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The Canadian petri dish – politicalbetting.com
The Canadian petri dish – politicalbetting.com
Former Governor of the Bank of England turned Prime Minister of Canada Mark Carney has called an election for the 28th of April and this will be a test if Donald Trump’s interventions can shape elections outside of Les Etats-Unis.
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R4 have a good documentary on the modern gambling industry, though yet to talk about FOBT and laundering
F1: Chinese Grand Prix review in the latest Undercutters podcast. Weirdly, Apple is being ultra-slow, so I'll add that link when it comes through.
Anyway, Tsunoda gets shafted by his strategy team (again), Ferrari have a very mixed weekend, Alonso's luck remains awful, and Piastri rapidly narrows the gap to Norris.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-chinese-grand-prix-review/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RrRUWYBdL1Wgsh08GFxhM
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/0423e194-ae55-4e4c-8ed6-77bc4c25e313/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-chinese-grand-prix-review
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/03/f1-2025-chinese-grand-prix-review.html
That said I don’t think it will be a slam dunk for the Tories like it was looking a couple of months ago.
Hopefully I will be alive when their memoirs can be released as it’s going to be interesting by to find out if they see the madness or if actually Amercans actually are ok with this reset.
Most Scots want to keep UK’s nuclear deterrent, poll shows
Support to retain the Clyde-based weapons is even strong among supporters of the SNP, which wants unilateral disarmament
A majority of Scots believe that Britain should keep its nuclear arsenal amid calls for the SNP to reconsider its historic demand for unilateral disarmament.
A poll has found that 56 per cent believe the UK should retain its independent nuclear deterrent, compared with 22 per cent who think it should be given up.
The SNP has long campaigned for Britain to unconditionally relinquish its Trident nuclear submarines, which are based on the Clyde (the Royal Navy’s headquarters in Scotland), arguing that they are both financially and morally wrong.
However, Ian Blackford, the party’s former Westminster leader, recently became the first senior nationalist to break ranks, citing Russian aggression and uncertainty over President Trump’s commitment to European defence.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/scottish-people-back-nuclear-deterrent-uk-snp-7kjm7kp2s
Checking - it has been done back in 2018:
Donald, Where's Your Troosers?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y11yHLvmzA0
"He says his mum's from the Isle of Skye
But he doesn'y drink and he don't get high
He's never Scottish - Jings Och Aye !
Donald is a Doozer."
A strange one - New York State has suddenly started enforcing on false number plates, slightly (they caught just 5000 in one year). Strange because the most notorious and corrupt offenders have been NYPD employees and City Officials.
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-marks-one-year-largest-city-and-state-interagency-task-force-remove-ghost-cars
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-chinese-grand-prix-review/id1786574257?i=1000700713959
His maw is from the Isle of Lewis (fake news in itself as it's actually the Isle of Lewis & Harris).
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1904241328407580875
There are few wingnuts on the fringes of the Nats who beleive that Trump could be their helper, but I think they misunderstand their man. The late Mrs. Trump was one of those with a great love for the crown, hence the simpering flesh crawl of Trump to the Royal family. The SNP was founded by Communists like Hugh McDairmid.
Akshata Murty joins Mariella Frostrup and Vick Hope among new museum appointees
...
Meanwhile, Sir Keir has also approved several new appointments at the British Museum... Its new trustees include Claudia Winkleman, the presenter of the popular television programme The Traitors, along with Martha Kearney, presenter of BBC Radio 4’s The World at One, and Tom Holland, the historian.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/24/starmer-appoints-rishi-sunak-wife-v-and-a-trustee-murty-uk/ (£££)
Turns out it is not just President Trump who only appoints people he has seen on telly.
The SNP are staring obliteration in the face.
The weird thing about this regime is that the more they proclaim a white, Christian, European vision of America, the more they hate Europe. There must be some kind of psychology thesis to be written about this.
But their hierarchy of contempt extends domestically too. The more familiar, the more they despise. US Liberals are at the top, then Canadians, then Europeans. It’s civil war thinking.
Obliteration might just be the man for the job.
Yet the Liberals are massively up on last year's polls to near 40% as they squeeze the NDP, BQ and Green voters to give Carney a mandate to stand up to Trump on his tariffs and annexation threats
Most of Trump's wives including Melania are Eastern European
An oddity: the outfit in Europe the warmongering gangsters should hate most is the one which moralistically proclaims its neutrality, was neutral in WWII and de facto relies on everyone else, especially the UK and USA, to make sure the Russians don't attack it. Step forward the Republic of Ireland. Do I detect a degree of silence, even from Trump on the matter?
Mrs Sunak will be able to run a pretty fair bake sale.
refuse them both even if they
were stupid enough to allow
them an Indyref2 the nationalists won
But the BBC continues to give relatively scant attention to the big story: USA has switched sides, and USA is becoming a rogue state both externally and internally.
BTW did you see the Sunday Times named Telegraph Hill as one of Britain's top neighbourhoods? Feeling even smugger than usual.
To re-iterate, as some of the more frequent posters don't seem to either know or understand politics that well, the key polling numbers in Canada aren't the nationwide ones but the regional ones.
Canada, for all it is a vast country, is quite concentrated demographically - of the 338 ridings which make up the Parliament, nearly 200 are in Ontario and Quebec. The other marginal area is British Columbia but the prairie states (Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan) will likely retain mostly Conservatives while the Atlantic coastal provinces return mostly Liberals.
In Quebec, you obviously have Bloc Quebecois to consider.
The only recent regional polling is in Nova Scotia which returns just 11 MPs - last time it split 8 Liberal and 3 Conservatives. The latest poll (from March 20th) has the Liberals up by four points on the 2021 result and the Conservatives up eight so a net 2% swing to the Tories. The NDP are down ten points.
IF we see similar nationally, you'd expect a Conservative lead of about five points but the latest Angus Reid has an eight point Liberal lead. The Conservatives need to be doing well in Ontario in particular which elected 78 Liberals and 37 Conservatives but there's been no recent polling. Any Liberal progress in Ontario and Quebec means Carney wins to be blunt. The Conservatives do themselves little good piling up votes in Alberta (30 of 34 seats) and Saskatchewan (all 14 seats).
The battlegrounds are Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia which have 243 of the 338 ridings - polls from those regions are what anyone looking to have a bet on this election should be analysing as well as any individual riding polling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNMdRzK9Nj0
A Telegraph investigation itemises the astonishing bills racked up by civil servants at the taxpayers’ expense"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/24/government-credit-cards-spending/
https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/51484-how-do-britons-feel-about-brexit-five-years-on
I have no idea why anyone expects the SNP to be obliterated who knows anything about Scotland
Indeed I expect they will do very well next year for Holyrood not least now Sturgeon has been cleared
Oh.
Carnage for the NDP.
This is what you get under FPTP.
I wonder how much was wasted then on pointless things such as ice cream, dry cleaning, getting out of the EU....
It's taken a while, but at this rate they could be the main opposition party after the 2028/9 election.
Cannot blame them, given the fact the King is rolling out the red carpet for Trump.
Most British Columbians want Canada to abandon the constitutional monarchy
https://victoriabuzz.com/2025/03/most-british-columbians-want-canada-to-abandon-the-constitutional-monarchy/
Most likely outcome, with Indy off the table, is an SNP-Labour "grand coalition". Swinney will want to remain as First Minister and Sarwar will be desperate to get into office. And, on most issues (apart from Indy) there is very little between them. LibDems likely to be part of it too depending on the numbers - they certainly want to get back into Govt.
From wiki: "About 60 percent of British Columbians have European descent with significant Asian and Aboriginal minorities. Just under 30% of British Columbians are immigrants. Over half of the population is irreligious, with Christianity and Sikhism being the most followed religions."
I don't agree with freebies for politicians, particularly the CoE, but at least it's not a Lebedev bunga bunga party bung to a serving British Foreign Secretary.
The enthusiasm with which certain activist types sell “only White people can be racist” and “it’s racist to suggest that non-white ethnic groups don’t all love each other” is quite telling.
These are the same people negotiating with Russia - one was probably in the group chat from there.
We're allowing people who actively hate Europe to negotiate its future. The implications of that are not something that we can hope to avoid like tariffs.
His writings (see the one that was linked to recently about his conversion to Catholicism) seem to show a need to boast about what he has achieved and what he knows.
More generally Washington resembles a Tudor court more than a modern government.
Trump has all the insecure, grandiose, erratic narcissism of late stage Henry VIII.
Mike Pence / Thomas More as the former favourite who chose his conscience over his master orders.
Vance as the Thomas Cromwell figure - low born and talented but always looked down on by those born to privilege.
The likes of Musk, Rubio, Hegseth scheming for position as the Howards, Seymours and such like did.
There's even a weak ineffective legislature and a threatened judicial system.
Powerful Republics, paradoxically, are more wedded to the idea that “the will of the Prince has the force of law.”
(Using Prince in its older sense, as Head of Government).
@MaxKendix
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19m
EXC: The Lower Thames Crossing has been approved by the government. The £9billion project has been in the pipeline since 2009. £300m spent on the planning application alone.
That isn't, of course, always welcome to liberal-minded people like most of us. If women wearing headscarves becomes more common, should we object, even if it's at least superficially a matter of individual choice?
Can you have a Black Swan event which is heavily trailed and predicted and overtly announced on the election trail for months. Well, if you can this is the Black Swan of Black Swans, needing I think a new sort of Swan.
The PM and government need some time and a bit of slack.
It is the imbalance in power that has led to the oppression. It nearly always is.
I presume the figure quoted here is simply the expenditure by RIBA Work Stage 3.
With a ruler who proclaims his absolute power, untrammelled by law, but places the actual administration in the hands of incompetent favourites.
Which would make Vance the Duke of Buckingham.*
The Tudors, after all, proved rather competent - though brutal - monarchs.
You have a point with the multiple wives, of course.
*Also fond of facial hair and guyliner...
Anyway, I think this is basically fatal for the
LabourLondon Party. Equivalent to 4GW of offshore wind, 9000 miles of cycle infrastructure or a quarter of HS2 to Manchester.