Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
I am not surprised. I remember cycling around the Netherlands in the Eighties, and it was supremely set out for cyclists with seperate cycle lanes and lights, keeping safe from both pedestrians and motorists.
All that cycling is why they are thinner than other North Europeans too.
And taller according to my Dutch friend. Apparently this is closely held belief and she won't hear any arguments against it.
"Pavement pounders" she calls us
The Dutch and Irish are both taller than the British likely because they have more dairy in their diet.
The idea that cycling adds to terminal height is certainly one of the more cretinous concepts I've heard here today.
Another day of local by-elections tomorrow with many caused by councillors becoming MPs. We have Labour defences in Calderdale, Crawley, Denbighshire, Middlesbrough, Monmouthshire, and South Ribble. There are Con defences in East Lindsey, New Forest, and Surrey Heath, We have LD defences in Gateshead and South Cambridgeshire. Finally there is a Ind defence in Bournemouth et al and a PC defence in Isle of Anglesey.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Anyone who votes for Trump knows who he is. They have agency and they are happy to overlook his racism, his criminality, his opposition to democracy and the rule of law, his support for Putin and so on. But the Democrats messed up by failing to understand just how many Americans really don't mind voting for such a candidate if they do not like the alternative. If it wasn't for the harm a Trump presidency will do the UK, I would be watching all this with detached interest. But the forthcoming betrayal of Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade war are going to be very bad for us. It's worrying.
People vote for fascists, again and again, despite the lessons from history.
We assume that Hitler was an aberration, but it appears a lot of Americans don't see it that way.
Trump isn't Hitler. He is more like Peron, or Boulanger.
Trump is Trump. But the pattern of dehumanising an “enemy within” and the proposed ‘strong man’ approach to fix a supposed security risk is too familiar and very concerning, whether the better model is Hitler, Perón or Boulanger.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. We live in a country where the deputy Prime Minister calls political opponents 'scum'.
That's quite a long way away from Trump's rhetoric, though.
I changed my views on Trump from 'he's a typical hard right, American conservative radio commentator style blowhard' to 'this guy could be a full on fascist' after his Veteran's day speech where he literally used fascist language and imagery:
"“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections" and "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us."
Calling your opponents "scum" is one thing, threatening to "root out" the "vermin" in your own country, while talking about "grave threats from within" while comaparing himself to a strongman who can stand up to other countries led by strongmen.
James Carville tries to stready the panic in Dem circles.
"Ms. Harris has assembled a unified and electrified coalition. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Liz and Dick Cheney, it is the broadest we have seen in modern political history. And Ms. Harris’s coalition is just as excited as the smaller opposition. This is shaping out to be a record-turnout election — and if the bigger coalition turns out with equal enthusiasm, it will be lights out for Mr. Trump."
"With her field operation moving like a tremendous machine, it seems likely there has never been a greater disparity in voter contact efforts."
"Mr. Trump is a loser; he is going to lose again. And it is highly likely that there will be no other who can carry the MAGA mantle in his wake — certainly not his running mate."
James Carville tries to stready the panic in Dem circles.
"Ms. Harris has assembled a unified and electrified coalition. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Liz and Dick Cheney, it is the broadest we have seen in modern political history. And Ms. Harris’s coalition is just as excited as the smaller opposition. This is shaping out to be a record-turnout election — and if the bigger coalition turns out with equal enthusiasm, it will be lights out for Mr. Trump."
"With her field operation moving like a tremendous machine, it seems likely there has never been a greater disparity in voter contact efforts."
"Mr. Trump is a loser; he is going to lose again. And it is highly likely that there will be no other who can carry the MAGA mantle in his wake — certainly not his running mate."
James Carville tries to stready the panic in Dem circles.
"Ms. Harris has assembled a unified and electrified coalition. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Liz and Dick Cheney, it is the broadest we have seen in modern political history. And Ms. Harris’s coalition is just as excited as the smaller opposition. This is shaping out to be a record-turnout election — and if the bigger coalition turns out with equal enthusiasm, it will be lights out for Mr. Trump."
"With her field operation moving like a tremendous machine, it seems likely there has never been a greater disparity in voter contact efforts."
"Mr. Trump is a loser; he is going to lose again. And it is highly likely that there will be no other who can carry the MAGA mantle in his wake — certainly not his running mate."
The money has got to come from somewhere and every single tax rise is derided. No government can win.
In addition, everyone is pissed off that the NHS and other public sector institutions are shit. If you cut their funding, they will get even shitter. No government can win.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
The money has got to come from somewhere and every single tax rise is derided. No government can win.
In addition, everyone is pissed off that the NHS and other public sector institutions are shit. If you cut their funding, they will get even shitter. No government can win.
Just tax rises aren't going to solve the problem either. Real growth and increased productivity is the only solution, but for 20 years we haven't seen it.
A priest who fondled a sleeping train passenger in front of a young family told railway staff: “I was affirming him.”
Father Daniel Doherty, 61, was seen repeatedly kissing the much younger man. On two more occasions he fondled the man, who had passed out after drinking. The victim later reported that Doherty had put his hands inside his trousers.
Doherty, the parish priest at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Falkirk, admitted at Kirkcaldy sheriff court to three charge of sexual assault.
The incident was witnessed by members of the public and continued for about an hour, Sarah Smith, fiscal depute, told the court.
Doherty has been removed from duties and is on the sex offenders register. In a statement, the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh offered a “profound apology” to the victim and commended his courage for coming forward. It said that when the allegations had first come to light Doherty voluntarily withdrew himself from active ministry.
On cycling deaths, I've nothing statistical to add.
But all this talk about the Netherlands reminds me of when I was there having a drink with a friend and her 5-year-old son in Amsterdam. We were sitting outside and the cafe was next to a busy cycle lane. The kid spontaneously decided to run out into the lane in the manner of small children, exactly as a woman on her heavy bike was riding past us at speed. Luckily I'd been watching him in case he did that and grabbed him in time.
Anyway, though I know anybody would have done it, saving a friend's child from serious injury gave me a good feeling for the next couple of days and I floated around on a cloud of smug. Sort of the feeling Trump gets when he's just fired 30 people or Putin when he's just blown up another children's cancer hospital I expect.
The money has got to come from somewhere and every single tax rise is derided. No government can win.
In addition, everyone is pissed off that the NHS and other public sector institutions are shit. If you cut their funding, they will get even shitter. No government can win.
Just tax rises aren't going to solve the problem either. Real growth and increased productivity is the only solution, but for 20 years we haven't seen it.
Well that may be true but good luck winning an election on that basis, especially as almost all entities (both public and private sector) have been asking their employees to do more with less my entire adult life.
On the Farage/Trump bromance appearing to have cooled I wonder if it's as simple as Farage accepting that his party came third in votes, and lower in seats, in the recent general election, and Trump not wanting to associate with a loser?
Someone on RTÉ news has just said that Trump was quite complimentary about Starmer after the landslide victory.
On the Farage/Trump bromance appearing to have cooled I wonder if it's as simple as Farage accepting that his party came third in votes, and lower in seats, in the recent general election, and Trump not wanting to associate with a loser?
Someone on RTÉ news has just said that Trump was quite complimentary about Starmer after the landslide victory.
Maybe Trump thinks they should use Starmer's treatment of rioters as a model for dealing with troublemakers after his next inauguration.
On the Farage/Trump bromance appearing to have cooled I wonder if it's as simple as Farage accepting that his party came third in votes, and lower in seats, in the recent general election, and Trump not wanting to associate with a loser?
Someone on RTÉ news has just said that Trump was quite complimentary about Starmer after the landslide victory.
Maybe Trump thinks they should use Starmer's treatment of rioters as a model for dealing with troublemakers after his next inauguration.
Yes. Trump might view the "two-tier" moniker as a compliment. Special treatment for the favoured is right up his alley.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
It's not against the rules and there are multiple examples of this kind of campaign volunteering happening both sides of the pond. You could say that having a load of people with foreign accents door knocking isn't likely to be effective but that's up to the local campaign organisation.
This row is actually about the Trump campaign storing up a bank of grievances to trot out of he loses. It's of the same piece as those dodgy opinion polls showing Trump way in the lead. In 2020 Trump started to make comments about the electoral process early for the same reason
On the Farage/Trump bromance appearing to have cooled I wonder if it's as simple as Farage accepting that his party came third in votes, and lower in seats, in the recent general election, and Trump not wanting to associate with a loser?
Someone on RTÉ news has just said that Trump was quite complimentary about Starmer after the landslide victory.
Maybe Trump thinks they should use Starmer's treatment of rioters as a model for dealing with troublemakers after his next inauguration.
Trump will certainly have a lot more control of the courts that Starmer does. He owns the Supreme Court for starters. That will prove invaluable if the election result is a tight Harris win.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
Naive From Labour activists I think ?
Starmer/the party can't control what they do in their spare time. Well they could but...
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
It's not against the rules and there are multiple examples of this kind of campaign volunteering happening both sides of the pond. You could say that having a load of people with foreign accents door knocking isn't likely to be effective but that's up to the local campaign organisation.
This row is actually about the Trump campaign storing up a bank of grievances to trot out of he loses. It's of the same piece as those dodgy opinion polls showing Trump way in the lead. In 2020 Trump started to make comments about the electoral process early for the same reason
Out of all the posters moaning today about Labour doing this based on a linkedin tweet have any previously criticised Farage for doing it, expenses paid, in person as a party leader, many times?
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
Naive From Labour activists I think ?
Starmer/the party can't control what they do in their spare time. Well they could but...
Indeed. But that's rather beside the point, as is the fact they've done nothing illegal.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
It's not against the rules and there are multiple examples of this kind of campaign volunteering happening both sides of the pond. You could say that having a load of people with foreign accents door knocking isn't likely to be effective but that's up to the local campaign organisation.
This row is actually about the Trump campaign storing up a bank of grievances to trot out of he loses. It's of the same piece as those dodgy opinion polls showing Trump way in the lead. In 2020 Trump started to make comments about the electoral process early for the same reason
Out of all the posters moaning today about Labour doing this based on a linkedin tweet have any previously criticised Farage for doing it, expenses paid, in person as a party leader, many times?
Two tier posting.....
Isn't there a qualitative difference between public endorsement and donating campaign resources?
On cycling deaths, I've nothing statistical to add.
But all this talk about the Netherlands reminds me of when I was there having a drink with a friend and her 5-year-old son in Amsterdam. We were sitting outside and the cafe was next to a busy cycle lane. The kid spontaneously decided to run out into the lane in the manner of small children, exactly as a woman on her heavy bike was riding past us at speed. Luckily I'd been watching him in case he did that and grabbed him in time.
Anyway, though I know anybody would have done it, saving a friend's child from serious injury gave me a good feeling for the next couple of days and I floated around on a cloud of smug. Sort of the feeling Trump gets when he's just fired 30 people or Putin when he's just blown up another children's cancer hospital I expect.
Nice. It's definitely a hazard for someone not used to busy cycle lanes that don't look like the road. I've stepped out into them absent mindedly several times in Amsterdam and Copenhagen, the two cities where the infrastructure is most dominant. Fortunately the cyclists tend to be pootling along upright at reasonable speeds in their work suits, and are able to stop. And the worst they do in response is a ring of the bell. Step out in front of a MAMIL bombing down the mean streets of London in their Rapha gear and you'll get a torrent of angry invective and various hand signals.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
To be honest this story is getting far less coverage in US than UK media.
The Trump campaign has responsed though 'When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations, posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida.
In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown - a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian" [sic].' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce318l17dd3o
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
Naive From Labour activists I think ?
Starmer/the party can't control what they do in their spare time. Well they could but...
Indeed. But that's rather beside the point, as is the fact they've done nothing illegal.
The problem is not the decision of the individuals to fly to the US in the (probably mistaken) belief they can contribute anything useful. The problem is that the Labour Party Head of Operations (Sofia Patel) has been bragging on LinkedIn about her role in organising it. And it's a political problem, not a legal one. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
It's not against the rules and there are multiple examples of this kind of campaign volunteering happening both sides of the pond. You could say that having a load of people with foreign accents door knocking isn't likely to be effective but that's up to the local campaign organisation.
This row is actually about the Trump campaign storing up a bank of grievances to trot out of he loses. It's of the same piece as those dodgy opinion polls showing Trump way in the lead. In 2020 Trump started to make comments about the electoral process early for the same reason
Out of all the posters moaning today about Labour doing this based on a linkedin tweet have any previously criticised Farage for doing it, expenses paid, in person as a party leader, many times?
Two tier posting.....
Isn't there a qualitative difference between public endorsement and donating campaign resources?
The main thrust of todays complaint is foreigners (maybe foreign non residents) shouldnt be active in domestic elections. I don't have a strong view either way on that but Farage has clearly been far more active in US elections than Labour has.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
To be honest this story is getting far less coverage in US than UK media.
The Trump campaign has responsed though 'When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations , posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida. In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown - a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian" [sic].' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce318l17dd3o
Oh wait, hold on. I thought this was random activists giving up their free time. The head of operations for the Labour party being involved puts a bit of a different spin on it.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
To be honest this story is getting far less coverage in US than UK media.
The Trump campaign has responsed though 'When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations, posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida.
In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown - a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian" [sic].' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce318l17dd3o
We should stick to their preferred approach to influencing elections and set up large bot farms on the South Coast to flood social media with misinformation, or maybe consider sponsoring one or two prominent US talk show hosts.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
You can't have 1 rule for public sector workers and another for private sector workers. Even if it's a niche area like pensions anything that discourages private sector workers from saving into pensions (they don't save enough at the moment) is a stupid thing.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
Cut welfare spending, push people back into work and start to trim the public sector employment bill. There are too many people working for the state and the private sector can no longer hold up the weight of it all, these taxes will just make things worse as more people drain out of the private sector and decide that a DB pension and similar wages without the hassle of having to actually do a proper job in the public sector.
I was talking to a friends daughter over the weekend.
She is on a rotation as part of a civil-service funded professional qualification. 2 months in she has never met her boss who never comes into the office (prefers to WFH) - none of her team come into the office either so she is miserable and bored. Can do her job in 3 days so just stops around the other 2…
Yup, so why should someone work extremely hard for 5 days per week in the private sector only to be taxed to fuck and get your pension decimated and pay frozen for the next 5-7 years when the public sector offers full time pay for part time work and a gold plated pension.
A priest who fondled a sleeping train passenger in front of a young family told railway staff: “I was affirming him.”
Father Daniel Doherty, 61, was seen repeatedly kissing the much younger man. On two more occasions he fondled the man, who had passed out after drinking. The victim later reported that Doherty had put his hands inside his trousers.
Doherty, the parish priest at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Falkirk, admitted at Kirkcaldy sheriff court to three charge of sexual assault.
The incident was witnessed by members of the public and continued for about an hour, Sarah Smith, fiscal depute, told the court.
Doherty has been removed from duties and is on the sex offenders register. In a statement, the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh offered a “profound apology” to the victim and commended his courage for coming forward. It said that when the allegations had first come to light Doherty voluntarily withdrew himself from active ministry.
This Guardian article, moving and tragic, has the headline ' "In the Jabalia refugee camp, my sister has reached breaking point. What will it take to stop this nightmare?" by Ahmed Najar.
It manages in trying to answer this question to avoid any mention of the issues of: handing back hostages, Hamas's position on continuing violence, and 7 October 2023. It's as if all this is wholly unrelated to Israel's continuing military policy (for which I have no particular support).
This is all understandable as polemic, but as a serious Guardian article it just doesn't begin to deal with its own question.
I’d also posit that Trump’s tariff policies will make joining the EU a must as we’d get all the benefits of the single market and customs union.
Perhaps Don does have some redeeming features after all.
I was watching the angry popinjay Jenrick on Newsnight yesterday evening. He's preparing for even greater isolationism from Europe, but seems quite keen on dealing with the Trumper.
The mathematics of our electoral cycle and their term limits mean that Jenrick will never get to deal with Trump, unless Trump becomes dictator for life.
Here’s a thought. By the time of the next UK election, there’s a good chance that Elon’s humanoid robots will be wandering around on the surface of Mars, prepping the oxygen and propellant factory for the first human arrivals.
I'd take the bet that they won't.
I’m surprised by your pessimism. Good chance of a successful starship orbital re-fueling demonstration in 2025. And I think it follows after that he’d push very very hard to hit the 2026 earth Mars transfer window for a successful demonstration of landing on Mars. Who knows what tech they’d put on that trip, the marginal cost of loading some potentially useful cargo would be quite small even if the chance of a successful landing was only 50-50.
There’s then a couple of years to fine tune the system before the late 2028 transfer window. That’s four years from now, by then the Tesla robots will have proven more than capable of autonomously loading and unloading things and connecting a thing to a thing. Presumably the first mission will be setting up a solar farm and comms station. If they are very ambitious they might even get as far as a demonstration oxygen plant on that mission.
All just this side of a May 2029 UK election if that timetable is hit.
The planetary protection people will fight a serious battle to prevent a Starship landing on Mars.
For some of them, it is a religious issue. They want no humans or human capable landers on the surface.
At least, they claim, until the question of life is proven or disproven for the entire planet. Which, at the current rate of robotic exploration (and factoring in the effort taken to *not* include directly looking for life) will take forever. Literally.
I don’t see how they could prevent an unmanned starship mission, given how many unmanned Mars missions there have been already. I don’t think you’ll get definitive proof of life until there’s boots on the ground, be they human or humanoid robots.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
Typically the average mileage cycled by a person in Holland is around 800% of that cycled in the UK.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
But we still can't really compare until we have as much cycling as the Netherlands as the mix is very likely quite different.
Also worth noting that is an article by a notorious anti-cycling lobbyist who must have been taking a break from astroturfing as a blind lobbyist to prevent cycle lanes running behind built-out bus boarding points (the global best practice standard that's somehow become a culture war issue in the UK).
A remarkable statistic is that over half of Dutch cycling fatalities are pensioners, whereas in the UK it's received wisdom that "older people can't cycle" and any attempt to deprioritise the private motor car is ageist discrimination (one of the factors in people continuing to drive long after they should have stopped doing so for everyone's safety).
The last big ITF study attempting to estimate the denominator was I think 2021 so data for the first half of the 2010s, and concluded that deaths per 100m km cycled were 2.1 in the UK and 0.8 in the Netherlands. If the recent increase is genuine and sustained it might take them to around 1.3 - cause unclear, one hypothesis is that they're going faster because of high take-up of ebikes.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
Naive From Labour activists I think ?
Starmer/the party can't control what they do in their spare time. Well they could but...
Indeed. But that's rather beside the point, as is the fact they've done nothing illegal.
On WatO: Trump's lawyers have written a letter of complaint about Labourites campaigning in the US. Cue hilarious argumentation by Alastair Campbell and ex-Rev Chris Bryant to the effect that everyone does it anyway and Trump's people are "putting chaff out .." etc etc. Much better than standard BBC comedy these days
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
To be honest this story is getting far less coverage in US than UK media.
The Trump campaign has responsed though 'When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations , posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida. In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown - a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian" [sic].' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce318l17dd3o
Oh wait, hold on. I thought this was random activists giving up their free time. The head of operations for the Labour party being involved puts a bit of a different spin on it.
It certainly seems a bit dumb for officials of the Labour party to get involved.
Given the response to the Guardian organised thing, last time, especially.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
To be honest this story is getting far less coverage in US than UK media.
The Trump campaign has responsed though 'When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations , posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida. In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown - a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian" [sic].' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce318l17dd3o
Oh wait, hold on. I thought this was random activists giving up their free time. The head of operations for the Labour party being involved puts a bit of a different spin on it.
It certainly seems a bit dumb for officials of the Labour party to get involved.
Given the response to the Guardian organised thing, last time, especially.
I don't want to make you feel old, but that wasn't last time, that was 20 years ago.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Twitter is the American public square. Foreigners trying to kill it is basically an act of war.
I find it difficult to consider policy wonks in Islington as a credible threat to a man who is worth over 400billion dollars and is willing to piss away 30 of those billions for shits and giggles.
This Guardian article, moving and tragic, has the headline ' "In the Jabalia refugee camp, my sister has reached breaking point. What will it take to stop this nightmare?" by Ahmed Najar.
It manages in trying to answer this question to avoid any mention of the issues of: handing back hostages, Hamas's position on continuing violence, and 7 October 2023. It's as if all this is wholly unrelated to Israel's continuing military policy (for which I have no particular support).
This is all understandable as polemic, but as a serious Guardian article it just doesn't begin to deal with its own question.
It is an opinion piece, rather than part of the news coverage. I'll, er, go and check if they have an article from someone related to one of the hostages now. ... Not finding one. A temporary oversight I'm sure.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
Typically the average mileage cycled by a person in Holland is around 800% of that cycled in the UK.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
But we still can't really compare until we have as much cycling as the Netherlands as the mix is very likely quite different.
Also worth noting that is an article by a notorious anti-cycling lobbyist who must have been taking a break from astroturfing as a blind lobbyist to prevent cycle lanes running behind built-out bus boarding points (the global best practice standard that's somehow become a culture war issue in the UK).
A remarkable statistic is that over half of Dutch cycling fatalities are pensioners, whereas in the UK it's received wisdom that "older people can't cycling" and any attempt to deprioritise the private motor car is ageist discrimination (one of the factors in people continuing to drive long after they should have stopped doing so for everyone's safety).
The last big ITF study attempting to estimate the denominator was I think 2021 so data for the first half of the 2010s, and concluded that deaths per 100m km cycled were 2.1 in the UK and 0.8 in the Netherlands. If the recent increase is genuine and sustained it might take them to around 1.3 - cause unclear, one hypothesis is that they're going faster because of high take-up of ebikes.
As a matter of interest - on bus islands, has anyone actually worked out the status of the crossings from the pavement to the island? Round here, they have been painted with stripes, like a zebra crossing. But they have no lights, and no formal status, I believe.
So the polite cyclists stop and the thug eBikers (generally delivery people) zoom through, often yelling at anyone who impeded their progress.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
True but beside the point, which is that the British government party is riling a possible future US president. It's 100% sure he knows about it
I think that should be the case for everyone in these kind of circumstances, particularly for something like a terrorist attack where decisions are taken quickly and the threat of reprisal is high.
The line between murder and heroism is necessarily fine in that scenario, and could be ultimately determined by the opinion of a jury.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
Typically the average mileage cycled by a person in Holland is around 800% of that cycled in the UK.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
But we still can't really compare until we have as much cycling as the Netherlands as the mix is very likely quite different.
Also worth noting that is an article by a notorious anti-cycling lobbyist who must have been taking a break from astroturfing as a blind lobbyist to prevent cycle lanes running behind built-out bus boarding points (the global best practice standard that's somehow become a culture war issue in the UK).
A remarkable statistic is that over half of Dutch cycling fatalities are pensioners, whereas in the UK it's received wisdom that "older people can't cycle" and any attempt to deprioritise the private motor car is ageist discrimination (one of the factors in people continuing to drive long after they should have stopped doing so for everyone's safety).
The last big ITF study attempting to estimate the denominator was I think 2021 so data for the first half of the 2010s, and concluded that deaths per 100m km cycled were 2.1 in the UK and 0.8 in the Netherlands. If the recent increase is genuine and sustained it might take them to around 1.3 - cause unclear, one hypothesis is that they're going faster because of high take-up of ebikes.
Having been in the Netherlands and Germany recently it is obvious that most urban cyclists ride at a casual pace, and are therefore able to avoid both pedestrians and cars. Saw one guy in Lübeck today with two small children in a pannier thing behind the saddle (but not the actual panniers). They both had helmets on, so presumably that is OK
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
True but beside the point, which is that the British government party is riling a possible future US president. It's 100% sure he knows about it
Last time this happened was in 1992 when Central Office under Major sent aides to help Bush Snr's re election campaign. After Bill Clinton won relations between No 10 and the White House were certainly somewhat frosty initially and it firmly put the Clinton White House behind Blair and New Labour
Twitter is the American public square. Foreigners trying to kill it is basically an act of war.
I find it difficult to consider policy wonks in Islington as a credible threat to a man who is worth over 400billion dollars and is willing to piss away 30 of those billions for shits and giggles.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
True but beside the point, which is that the British government party is riling a possible future US president. It's 100% sure he knows about it
Last time this happened was in 1992 when Central Office under Major sent aides to help Bush Snr's re election campaign. After Bill Clinton won relations between No 10 and the White House were certainly somewhat frosty initially and it firmly put the Clinton White House behind Blair and New Labour
Good recall. If memory serves there's a rather frosty piece of footage of Major and Clinton, with Clinton looking bored and unenthused. Not awful, but plainly not besties.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
You can't have 1 rule for public sector workers and another for private sector workers. Even if it's a niche area like pensions anything that discourages private sector workers from saving into pensions (they don't save enough at the moment) is a stupid thing.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
Cut welfare spending, push people back into work and start to trim the public sector employment bill. There are too many people working for the state and the private sector can no longer hold up the weight of it all, these taxes will just make things worse as more people drain out of the private sector and decide that a DB pension and similar wages without the hassle of having to actually do a proper job in the public sector.
I was talking to a friends daughter over the weekend.
She is on a rotation as part of a civil-service funded professional qualification. 2 months in she has never met her boss who never comes into the office (prefers to WFH) - none of her team come into the office either so she is miserable and bored. Can do her job in 3 days so just stops around the other 2…
Yup, so why should someone work extremely hard for 5 days per week in the private sector only to be taxed to fuck and get your pension decimated and pay frozen for the next 5-7 years when the public sector offers full time pay for part time work and a gold plated pension.
So when you’ve sacked all of them, where are you going to find the rest of the money?
This Guardian article, moving and tragic, has the headline ' "In the Jabalia refugee camp, my sister has reached breaking point. What will it take to stop this nightmare?" by Ahmed Najar.
It manages in trying to answer this question to avoid any mention of the issues of: handing back hostages, Hamas's position on continuing violence, and 7 October 2023. It's as if all this is wholly unrelated to Israel's continuing military policy (for which I have no particular support).
This is all understandable as polemic, but as a serious Guardian article it just doesn't begin to deal with its own question.
It is an opinion piece, rather than part of the news coverage. I'll, er, go and check if they have an article from someone related to one of the hostages now.
Got that, but it's by a journalist not a member of QAnon. The article asks a specific question, but is seriously deficient in trying to answer it. I'm not taking sides, it's just the the Guardian ought to do much better than stuff which simply does not advance reasoned argument about one of the world's most intractable issues, in which women and children are being brutally killed in large numbers.
What do I know at the end of the article that I didn't at the start?
Seeing as the decommissioning cost for nuclear is seemingly so high and we do actually require the power, why not just run indefinitely replacing worn out parts when needed ?
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
None of the dwindling number of undecided voters left who are actually going to vote will make a decision based on this.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
50m views on twitter isn't 50m people in the US. Bots, people not from the US etc... will account well over 90% of that figure.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
None of the dwindling number of undecided voters left who are actually going to vote will make a decision based on this.
Yup, the bigger issue is that if Trump wins we've soured relationships with the GOP because some idiot Labour activists couldn't keep their noses out and if Kamala wins we get zero benefit.
This Guardian article, moving and tragic, has the headline ' "In the Jabalia refugee camp, my sister has reached breaking point. What will it take to stop this nightmare?" by Ahmed Najar.
It manages in trying to answer this question to avoid any mention of the issues of: handing back hostages, Hamas's position on continuing violence, and 7 October 2023. It's as if all this is wholly unrelated to Israel's continuing military policy (for which I have no particular support).
This is all understandable as polemic, but as a serious Guardian article it just doesn't begin to deal with its own question.
It is an opinion piece, rather than part of the news coverage. I'll, er, go and check if they have an article from someone related to one of the hostages now.
Got that, but it's by a journalist not a member of QAnon. The article asks a specific question, but is seriously deficient in trying to answer it. I'm not taking sides, it's just the the Guardian ought to do much better than stuff which simply does not advance reasoned argument about one of the world's most intractable issues, in which women and children are being brutally killed in large numbers.
What do I know at the end of the article that I didn't at the start?
When Gazans overwhelmingly supported Hamas in 2006 they were explicitly voting for war with Isreal. After 18 years their patience has finally been rewarded. What have they got to complain about?
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
Almost by definition, any negative story which makes the national news will outweigh any benefit from a few extra canvassers. The Dems are not short of the latter.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
Two months out from the election, it wouldn't have mattered a damn. Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
It's a big story in the UK for some reason. I doubt it is in the US.
Yes, 99.9% of American voters won't have heard the story.
Musk heard it and retweeted it and his tweet was read by 50 million people. So you’re wrong
None of the dwindling number of undecided voters left who are actually going to vote will make a decision based on this.
Setting aside the possible effect on the US elex the juvenile and embarrassing behaviour from Labour -yet again - has potentially alienated our major ally (by a distance), infuriated the next US President, and aggrieved the richest man in the world with trillions to invest where he likes
I agree with those who say we should not grovel to America. And we shouldn’t. But what the adolescent Labour imbeciles have done is needlessly antagonise America. Fucking wankers
Yet it's fine for him to take the public stage to fellate Trump. Isn't he currently on sabbatical from the mundane issues befalling the burghers of Jaywick to ensure the return of the fash King.
Team Trump crying crocodile tears over foreign interference when the 2016 "win" was handed to him by Moscow is a bit rich.
Are the PBers crying foul doing so to embarrass Labour or because they believe Trump is hard-done-by?
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Yours is a strong response to what I put. But you are still wrong on two points of reality.
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
It's not against the rules and there are multiple examples of this kind of campaign volunteering happening both sides of the pond. You could say that having a load of people with foreign accents door knocking isn't likely to be effective but that's up to the local campaign organisation.
This row is actually about the Trump campaign storing up a bank of grievances to trot out of he loses. It's of the same piece as those dodgy opinion polls showing Trump way in the lead. In 2020 Trump started to make comments about the electoral process early for the same reason
Out of all the posters moaning today about Labour doing this based on a linkedin tweet have any previously criticised Farage for doing it, expenses paid, in person as a party leader, many times?
Two tier posting.....
There is a material difference because Labour is in government and Farage is not. Also, the issue is about reputational damage. Frankly Farage doesn't have a reputation capable of damage. He's a hypocritical dipshit - what's new?
As far as Labour is concerned, there's a conflict of interest. The government must be neutral in the political affairs of countries; the Labour Party has a reasonable objective of helping the Democrats. In general conflicts of interest should be managed - you don't necessarily eliminate them. You manage conflicts of interest through policy.
The obsession of how horrid twitter and that it censorship policy isn't strong enough against Russian bots I find very strange, while TikTok, literally CCP spyware and many suspect algorithmically designed to push divisive content, is given a totally free ride. The CCP have taken what Russian did with Facebook 10 years ago and turned it into an addictive app.
Twitter is the American public square. Foreigners trying to kill it is basically an act of war.
I find it difficult to consider policy wonks in Islington as a credible threat to a man who is worth over 400billion dollars and is willing to piss away 30 of those billions for shits and giggles.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
Typically the average mileage cycled by a person in Holland is around 800% of that cycled in the UK.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
But we still can't really compare until we have as much cycling as the Netherlands as the mix is very likely quite different.
Also worth noting that is an article by a notorious anti-cycling lobbyist who must have been taking a break from astroturfing as a blind lobbyist to prevent cycle lanes running behind built-out bus boarding points (the global best practice standard that's somehow become a culture war issue in the UK).
A remarkable statistic is that over half of Dutch cycling fatalities are pensioners, whereas in the UK it's received wisdom that "older people can't cycle" and any attempt to deprioritise the private motor car is ageist discrimination (one of the factors in people continuing to drive long after they should have stopped doing so for everyone's safety).
The last big ITF study attempting to estimate the denominator was I think 2021 so data for the first half of the 2010s, and concluded that deaths per 100m km cycled were 2.1 in the UK and 0.8 in the Netherlands. If the recent increase is genuine and sustained it might take them to around 1.3 - cause unclear, one hypothesis is that they're going faster because of high take-up of ebikes.
Yes, the headline isn't really supported at all once one digs into the figures, including those in the article itself!
Twitter is the American public square. Foreigners trying to kill it is basically an act of war.
I find it difficult to consider policy wonks in Islington as a credible threat to a man who is worth over 400billion dollars and is willing to piss away 30 of those billions for shits and giggles.
How do you suggest he does that? Full scale invasion, pulling Tesla chargers from MOTO services or ban Labour MPs from a blue tick?
If they believe what they say about Trump being a fascist, then targeted assassinations in retaliation ought to be expected. Possibly a drone strike on Labour HQ.
Twitter is the American public square. Foreigners trying to kill it is basically an act of war.
I find it difficult to consider policy wonks in Islington as a credible threat to a man who is worth over 400billion dollars and is willing to piss away 30 of those billions for shits and giggles.
The obsession of how horrid twitter and that it censorship policy isn't strong enough against Russian bots I find very strange, while TikTok, literally CCP spyware and many suspect algorithmically designed to push divisive content, is given a totally free ride. The CCP have taken what Russian did with Facebook 10 years ago and turned it into an addictive app.
The radicalisation spiral algorithms predate any "Russian election interference" by a long, long way. They were inherent in how Farcebook became a giant. And are present in all the social media "recommendations" system I see.
Comments
It HAS allowed Trump campaign to score a broadbrush win here, adding the UK Labour Party to the list of malign foreign actors such as the Putin regime, interfering in US democracy. It matters as malign foreign actors in the election are now seen as not entirely for Trump, but Harris too. And matters as it allows MAGA leadership prominent media time to paint UK Labour Party as extremely left wing and anti American. And for many Americans, this is how they will now know Starmer’s Labour. This is actually happening in front your eyes, so you can’t dismiss it as harmless.
Also, in reality, there is no such thing as sister parties in other countries.Those sisters parties are patriotic nationalists to their own country, whose interests and values cannot completely be shared with ours. It’s as daft as finding the aliens from the planet Zarg rather cute. They are not cute. Any second they can turn ugly and vicious, and lethal to you.
What the immature children running the Labour Party done here is simply daft.
I changed my views on Trump from 'he's a typical hard right, American conservative radio commentator style blowhard' to 'this guy could be a full on fascist' after his Veteran's day speech where he literally used fascist language and imagery:
"“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections" and "The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within. Our threat is from within. Because if you have a capable, competent, smart, tough leader, Russia, China, North Korea, they’re not going to want to play with us."
Calling your opponents "scum" is one thing, threatening to "root out" the "vermin" in your own country, while talking about "grave threats from within" while comaparing himself to a strongman who can stand up to other countries led by strongmen.
Yeah, that was him going full fash.
"Ms. Harris has assembled a unified and electrified coalition. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to Liz and Dick Cheney, it is the broadest we have seen in modern political history. And Ms. Harris’s coalition is just as excited as the smaller opposition. This is shaping out to be a record-turnout election — and if the bigger coalition turns out with equal enthusiasm, it will be lights out for Mr. Trump."
"With her field operation moving like a tremendous machine, it seems likely there has never been a greater disparity in voter contact efforts."
"Mr. Trump is a loser; he is going to lose again. And it is highly likely that there will be no other who can carry the MAGA mantle in his wake — certainly not his running mate."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/opinion/trump-kamala-harris-democrats.html
https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/why-independent-voters-are-turning-to-trump-b30ncthnj
In addition, everyone is pissed off that the NHS and other public sector institutions are shit. If you cut their funding, they will get even shitter. No government can win.
Father Daniel Doherty, 61, was seen repeatedly kissing the much younger man. On two more occasions he fondled the man, who had passed out after drinking. The victim later reported that Doherty had put his hands inside his trousers.
Doherty, the parish priest at St Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Falkirk, admitted at Kirkcaldy sheriff court to three charge of sexual assault.
The incident was witnessed by members of the public and continued for about an hour, Sarah Smith, fiscal depute, told the court.
Doherty has been removed from duties and is on the sex offenders register. In a statement, the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh offered a “profound apology” to the victim and commended his courage for coming forward. It said that when the allegations had first come to light Doherty voluntarily withdrew himself from active ministry.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/priest-admits-fondling-sleeping-train-passenger-jqw9kzhq0
But all this talk about the Netherlands reminds me of when I was there having a drink with a friend and her 5-year-old son in Amsterdam. We were sitting outside and the cafe was next to a busy cycle lane. The kid spontaneously decided to run out into the lane in the manner of small children, exactly as a woman on her heavy bike was riding past us at speed. Luckily I'd been watching him in case he did that and grabbed him in time.
Anyway, though I know anybody would have done it, saving a friend's child from serious injury gave me a good feeling for the next couple of days and I floated around on a cloud of smug. Sort of the feeling Trump gets when he's just fired 30 people or Putin when he's just blown up another children's cancer hospital I expect.
Someone on RTÉ news has just said that Trump was quite complimentary about Starmer after the landslide victory.
Ten days out, it's at least partially cost the Democrats a precious news cycle. Naive nonsense from Labour.
This row is actually about the Trump campaign storing up a bank of grievances to trot out of he loses. It's of the same piece as those dodgy opinion polls showing Trump way in the lead. In 2020 Trump started to make comments about the electoral process early for the same reason
Starmer/the party can't control what they do in their spare time. Well they could but...
VoteHub
https://projects.votehub.com/pages/campaign-tracker
https://projects.votehub.com/pages/early-voting-tracker
Nationwide
All: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/
2024: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/
2020: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
2016: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1fz_V3oAUL8XJMEudq5wm5hDT_f554uagt6sIm_sJDro/edit?gid=1996929977#gid=1996929977
Nevada
2024: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-2024
2020: https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/the-early-voting-blog-3
2024: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/2024-general-election-early-vote-nevada/
2020: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/NV.html
Pennsylvania
2024: https://x.com/VoteHubUS/status/1848747132334793067
2024: https://election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2024-early-voting/2024-general-election-early-vote-pennsylvania/
2020: https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html
Two tier posting.....
There are definitely a couple of these at least that I'd visit, if I get back to Seoul.
Where to eat at restaurants run by 'Culinary Class Wars' finalists in Seoul
https://m.koreatimes.co.kr/pages/article.asp?newsIdx=384779
(Contains spoilers, obviously.)
(Edit) I've already tried the kalguksu at Gyeongdong Market.
The Trump campaign has responsed though 'When Sofia Patel, the Labour Party’s head of operations, posted on the site last week that she was coordinating nearly 100 current and former party officials to campaign in battleground states in the final weeks of the US presidential election, she surely could not have imagined that she would provoke a legal complaint filed in Florida.
In a formal complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the Trump presidential campaign’s deputy general counsel declared: “When representatives of the British government previously sought to go door-to-door in America, it did not end well for them.”
Last week, he noted, was the 243rd anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown - a military victory which ensured the United States’ enduring independence from “Great Britian" [sic].'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce318l17dd3o
https://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=b7d2e65d-f396-4270-b2e1-62423de28238
Officers on trial after shooting suspects to be anonymous in future, says Yvette Cooper
Home secretary says new rules in England and Wales will mean armed officers stay anonymous unless convicted
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/oct/23/officers-on-trial-after-shooting-suspects-to-be-anonymous-in-future-says-yvette-cooper
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-linked-censorship-group-plans-to-kill-musks-twitter/
National Audit Office questions value for money as predicted bill for decommissioning increases by £21bn
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/23/sellafield-cleanup-cost-136bn-national-audit-office
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cp959pjvn9jt
"In the Jabalia refugee camp, my sister has reached breaking point. What will it take to stop this nightmare?" by Ahmed Najar.
It manages in trying to answer this question to avoid any mention of the issues of: handing back hostages, Hamas's position on continuing violence, and 7 October 2023. It's as if all this is wholly unrelated to Israel's continuing military policy (for which I have no particular support).
This is all understandable as polemic, but as a serious Guardian article it just doesn't begin to deal with its own question.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/20/jabalia-refugee-camp-gaza-sister-breaking-point-nightmare
https://www.itv.com/news/central/2024-10-23/birmingham-airport-evacuated-after-eyewitness-reports-of-bomb-threat
A remarkable statistic is that over half of Dutch cycling fatalities are pensioners, whereas in the UK it's received wisdom that "older people can't cycle" and any attempt to deprioritise the private motor car is ageist discrimination (one of the factors in people continuing to drive long after they should have stopped doing so for everyone's safety).
The last big ITF study attempting to estimate the denominator was I think 2021 so data for the first half of the 2010s, and concluded that deaths per 100m km cycled were 2.1 in the UK and 0.8 in the Netherlands. If the recent increase is genuine and sustained it might take them to around 1.3 - cause unclear, one hypothesis is that they're going faster because of high take-up of ebikes.
Given the response to the Guardian organised thing, last time, especially.
...
Not finding one. A temporary oversight I'm sure.
So the polite cyclists stop and the thug eBikers (generally delivery people) zoom through, often yelling at anyone who impeded their progress.
https://x.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1849067632009298174
I think that should be the case for everyone in these kind of circumstances, particularly for something like a terrorist attack where decisions are taken quickly and the threat of reprisal is high.
The line between murder and heroism is necessarily fine in that scenario, and could be ultimately determined by the opinion of a jury.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1848875059265605639
I have to say the food on this Japan trip has been stunningly good. I’ve not been to Japan for 30 years and it’s even better than I remembered
The best food in the world? It must be up there. Probably is the best
And it’s so varied compared to what we get in the west (sushi, tempura, sashimi, ramen)
Only the oysters have mildly disappointed. Don’t think Japan does good oysters
The beef on the other hand….
What do I know at the end of the article that I didn't at the start?
When you land a rocket into a giant pair of metal chopsticks thereby paving the way to mankind living on Mars do get back to us
Half the US wants to kill it off now, too.
I'm not a believer in censorship, but campaigning for it isn't political interference.
It's not complicated.
I agree with those who say we should not grovel to America. And we shouldn’t. But what the adolescent Labour imbeciles have done is needlessly antagonise America. Fucking wankers
Team Trump crying crocodile tears over foreign interference when the 2016 "win" was handed to him by Moscow is a bit rich.
Are the PBers crying foul doing so to embarrass Labour or because they believe Trump is hard-done-by?
As far as Labour is concerned, there's a conflict of interest. The government must be neutral in the political affairs of countries; the Labour Party has a reasonable objective of helping the Democrats. In general conflicts of interest should be managed - you don't necessarily eliminate them. You manage conflicts of interest through policy.
Starmer and Labour are too fucking dumb and childish to grasp this. They are so desperately bad at EVERYTHING