any hope is to unfortunately join with Hamas and Hezbollah respectively.
The only way to end the cycle of violence is to metaphorically stuff people's faces with gold, the Marshall Plan works, but the prerequisite of that even being an option is to end the threat from Hamas and Hezbollah.
Not reduce it, not a temporary ceasefire, but to end the threat by destroying those organisations completely.
If that is done the cycle of violence can end, but if there's a ceasefire then it is inevitable that the fighting will resume as without a lasting peace, without development, without opportunities people will see no alternative but to continue the violence.
That isn't going to come from Bibi and/or Smotrich. Bibi is interested in starting in power and avoiding corruption charges: endless war suits him. Smotrich wants genocide, to clear out the non-Jewish populations and create a greater Israel.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
It is barely worth investigating except to establish a precedent. Presumably the Gambling Commission has already been told who staked what and when.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
Mary Tudor did the burnings to Protestants instead
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
Musk routinely posts antisemitism and conspiracy theories. I presume this is just more of the same.
Far right Freedom party looks to have come first in Austria yes but the centre right OVP may prefer coalition with the centre left SPO who are projected to come 3rd than with them
Also yet another dismal failure of the strategy of mainstream centre-right parties co-opting language of populist right. Few have been as accommodating as the ÖVP have been of the FPÖ, yet this is the end result (as it has been pretty much everywhere).
The centre right were still second though and will probably end up in a coalition government with the centre left. If they were truly accommodating of the far right FPO they would be going into government with them instead
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
Why are you being so dramatic about it - she has one opinion that you don't agree with and she is 'unfit to be leader'? Do you expect to agree with every opinion?
It's not dramatic, it shows she's got poor judgement on one of the biggest issues of our era and for my generation and the one that follows.
It is a single issue where you have a disagreement. She has her reasons and you have yours. The silly media uproar circus whenever someone departs from the mumsnet script is what's landing us with shit politicians like Keir Starmer who've spent their entire career not going off-message and think that's all it takes to be PM.
I do not agree with Badenoch on maternity leave specifically, but there is a general point to be made that successive Governments heaping obligations like high levels of paid holiday, minimum wage/living wage, maternity/paternity leave, workplace pensions etc. etc. etc. all come with a price, which is that many companies don't make it. Chancellors just like to outbid each other in these changes because it's 'free'. Which it isn't.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
The trick is to find a way of spending the summer in the UK, and the winter somewhere hotter, either the Middle East or Southern Hemisphere.
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
A colleague of mines son is a pilot. In the summer he flies Canadians to remote fishing and hunting lodges in a float plane, then when the weather changes he flies supplies to remote missions in the DRC, including occasional scrapes with various guerilla.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
If you want hot sun in the deeps of winter then Sharm should not be on your list. Because it's not reliably hot and sunny in January: the average high is 19C and it can be grey and cool. Very disappointing if you want proper sun
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
Are you and the other mods worried that it could bring quite a lot of scrutiny and press interest to the site? If political betting becomes a bit of a stick to beat politicians with, might Political Betting feel a bit of stick as well?
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
I mean, that sorta ignores the entire history of the USA. A country that was built on mass immigration.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
The annoying thing is you're indoors and you think oh it looks nice outside and you go out and you find, fuck it is cold, I need to put on my The North Face arctic gear.
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Serious question - does Jenrick identify as a Nat Con? I've been surprised by some who do, who I would (my opinion) expect to know better than to tangle up religion with their political identity in the UK. Ultimately imo it won't be effective here for cultural reasons.
Jenrick's wife is Jewish and they are bringing up their children in that faith
"But our population is ageing, we need immigration"
"Nah, women need to have more kids"
"And we should encourage mums to stay at home to look after their kids"
"Yeah and slash maternity pay"
@Number10cat If Badenoch gets elected as Tory leader every Labour MP is going to have to register it as a gift
@MrHarryCole Kemi camp in full damage control mode now:
Source; “Infighting and internal conflicts helped take our party to an historic defeat. We need to be better, we need our politics to be better. Kemi obviously supports maternity pay and was making a case for lower regulation - something she always aimed for as business secretary. For other leadership campaigns to be seeking to use selective quotes from an interview to score political hits, shows they’re still wedded to the old politics and simply aren’t serious about getting back to government.”
Good response from Kemi's team.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
Serious question - does Jenrick identify as a Nat Con? I've been surprised by some who do, who I would (my opinion) expect to know better than to tangle up religion with their political identity in the UK. Ultimately imo it won't be effective here for cultural reasons.
Jenrick's wife is Jewish and they are bringing up their children in that faith
I did that one for all the candidates the other day; you need to follow my comments .
He was being disingenuous, and failing to take personal responsibility for himself. He is pretending "I was not making a phone call" means "I was not using my phone". It's the kind of circumlocution used by Mr Poophole.
He was using his phone in his hand for satellite navigation whilst driving. In law that meets the definition of "using a phone". Since it was one of a series of offences that took him over the top, he got himself banned.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
Are you and the other mods worried that it could bring quite a lot of scrutiny and press interest to the site? If political betting becomes a bit of a stick to beat politicians with, might Political Betting feel a bit of stick as well?
I am limited to what I can say but we're already on the radar, so modest fellow tipped a July election at 20/1.
Did I have inside information? Nope, I just thought Sunak looked knackered.
From the summary of Laura K's programme, here's the key difference between Jenrick and Kemi:
Jenrick says he'd introduce a legally binding cap on migration in the tens of thousands "or lower"
Badenoch says some people have brought views that "have no place here" - and also says some cultures are less valid than others
Both are expressing an immigration-skeptic viewpoint. But Kemi just says something fruity, cultural, and potentially annoying to the sensitive, about immigration. She says nothing about what she would do - what policies she would put in place to support her (perhaps valid) views. Jenrick - what do we need to do? Get net migration below 100,000. How would you do it? Legally-binding migration cap. Now, it may be bollocks, as bollocks as Boris' manifesto, but at least he has committed, so it will be exposed as a u-turn if abandoned. Kemi has given nothing except some punchy commentary. That's a Spectator writer, not a PM.
Or alternatively, all Jenrick is talking about is numbers....... Not bothering with the thorny but necessary subject of who is most likely to be able to integrate into UK society.
So what is Kemi saying then? Quotas from Muslim countries? Not a chance in hell. She has made absolutely no policy proposals of any kind to my knowledge.
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Don't forget the people at the bottom - we need millions more houses in council-style housing too. There is or was an incentive for couples in that range to have at least 3 children. Whatever the child benefit limit, it's that third child qualifies/qualified you for a 3-bed house (and probably garden) rather than a 2-bed flat in a huge block.
And then the couple splits up, Dad probably gets pushed out to make way for the new boyfriend, and Dad needs a place that will accommodate the three chdren for 50% of the time.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
The trick is to find a way of spending the summer in the UK, and the winter somewhere hotter, either the Middle East or Southern Hemisphere.
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
A colleague of mines son is a pilot. In the summer he flies Canadians to remote fishing and hunting lodges in a float plane, then when the weather changes he flies supplies to remote missions in the DRC, including occasional scrapes with various guerilla.
He has some amazing photos and stories.
Awesome. If I lived my life again I think that’s what I would do.
The problem is that a commercial pilot’s licence costs close to £100k, and you can’t get a student loan for it. Most pilots are financed by the bank of Mum and Dad, who often remortgage their houses to do so.
Meanwhile, the airlines complain about a pilot shortage while sponsoring no more than dozens of pilots every year.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
Are you and the other mods worried that it could bring quite a lot of scrutiny and press interest to the site? If political betting becomes a bit of a stick to beat politicians with, might Political Betting feel a bit of stick as well?
I am limited to what I can say but we're already on the radar, so modest fellow tipped a July election at 20/1.
Did I have inside information? Nope, I just thought Sunak looked knackered.
I don't think we still know any other reason that Sunak called the election.
Maybe it was just to spoil Starmers honeymoon with the recess and silly season. If so, it worked.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
The candied salmon Martini definitely a wrong ‘un.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
Mary Tudor did the burnings to Protestants instead
And Lady Whiteadder insisted Nathaniel sat on a spike.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
The trick is to find a way of spending the summer in the UK, and the winter somewhere hotter, either the Middle East or Southern Hemisphere.
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
A colleague of mines son is a pilot. In the summer he flies Canadians to remote fishing and hunting lodges in a float plane, then when the weather changes he flies supplies to remote missions in the DRC, including occasional scrapes with various guerilla.
He has some amazing photos and stories.
Awesome. If I lived my life again I think that’s what I would do.
The problem is that a commercial pilot’s licence costs close to £100k, and you can’t get a student loan for it. Most pilots are financed by the bank of Mum and Dad, who often remortgage their houses to do so.
Meanwhile, the airlines complain about a pilot shortage while sponsoring no more than dozens of pilots every year.
His are small light planes, the Canadians in effect pay for the mission work.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
The annoying thing is you're indoors and you think oh it looks nice outside and you go out and you find, fuck it is cold, I need to put on my The North Face arctic gear.
I'm sure in the past it only got "proper cold" in late October. That was always the time I would fish out winter coats. Scarves and hats. It was OK then. Late October. Halloween coming. Fireworks and sparklers. Apple bobbing. Misty Bloomsbury mornings, like echoes of the Holborn marshes beneath
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
The trick is to find a way of spending the summer in the UK, and the winter somewhere hotter, either the Middle East or Southern Hemisphere.
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
A colleague of mines son is a pilot. In the summer he flies Canadians to remote fishing and hunting lodges in a float plane, then when the weather changes he flies supplies to remote missions in the DRC, including occasional scrapes with various guerilla.
He has some amazing photos and stories.
Awesome. If I lived my life again I think that’s what I would do.
The problem is that a commercial pilot’s licence costs close to £100k, and you can’t get a student loan for it. Most pilots are financed by the bank of Mum and Dad, who often remortgage their houses to do so.
Meanwhile, the airlines complain about a pilot shortage while sponsoring no more than dozens of pilots every year.
His are small light planes, the Canadians pay for the mission work.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
The annoying thing is you're indoors and you think oh it looks nice outside and you go out and you find, fuck it is cold, I need to put on my The North Face arctic gear.
I'm sure in the past it only got "proper cold" in late October. That was always the time I would fish out winter coats. Scarves and hats. It was OK then. Late October. Halloween coming. Fireworks and sparklers. Apple bobbing. Misty Bloomsbury mornings, like echoes of the Holborn marshes beneath
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Don't forget the people at the bottom - we need millions more houses in council-style housing too. There is or was an incentive for couples in that range to have at least 3 children. Whatever the child benefit limit, it's that third child qualifies/qualified you for a 3-bed house (and probably garden) rather than a 2-bed flat in a huge block.
And then the couple splits up, Dad probably gets pushed out to make way for the new boyfriend, and Dad needs a place that will accommodate the three chdren for 50% of the time.
Good eve, everybody
The system has been points-based since the time of Thatcher approx (I think), which means dad gets ignored if he does not have custody or a pre-existing tenancy.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
The cold weather is God's reminder to burn more Catholics at the stake.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
The candied salmon Martini definitely a wrong ‘un.
THE CANDIED SALMON
Did I mention that, on here? Must have. It was a gift from the Vancouver Tourist Board, and I don't want to be mean but it is one of only two foodstuffs I have instantly spat out of my mouth in a reflex of disgust - the other was dried frog, in Cambodia
Fermented silkworm larvae (Seoul, Korea) might have been worse but they never even reached my mouth. The smell. OMFG
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
How much money is being spent investigating this, vs how much money was actually staked on the election date?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I suspect it is like Operation Branchform which branched out to other things following the investigation of the original allegations.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
Are you and the other mods worried that it could bring quite a lot of scrutiny and press interest to the site? If political betting becomes a bit of a stick to beat politicians with, might Political Betting feel a bit of stick as well?
I could see some pols trying to use it as an excuse.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
A reminder that the song "Why does it always rain on me" was inspired by a soggy holiday in Eilat
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
White South African billionaire has opinion on brown people, the opinion will not surprise you.
South African immigrant deprecates immigrants. In a country of immigrants.
War is horrific, but as horrors go this is impressively efficient
But it also begs the question: why was this chilling accuracy not used against Hamas, why instead did they carpet bomb civilians?
Because Bibi wants to commit genocide/ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories, if you follow that, he's not interested in a greater Israel.
Yes, that is my suspicion
If you look at some of the stuff his cabinet have said publicly, such as the below, you can only imagine what they say/do in private.
The EU, France and UK have condemned a senior Israeli minister for suggesting it might be “justified and moral” to starve people in Gaza.
Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, sparked international outrage after he said on Wednesday: “No one in the world will allow us to starve 2 million people, even though it might be justified and moral in order to free the hostages.”
Separately on Wednesday, Israel’s Channel 12 broadcasted security camera footage that reportedly showed the sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee from Gaza at Sde Teiman military detention camp. Last week, the detention of the soldiers accused of involvement in the alleged abuse sparked violent riots.
I said at the beginning I suspected this of Israel. It’s the only logic behind their behaviour in Gaza - a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem. Just cleanse them entirely: make Gaza uninhabitable and terrify them out of the West Bank
And if you’re an Israeli looking at October 7 I can see why you might feel that way. The Jewish state cannot tolerate the mere possibility it might happen again - it is existential. AND if you’re going to do this you have to get it done before Iran acquires nukes
So: this will end either with the elimination of any Palestinian homeland or the destruction of Israel
Israel can't defeat Hamas by invading and occupying the Palestinian Authority any more than the UK could defeat the IRA by invading and occupying the Republic of Ireland and West Belfast
Of course they can, if they press their advantages until the enemies surrender unconditionally.
Just as we pressed our advantages until the Nazis surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Americans pressed theirs until the Japanese surrendered unconditionally. Just as the Sri Lankans pressed theirs until the Tamil Tigers surrendered unconditionally.
Unconditional surrender ends wars.
Ethnic cleansing also ends historic conflicts. Cf Turkey/Greece
This is what Israel is pursuing. They just can’t say it
Indeed they can’t.
The Gaza Strip would make for some first class seaside real estate when redeveloped.
Pretty much everyone with coastline in the Middle East is now planning to copy Dubai and build hotels on the beaches.
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter.
If it dropped the violence and distaste for alcohol and women then the Middle East would be beautifully situated to make a fortune from tourism.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Sharm-el-Sheikh is lovely, a good example of what they could all be doing. If you stop the war, you start attracting tourists.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
NARRATOR: Sharm-el-Sheikh is not "lovely", unless you you enjoy sterile, dessicated resort-cities inexplicably plonked in hostile desert by a windy coast
If all you want to do is lie on the beach for a week in the middle of British winter…
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
What fools they are
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Barely coat weather. Very much enjoying the greens turning to golds and anticipating a lovely Autumn here. In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
The trick is to find a way of spending the summer in the UK, and the winter somewhere hotter, either the Middle East or Southern Hemisphere.
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
A colleague of mines son is a pilot. In the summer he flies Canadians to remote fishing and hunting lodges in a float plane, then when the weather changes he flies supplies to remote missions in the DRC, including occasional scrapes with various guerilla.
He has some amazing photos and stories.
Awesome. If I lived my life again I think that’s what I would do.
The problem is that a commercial pilot’s licence costs close to £100k, and you can’t get a student loan for it. Most pilots are financed by the bank of Mum and Dad, who often remortgage their houses to do so.
Meanwhile, the airlines complain about a pilot shortage while sponsoring no more than dozens of pilots every year.
I think Kemi is unfit to be leader having just read her comments on maternity leave/pay. It's absolutely idiotic, in a country where we have a birth rate lower than the replacement rate we need for families to have an extra child, not have fewer because they can't afford the time off.
If anything maternity pay and early years childcare funding needs to go up substantially so that parents don't feel as though they can't have 2 kids instead of 1 or decide that 2 is enough and not go for a third one etc...
I don't know if it plays well with members, perhaps it does because they're all old fuckers who "didn't have that in our day and we raised a family of 17 on a single salary" but this shows she doesn't understand the major demographic issue facing the nation and a big driver of migration in the last 10 years.
The best fix for larger family sizes is to sort the housing market, so buying a decent house doesn't require both parents to be out at work and the child dumped in childcare from 6 months old.
Maternity pay is a side-show compared to this.
Don't forget the people at the bottom - we need millions more houses in council-style housing too. There is or was an incentive for couples in that range to have at least 3 children. Whatever the child benefit limit, it's that third child qualifies/qualified you for a 3-bed house (and probably garden) rather than a 2-bed flat in a huge block.
And then the couple splits up, Dad probably gets pushed out to make way for the new boyfriend, and Dad needs a place that will accommodate the three chdren for 50% of the time.
Good eve, everybody
The system has been points-based since the time of Thatcher approx (I think), which means dad gets ignored if he does not have custody or a pre-existing tenancy.
Yes, he does, but he still needs a roof over his head.
Comments
CBS News Says It Will Be Up To Vance And Walz To Fact-Check Each Other. https://apnews.com/article/cbs-debate-vice-president-fact-check-7a3b31c98ab092dd44915df57a359d10
ABC showed it could be done. Now:
"CBS News is clearly indicating it wants to take a step back from the heat generated by calling attention to misleading statements by candidates."
https://x.com/jayrosen_nyu/status/1840213823099126003
Tourism should be a large attraction for the whole region, especially as it’s mostly off-season for European visitors, somewhere to find sun in winter. Doesn’t work too well if there’s a war on though.
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/factchecking-the-harris-trump-debate/
Given how long that list is, they both said more that was wrong about each other, than was correct.
Sharm el-Sheikh was itself of course developed by Israel while it occupied the land, and it became a very successful tourist area which it remains to this day after Egypt accepted peace with Israel.
Egypt accepting it had lost the war ended the cycle of violence with Israel and has led to much more prosperity since, even if not great amounts of freedom. Far better than what the Palestinians have under Hamas.
Even the Saudis are preparing to relax rules on alcohol and women’s dress in their new resort city on the Red Sea. It’ll be a ‘closed city’ with no locals there. Just across the sea from Sharm, as it happens.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ad0f72
Global declines in insect populations have important implications for biodiversity and food security. To offset these declines, habitat restoration and enhancement in agricultural landscapes could mutually safeguard insect populations and their pollination services for crop production. The expansion of utility-scale solar energy development in agricultural landscapes presents an opportunity for the dual use of the land for energy production and biodiversity conservation through the establishment of grasses and forbs planted among and between the photovoltaic solar arrays ('solar-pollinator habitat'). We conducted a longitudinal field study across 5 years (2018–2022) to understand how insect communities responded to newly established habitat on solar energy facilities in agricultural landscapes by evaluating (1) temporal changes in flowering plant abundance and diversity; (2) temporal changes in insect abundance and diversity; and (3) the pollination services of solar-pollinator habitat by comparing pollinator visitation to agricultural fields near solar-pollinator habitat with other agricultural field locations. We found increases over time for all habitat and biodiversity metrics: floral rank, flowering plant species richness, insect group diversity, native bee abundance, and total insect abundance, with the most noticeable temporal increases in native bee abundance. We also found positive effects of proximity to solar-pollinator habitat on bee visitation to nearby soybean (Glycine max) fields. Bee visitation to soybean flowers adjacent to solar-pollinator habitat were comparable to bee visitation to soybeans adjacent to grassland areas enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, and greater than bee visitation to soybean field interior and roadside soybean flowers. Our observations highlight the relatively rapid (<4 year) insect community responses to grassland restoration activities and provide support for solar-pollinator habitat as a feasible conservation practice to safeguard biodiversity and increase food security in agricultural landscapes...</i>
I don't want to make people into stay at home mums (or dads) if they actually want to go back to work (although I don't really get why people want to have kids and then spend no time with them). What I really dislike is that we're setting up a society where that is the only option, unless you are stinking rich.
Former deputy prime minister Sir Oliver Dowden has become the most senior ally of Rishi Sunak to be interviewed in the official investigation into betting on the date of the general election, Sky News understands.
He follows Mr Sunak's former parliamentary aide Craig Williams and former Downing Street chief of staff Liam Booth-Smith in being questioned by the Gambling Commission, the statutory body that regulates betting in the UK.
Mr Sunak has not yet been interviewed, Sky News understands, though "numerous people" including Conservative Party officials have been.
The inquiry - launched in June - is set to continue for another three to six months.
News of Sir Oliver's interview, along with the seizing of "hundreds of documents" from Tory HQ by the commission, has emerged on the day the Conservative Party Conference opened in Birmingham.
Ironically, the Gambling Commission's head office, on the fourth floor of Victoria Square House, Victoria Square, Birmingham, is just a half-mile, 10-minute walk from the ICC, where the Tory conference is taking place.
https://news.sky.com/story/former-deputy-pm-oliver-dowden-interviewed-in-election-day-betting-probe-13224498
I'm lucky enough to have a job which I find interesting and which isn't stressful. Is it a good way to earn a living? Sure. Would it be top of my list of things to do, given a free choice? Of course not.
Or, of course, they were single!
Cabinet members with initiatives they’re itching to take are chafing against the restraints imposed by Rachel Reeves’ powerful bailiwick because it is blocking any announcements with a cost implication before the budget at the end of October.
There’s plenty to commend about the candour of the chancellor and the prime minister when they ask for patience because a better Britain won’t be built in a day. But after committing too many avoidable own goals, the government could now do with some quick wins.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/sep/28/keir-starmer-no-10-ministers
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1840409051357696324
Very few Americans realize that, if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election. Far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it!
As I see it that will probably damage Kemi from the point of view of the National Conservatives (aka NatCons, the intellectualised version of part of Mogg's PopCon agenda, one aspect of which @viewcode featured in his recent piece), who have a bee in their bonnet about fertility rates amongst natives from the UK - mirroring to an extent a UK version of the factors behind JD Vance's comments about the existential threat posed by single cat-ladies.
We perhaps aren't in the 'chained to the kitchen sink' territory that 2nd Wave feminists used to shout about, but is this a push in that direction from Kemi?
It shouldn’t take long to work out if anyone put money on a certain date, and then afterwards was in the meeting where they lobbied for that date, which would certainly be a problem.
It’s possible that people had an idea of when the date would be, from inside information, but it wasn’t the date until the PM actually announced it. That’s no different from a horse trainer giving tips to their friends about which are the fit and which are the lame animals.
I don’t particularly agree with her about maternity pay, and I am still broadly in favour of Jenrick, but I do detest these infantile 'gotcha' moments when someone departs from the blandest views on something.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8rdygy5888o
She has form. Say something batshit, then when she gets called out, instead of defending what she said accuse others of attacking her right to say it.
As OGH said to me earlier on this week, it wouldn't shock him to know these people were betting on other things given how much of PB's traffic comes from Westminster IP addresses.
There's a very fine line on the ethics of betting on private/embargoed polling.
Do Reform have clean hands holding their dog whistle, the world wonders?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_BIER_party
"Beer Parties exist throughout the world, especially in Eastern Europe. Already in the last 1990 East German general election, the electoral list of the "German Beer Drinkers' Union" (Deutsche Biertrinker Union) had been presented in the constituency of Rostock, which had only obtained 2,534 votes and no elected persons, in addition to a handful of votes in five other local elections in the German federal states. Another well-known example was the Polish Beer-Lovers' Party, which started as a prank and won 2.97% of the vote and 16 seats in the Sejm after Poland's 1991 parliamentary elections, even joining the government of Hanna Suchocka with its own minister.[9] Such parties are satirical as a general rule, though they can develop more serious platforms, as was the case for the Polish Beer-Lover's Party."
https://youtu.be/cHQ0BNZPVTM?feature=shared
Right on time, becuase there comes the rain in Bristol.
For the record I have never bet on an embargoed poll.
It has cost me money, once I was planning on putting more money on the Tories as the largest party at GE2015 as I was about to do so an embargoed poll from ComRes dropped showing the Tories were doing better in the marginals.
Never been a fan of ComRes since then.
Something similar happened during the Indyref.
I've only discovered this story from 2022
Security minister and Tory MP Tom Tugendhat has denied using his phone while driving his car.
He was spotted in Wandsworth High Street on 4 April by Met Police officer PC Joseph Robson, who pulled him over.
In a written guilty plea, the Tonbridge and Malling MP said he was holding the phone but not using it and had later taken a driving course.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-63573882
Remember that most Brits have to experience winter, rather than decamp to the brothels of Bangkok for months on end.
https://bsky.app/profile/dylandifford.bsky.social/post/3l5ciuifkg22h
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/17/security-minister-tom-tugendhat-given-six-month-driving-ban
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/apr/04/robert-jenrick-banned-from-driving-for-six-months-for-speeding
I can barely tolerate September in the New British Climate (TM)
I just walked out to buy some food and a wintry wind was gusting down Parkway and everyone was hunched in winter coats. "Feels like" about 9C? This is Sept 29
Badenoch says some people have brought views that "have no place here" - and also says some cultures are less valid than others
Both are expressing an immigration-skeptic viewpoint. But Kemi just says something fruity, cultural, and potentially annoying to the sensitive, about immigration. She says nothing about what she would do - what policies she would put in place to support her (perhaps valid) views. Jenrick - what do we need to do? Get net migration below 100,000. How would you do it? Legally-binding migration cap. Now, it may be bollocks, as bollocks as Boris' manifesto, but at least he has committed, so it will be exposed as a u-turn if abandoned. Kemi has given nothing except some punchy commentary. That's a Spectator writer, not a PM.
In a world in which school holidays were not an issue, I wouldn't mind missing the British January. But I don't think the Middle East would ever come top of the list, or even seem preferable to Britain, climatically.
Denmark literally bulldozes ethnic ghettoes:
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/20/europe/denmark-ghetto-relocation-intl/index.html
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/26/justice-must-prevail-against-denmarks-ghetto-laws
Result? In 2022 the Social Democrats got their best results in 20 years, and they lead the government
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Danish_general_election
This is going to happen across Europe, you simply need the ability to extrapolate. Europeans have had enough of migration/asylum and they've made it plain they will now vote the far right into power unless mainstream parties deal with it. So, unless you want the far right in power, you have to get very tough on migration/asylum
"Official result site of the Ministry for Internal Affairs:
https://www.bmi.gv.at/412/Nationalratswahlen/Nationalratswahl_2024/start.aspx
Public broadCaster ORF (i am certain, You will need VPN; left-leaning):
https://on.orf.at/live?channel=orf2
Mentioned private broadCaster ServusTV (will also require VPN; is perhaps at YouTube; FPÖVP-leaning):
https://www.servustv.com/jetzt-live/
Another private channel (very left-leaning; Puls4 & ATV belong also to this group):
https://www.puls24.at/live "
An old friend of mine had the best job ever, he was a professional gliding instructor who for two decades was in the UK in the summer and New Zealand in the ‘winter’. Oh, and ‘work’ in most cases meant going flying at least five days a week, and being paid to do so.
My fractious mood might be related to this: yesterday I discovered that you're never too old to learn new things
I went out on the lash with some old uni friends. The evening conclued at chucking out time at the Groucho. Around 1am we came up with a new game of: "inventing hideous cocktails for the other person to drink"
From this I have learned: "never start inventing cocktails, at the Groucho, at 1am"
I do not agree with Badenoch on maternity leave specifically, but there is a general point to be made that successive Governments heaping obligations like high levels of paid holiday, minimum wage/living wage, maternity/paternity leave, workplace pensions etc. etc. etc. all come with a price, which is that many companies don't make it. Chancellors just like to outbid each other in these changes because it's 'free'. Which it isn't.
He has some amazing photos and stories.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/travel/holiday-weather/africa/egypt/sharm-el-sheikh
Aswan is a few degrees warmer, but evenings are sharp
As so much Musk comes out with, it's BS.
There's a lot of it about.
He was being disingenuous, and failing to take personal responsibility for himself. He is pretending "I was not making a phone call" means "I was not using my phone". It's the kind of circumlocution used by Mr Poophole.
He was using his phone in his hand for satellite navigation whilst driving. In law that meets the definition of "using a phone". Since it was one of a series of offences that took him over the top, he got himself banned.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-63662624
My expectation is that he would do it again if he thought he could get away with it.
Did I have inside information? Nope, I just thought Sunak looked knackered.
And then the couple splits up, Dad probably gets pushed out to make way for the new boyfriend, and Dad needs a place that will accommodate the three chdren for 50% of the time.
Good eve, everybody
Slightly MORE believable than Tom Tugendhat saying he was driving while holding a phone he was NOT using.
The problem is that a commercial pilot’s licence costs close to £100k, and you can’t get a student loan for it. Most pilots are financed by the bank of Mum and Dad, who often remortgage their houses to do so.
Meanwhile, the airlines complain about a pilot shortage while sponsoring no more than dozens of pilots every year.
Maybe it was just to spoil Starmers honeymoon with the recess and silly season. If so, it worked.
Her husband works Deutsche Bank.
Not fucking September, thanksvmuch
Did I mention that, on here? Must have. It was a gift from the Vancouver Tourist Board, and I don't want to be mean but it is one of only two foodstuffs I have instantly spat out of my mouth in a reflex of disgust - the other was dried frog, in Cambodia
Fermented silkworm larvae (Seoul, Korea) might have been worse but they never even reached my mouth. The smell. OMFG
PB on the blocklist at Westminster?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Does_It_Always_Rain_on_Me?#:~:text=Fran_Healy_started_writing_the,he_left_a_week_later.?wprov=sfla1
Turns out she's not called Kemi at all, she is using a first name different from her assigned name.
Her full name is Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke Badenoch.
In a country of immigrants.
I don’t think he gets the US.
https://skyborne.com/uk/british-airways-speedbird-pilot-academy/
I have an acquaintance who is senior there who pointed one of his children onto that route.
England's cricket team playing international matches in England after my birthday and needing by big winter coat in September.