The odds tumble on my 100/1 tip – politicalbetting.com
The odds tumble on my 100/1 tip – politicalbetting.com
I don’t expect either to become PM before 2030 (odds fallings from 100/1 to 50/1 means something has gone from being extremely unlikely to very unlikely) but I’d expect some polls in the next few months showing their party doing well which would impact their odds so I saw it as a decent trading bet.
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This country is being driven mad by a sense of entitlement but even we are not that stupid.
Are we?
Checking as far as I can easily, these seem to be like E-Scooters, and that would make it a "Personal Light Electric Vehicle - PLEV", AFAICS. That is, outside identified categories.
I think that would make them illegal and potentially subject to confiscation if noticed by police. And you would need a driving license, type approval etc.
But that says nothing about whether they are safe or not. For that I would ask if they are compliant to the BS-EN standard mentioned yesterday, which covers the electrical system. And I would want a removable battery that I can keep separate whilst it is at home, and charge away from the pram, and to be self-contained away from the baby whilst it is in the pram.
Golden Rule One would be "do not charge with the baby in the pram".
Personally I'd keep it in the hard-floored conservatory or porch or garage, and only have the baby in it when in use, and transport the battery separated where I can see it for any distance in eg a car and not in the middle of a boot of "stuff".
More may be known by specialist pram shops, maybe in Which reports etc.
Final Note: There is an extensive (350 page) report from Jan 2025 on this whole area, here:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67a1e68dad556423b636c9c0/plev-battery-safety-report-amended.pdf
(That's me done on this topic for now - thanks all for the constructive comments.)
F1: rambling about Hungary, including Leclerc's woe, Norris starting badly and being ironically aided by the one-stop it forced him into, and great points for Aston Martin and Bortoleto.
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-hungarian-grand-prix-review/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/f1-2025-hungarian-grand-prix-review/id1786574257?i=1000720686680
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3pY779CSNXjrwFrndvfZdu
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/bf72d485-b20c-4b17-aed0-d9d8fd106e65/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-hungarian-grand-prix-review
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/08/f1-2025-hungarian-grand-prix-review.html
But I agree, much as I have a soft spot for both Sultana and Magic Grandpa, Your Party is likely to win only a handful of seats under FPTP.
More Independents in Parliament is probably a good thing, but may present problems in a NOC Parliament.
Off topic - Storm Bastard was fun. Wind speeds lower than Arwen but hitting trees covered in leaves - so an awful lot of branches and full trees down. We had a power cut of 4 hours - was brilliant going up to the village hall to see a generator running hooked up to swathes of extension leads so people could charge stuff up, communal cooking going on, kids having fun - exactly why I live in this community.
We were blessed that our power outage was reasonably easy to fix (remove the big branch from the inbound feed). So many other communities across the north and north east are still without power this morning.
In general, PB’s complacent accommodation of the prospect of PM Farage while electoral success for Sultana & Corbyn is seen as the wildest of hallucinations indicates the centre of gravity on here. To quote a not so great man, S & C may surprise on the upside.
Let's be honest - very few people ever become Prime Minister so the "field" for the race is always much smaller than the bookies would have you believe.
The only realistic candidates to succeed Starmer currently are someone in his own Cabinet, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage and neither of the last two have that much chance before 2028/9 and given how hard it is for Labour to get rid of a leader who doesn't want to go, all you're left with are these periodic unsubstantiated pieces from the anti-Government media claiming either that Starmer doesn't want to be Prime Minister any longer or the Cabinet is about to revolt and depose him.
Neither seem very probable either so until and unless Starmer decides to walk away, it's all conjecture.
MY feeling currently is Badenoch and Farage are much less secure in their positions than Starmer.
The real question is how that holds up in an election. Will their line about Blue Labour stop their supporters voting Labour, tactically?
There’s a parallel with the hard left (yes, they exist) in the US - some of whom refused to vote Dem to stop Trump.
Cant see them polling much into double figures after the initial surge of interest. Theyll run at kind of Green levels or just under - 5 to 10%. Enough to hamstring or damage any party with left/Gaza credentials polling well witn the youngest cohort.
YouGov is out and sees little change
Ref 27 (-2)
Lab 21 (-1)
Con 17 (=)
LD 15 (+1)
Grn 11 (=)
SNP 3 (=)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp8zlwd3e42o
...A combination of these conditions - poor treatment, hazardous work and structural discrimination - all contributed to a disproportionately high death toll among Koreans.
According to the Korean Atomic Bomb Victims Association, the Korean fatality rate was 57.1%, compared to the overall rate of about 33.7%.
About 70,000 Koreans were exposed to the bomb. By year's end, some 40,000 had died...
A combination of distrust of anyone connected with Japan, and a deep societal prejudice against the 'disfigured' meant returning survivors were more or less ignored in Korea, too.
I mean, it's not like the old days when Rab Butler would throw a custard pie at Richard Dimbleby - ah, whatever happened to good old fashioned political slapstick? The last Home Secretary to have a sense of humour was Theresa May - whatever happened to her?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c04r7l455zeo
Newham continues to go downhill rapidly - there was a strong and active hosuing enforcement team and a licensing system in place for private landlords but all that appears to have fallen apart and we are creating a new generation of slums alongside brand new flats which no one can afford to buy.
So I consider it very possible that we get to a place where a reactionary party on the left gains similar traction to the reactionary party on the right. We have the Fukkers protesting outside hotels and now anti-fukkers protesting the fukkers. Reform vs Corbynism. One party is flying, the other is new, but no reason why they can't grow.
He is also an utter tosser but that is beside the point.
My local contacts tell me the Conservatives ran a strong campaign in Bromley Common but still came up short.
The next contests of personal interest will be those in Addlestone and Hinchley Wood, Claygate & Oxshott in a fortnight or so. August by elections are always strange and generally have low turnout.
With the death of a County Councillor in Camberley West (another Con-LD marginal) earlier this week, Surrey now has 40 Conservative Councillors, 38 Opposition Councillors and 3 vacancies so if the Conservatives fail to win any of the vacancies, they will technically be a minority administration, not that it matters much but we will probably have elections to the new Shadow Authorities next spring.
“Entitled” seemed a reasonable 1 word summary.
The problem, as usual, is more complicated. Many people would be ok with better services, in return for more taxes.
What they actually see, locally and nationally, is services run badly.
So we seem to have a combination of “there’s no money” and poor cost control.
Most people assume that 5p on income tax would simply disappear into The Machine, with no noticeable change. They are probably right.
The government absolutely deserves criticism for being extremely slow in starting to address the many problems it inherited.
But a belief this can all be sorted with some magical policies within a year is nonsense.
Now of course the circumstances of the UK and US are very different, but there’s still millions of voters who don’t understand why the illegal crossers aren’t being immediately returned to France, or at least held in a tent city on an old airbase somewhere rather than in hotels.
People think they are entitled to be able to find work that pays their bills. To have those bills not keep going up. To receive a viable level of public services and social infrastructure back for their record tax payments.
There is a see of anger and discontent out there and I agree with the people who are sick of the LabCon blaming each other whilst doing nothing strategic.
That leaves the door open to new solutions being found. The LabCon duopoly has failed. In Scotland and Wales the sole party in power have failed in their respective domains. Change is coming.
You and I might wee ourselves laughing at the idea that Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are appealing to anyone. But we're not their target voter. Jezbollah motivated an awful lot of people (and yes, repelled even more). I can see the return of the Magic Grandpa - back to being a symbol of protest and resistance rather than pretending to be a viable government - attracting a whole lot of younger and more radical voters.
If - and its a very big if - they can focus attention onto home issues and not Gaza. With the greatest of respect to the people enraged by Gaza, that isn't going to attract people other than you. But talk about injustice (where Gaza is a foreign example) and play on injustice at home? Could do decent business.
We also know Reform's "programme" is likely to fall apart quicker than the England tail end (too soon?) once it's out in the public domain and Farage will be spending the campaign trying to either a) defend the inconsistencies and/or b) rebutting accusations about what his candidates tweeted in 2010 about (you can fill in the rest yourself).
Reform could perhaps win because the other parties will get in each other's way but we know there's a strong anti-Farage sentiment out there which can be effectively mobilised but that's the only way I can see it happening.
When 30p et al say "stick em in tents" they don't mean it. They would agitate for unrest at the tent city.
Everyone in politics (bar Corbynites maybe) want order restored to migration and the boats to stop. But as we don't have a magic wand we can't just go from today's mess to no migrants with one leap...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/05/britain-loses-more-than-1100-pubs-and-restaurants-in-wake-o/
If the country wants 'Change' then it's the Left that hasn't been tried.
Gosh. Amazing how difficult it was for him to turn that round.
They do cool things like "rock themselves".
At base, it could make sense in at least 3 circs I can see:
1 - A mobility impaired parent.
2 - Care by an elderly relative.
3 - Living somewhere hilly - eg Sheffield?
Politicians seem to think that we like them earnest and serious. I’m not so sure. Boris is the obvious exception and he did alright. Salmond could also be funny. I think we might appreciate a sense of the ridiculous rather more than most politicians think.
The pub that was empty on Saturday that we were discussing on here (wet only, closed at 7pm), now has the landlord doing a piece in Telegraph explaining why things are shite.
Matthew Todd
The village pub I run is being taxed to death
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/08/05/the-village-pub-i-run-is-being-taxed-to-death
As much as I hope they would set up a huge investment fund such as the Norwegians did or pay off national debt I just feel that it would be blown by salami slicing it into little areas where it would only ultimately have marginal effects.
The only reason someone like Farage, who for his many faults, can speak the language of many voters much better, is not even further ahead in the polls, is because of his sizeable baggage.
Boris was a similar “anti-politician” to many.
They’d have taken the hit at the time, but instead took the hit anyway with a load of tinkering that annoyed many organised groups of people a lot (farmers, pensioners, private school parents and teachers), had to back down on the only one that raised serious money (the WFA) and so are left with the political hit but no extra revenue for it.
Holding at an historically low level is not really shooting for the stars of course
It's complicated - I go back to the notion of us wanting European standards of public services on American levels of tax. That being said, if we are to pay European levels of tax, we should get commensurate levels of service and as I've mentioned earlier, we are failing on some of the basics such as housing. The problem, and I've seen this from both sides, is we expect our local councils in particular to provide service levels with minimum or often below minimum levels of resources. That's not necessarily a plea to give Councils more money but a recognition perhaps the way things are done needs to be fundamentally reassessed but not from a cost basis.
I'm also wary of the advent of "consumerism" - look at how our true leader is actually Martin Lewis. Lewis taps into two things - first, our resentment at how large private (and public) companies treat their customers and second, the truth these companies are more interested in their own profit margins than the service they provide.
The cost of everything and the value of nothing?
Otherwise all we are dealing with is the symptoms. We're lucky we're at the end of an arduous journey, and not on the front line.
Meanwhile my wife gets to spend time with her father who’s now 72 and not in the best of health, and I get a quiet couple of weeks off what’s been a very stressful job for the past year or so.
I’ll be up in your neck of the woods in a couple of weeks’ time, have a family reunion in Glasgow and will be showing Mrs Sandpit the Loch Ness monster, Edinburgh, and some of the surrounding scenery!
It's politicians taking the piss that they object to.
Boris went from the first category to the second.
Corbyn's best time was in June 2017. 0.5% for Labour, straight from the Conservatives; and a few of the closer calls falling his way and yeah, he could've been PM then. But not now. He'll be 80 years old at the time of the next election.
Maybe leader of his new party (if they can find a name) for a year or two to build brand name and recognition before handing over to Sultana or someone else - that's assuming they get a decent start and keep going. But I think they'll go the way of Veritas personally......
Ealing, Greenwich, Tower Hamlets look ripe for extinction
Edit - and Kingston
Jeez, I'm definitely in a Carry On mood this morning.
It’ll need to be codified at some point though, if the GOP don’t want the next Dem president to reverse course.
Congress, as usual and no matter which side is running it, are more in hock to themselves and their donors than the wishes of the American people. To those who think the British political class is aloof and disinterested, as usual the Americans do things bigger and better.
Although, to clarify, I refute the suggestion that we in the Lib Dems would be embarrassed about it at all.
Then another 100 billion program on trying to discover why retention in the NHS has gone down.
TNT will be showing this winter’s Ashes.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/aug/05/tnt-sports-secures-live-rights-england-ashes-tour-australia-test-cricket
Oh well, at least The Hundred starts today nn
https://x.com/LouiseRawAuthor/status/1952100402180268232
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/aug/05/how-did-british-pub-food-get-so-grim-gastropubs
Sky used to send their own full commentary team.
How odd that someone into crackpot conspiracy theories should be all "anti-woke" and join Reform.