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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » To start Christmas week a contender for the Tweet exchange of the year
Possibly my favourite tweet exchange of the year. People wonder why I doubt Montie's abilities as a pundit pic.twitter.com/VFdskPQyfS
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At the end of an era
The First thing to go
Are the heads of our leaders
Kicked down in the road...
On the day of reckoning
When we've struck & won
Watch close as their heroes
Go crashing down on the pavement...
The workers in Poland rose
& in Hungary too
Somoza & Jose fell
... Azania coming soon!
Kick over the statues
And the tyrants die
Wave bye bye with a hammer
To their heroes
The first act of freedom
All over the world
Is to topple the statues
Kick the bosses over
Well, except for the front bench MPs who took his lies and smear as gospel.
Other than them, no one takes him seriously.
i) An hour after the exit poll came out
https://twitter.com/LabourEoin/status/596435430880452609
ii) Then this after Swindon South and Nuneaton had shown swings from Lab to Con
https://twitter.com/LabourEoin/status/596478437839269888
I can remember the proprietor of a major political betting website repeatedly lambasting posters who thought the polls might be wrong … because polling had become so sophisticated since 1992, and that kind of blunder could never occur again.
He's a deeply unappealing character who has no sense of his own unimportance.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100194054/another-glorious-apology-from-dr-eoin-clarke/
Unfortunately there's just not enough bandwith on the internet to list all his apologies.
Fergie could be all of those things but in the main he favoured open, attacking football, Mourinho is anything but.
Well you don't come to this website for humility, that's for sure.
On other sites you may also observe the phenomenon of posters, who loudly proclaimed how stupid others were for doubting the polls ahead of the election, returning unruffled to the fray to again trumpet how clever and well-informed they are and how stupid everyone else is.
Jeremy Corbyn is hugely popular. Why are people even trying to deny it any more?
#Jez100
https://t.co/OJ4eX3dJq5
There's a gem from 2011, Osborne/QE is stoking up inflation and unemployment. Inflation and unemployment will cost the Tories the 2015 General Election
Jeremy Corbyn was accused by a senior Labour MP today of acting like an “SNP troll” for criticising backbenchers who applauded Hilary Benn’s speech backing airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-like-an-snp-troll-for-attacking-benn-supporters-says-exminister-a3141941.html
Now both have been brought low - we are in a new era and can be sceptical about every party and Party.
Edinson Cavani sent-off after Gonzalo Jara 'inserted finger into his anus' during Uruguay's 1-0 Copa America defeat to Chile
http://ind.pn/22kmTyq
Utter boll8cks. Remember what Keane did to that guy's leg? Any footie supporter who is preening about the morality of their club is on thin ice.
Liverpool is particularly bad. Everlasting breast beating about Hillsborough whilst Heysel is conveniently forgotten.
Looking at the Spanish elections, a stronger showing for Podemos and a weaker showing for Citizens than I had expected with both the old parties taking a hit. Interesting to see how this one develops.
Having your own awards thread is a sure sign of self-indulgence but mercifully most of us will have better things to do than endure Eagles and his endless "look we Tories won when everyone said we wouldn't" series of threads between now and New Year.
This has come in part from the mistaken belief that being a victim grants you some sort of moral status, some sort of moral halo or special immunity. A victim is just a word to describe a person who has suffered a crime or injury. It has no moral meaning. But somehow we have moved to a position in society where our feelings of compassion for someone who has suffered have resulted in us imbuing the person who has suffered into someone whose status qua victim - and, therefore, his/her views etc - are special, to be given special attention, to be beyond criticism, to be sanctified in some way.
Victims can be bad people; bad people can be and are victims.
Little wonder that people want to be classified as "victims" when it grants them this sort of secular holiness and they can make demands, no matter how unreasonable, which people feel unable to refuse because, poor things, it would make them feel even worse.
It's beyond pathetic: why would you want to be a victim, for God's sake? What a pathetic ambition. It's like wanting to be ill, just for the fuss. It's childish and narcissistic. It's what happens when we confuse sentimentality with true compassion, when we confuse self-esteem (the cry of the adolescent) with self-respect (the mark of an adult), when we confuse false sentiment and incontinent emotional outpouring with a proper moral sense of what it means to injure others, the difference between real repentance and remorse and how to cope with life's inevitable injuries and disappointments.
What's more most of the people claiming this are not victims in any sense of the word. They have suffered no injury. But they look for something which will allow them to claim "offence" precisely because no-one will challenge them. And the answer to people claiming "offence" in this way is "Grow up." Or "Oh dear. Never mind. You'll get over it."
Van Gaal watch.
TNS consituency figures for the under 65s:
SNP 65% Lab 20% Con 9%
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5Ik-gKDMpozRlFtcVA5X29kUE0/view?pref=2&pli=1 … table 2 page 4
http://www.broxtoweblue.co.uk/apology-from-dr-eoin-clarke/
Tell a lie. Eat 'umble pie.
At the moment, he is a like a naughty little boy, who is told if he says sorry and he wont do it again, he wont be grounded...then goes and is naughty again straight away.
Corbyn key ally, Lansman accused of hypocrisy after link to property company used for tax avoidance and asset stripping http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4646279.ece
'Having your own awards thread is a sure sign of self-indulgence but mercifully most of us will have better things to do than endure Eagles and his endless "look we Tories won when everyone said we wouldn't" series of threads between now and New Year.'
He could have chosen 'endless' dockside hooker poundings.
http://www.cicero.de/berliner-republik/grosse-koalition-die-realitaetsverleugnung-von-cdu-und-spd-wird-sich-raechen/60269
Highlights which may be familiar from the UK context:
- The CDU and SPD are both struggling with refugee and Syria issues, but reacting differently. The CDU is mainly a party dedicated to getting elected, so their response is to pretend to agree while arguing futilely in private. The SPD is mainly a party dedicated to policies, most of which can't be achieved any time soon, so their response is public feuding
- The SPD leader has attempted to escape the dilemma of whether to get involved in Syria by offering an online consultaiton of all members. Many elected MPs are horrified are refuse to be bound by it, though in practice they will probvably go along with the result.
A survey for the Standard by BMG Research also exposed a huge lack of trust in the inquiry set up to get to the bottom of the “Tatler Tory” scandal.
Almost half the 1,500 people surveyed said they would not trust the investigation’s findings. Around the same amount said former minister Grant Shapps was right to resign over the affair, in which Tory activist Elliott Johnson, 21, committed suicide after complaining about bullying.
Dr Michael Turner, director of BMG Research, said: “These results paint a fairly bleak picture for the party ahead of the campaigning season for elections around the country in 2016. The poll shows large numbers from all sides calling for heads to roll. Even among those who voted Conservative in May.”
http://bit.ly/1S4EtBR
Evidence of mass tactical voting that means the SNP honeymoon is over and Scottish Tory surge?
Van Gaal named boss
Monday 2 pm.
An opinion poll asking whether X should resign from a political party or as an MP will invariably produce a majority in favour of him doing so, provided either that he is fictional or is sufficiently obscure for respondents not to have any particular view on his record. 'Sufficiently obscure' in this context means pretty much anyone apart from the PM, Chancellor, Leader of the Opposition, and a handful of current and former cabinet ministers.
I probably shouldn't be saying this here - but life is not lived in your back bedroom. All those people claiming ersatz experiences based on what has happened to others need to go out and live.
"So after every terrorist attack now we learn of a “good news” story. After the attack on a café in Sydney a year ago the hashtag #illridewithyou became the good news story — the result of a story of a Muslim Australian woman on public transport allegedly removing her headscarf in fear after the attack. Australians tweeted “I’ll ride with you” to show that they would protect all of Australia’s Muslims from the other Australians who would otherwise brutalise them. The story of the woman taking off her headscarf turned out to be made up. Nevertheless, thousands of Australians tweeted “I’ll ride with you” and so the murder of, among others, café owner Tori Johnson (made to kneel on the floor and then shot in the back of the head) had a happy ending.
Three nights after the Commons managed to approve air strikes in Syria by the RAF, a man reportedly wielding a knife at Leytonstone Tube station in London and screaming that his actions were revenge for Syria allegedly stabbed a musician. Fortunately for the media worldwide and for social media in particular, one of the less traumatised passers-by was caught on camera shouting “You ain’t no Muslim, bruv” at the man, who has now been charged with attempted murder. This immediately “trended” on Twitter and became a top story on most news sites and a front-page headline in the next day’s newspapers around the world, said to epitomise the wisdom and stoicism of Londoners. While the victim was recovering in hospital everybody else got to move on to the joy of Muslims condemning this now allegedly “non-Muslim” attacker.
Worst was in the wake of November’s atrocity in Paris when the story went around from the Wall Street Journal to the Huffington Post and the Daily Mail that one of the suicide bombers at the Stade de France football stadium had been stopped and turned away by a Muslim security guard called Zouheir. The story was reported around the world and heralded across social media. Amid a night of bloodshed which allegedly had nothing to do with Islam here was a security guard who had everything to do with Islam saving hundreds of lives. This seemed such a good meme that it became one of the most popular “stories” of the night on Twitter. Except that it turned out — as the BBC was unusual in being good enough to concede — that the tale was fabricated. There was a guard in the stadium of unknown religion called Zouheir but he had been elsewhere on the night and had not seen any bombers. He had relayed part of a colleague’s story to a reporter. Why had this all become about him? For the simple reason that people wanted it to be."
http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/6357/full
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3321032/PIERS-MORGAN-Brave-Muslims-stopped-far-deaths-Paris-terror-attacks-s-rest-Islam-guts-root-ISIS.html
Furthermore, the Daily Mail did actually track down the real security guard and he did turn out to be a Muslim.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3337928/Hero-guard-saved-France-baby-faced-bomber-football-stadium-stopping-sneaking-turnstile-detonating-vest-thousands-fans-President-Hollande.html
The BBC has awarded Ukip three party political broadcasts a year outside elections even though the party has only one MP in the House of Commons, folowing a rule change introduced by the corporation’s governing body.
The broadcaster said it had done so taking into account Ukip’s level of support in the country and the fact that in the runup to the referendum on EU membership a Eurosceptic party should get more time on British television.
The Green party, however, will not get any broadcasts even though it too has a single MP. No explanation for the decision was provided, but the party’s share of the polls is lower: Ukip is currently polling at about 14% while the Greens sit at 5%.
http://bit.ly/1UWeHiL
http://www.wsj.com/articles/attacker-tried-to-enter-paris-stadium-but-was-turned-away-1447520571
"Zouheir, who could see the VIP box from his post."
This was the crucial bit that so many people seemed to miss.
http://imgur.com/RA78nFE
Well played to the other security guard though!
The good one is the desire to find anything good in a story of horror. I don't think this a bad impulse. Sometimes - most times, maybe - there is nothing good there. But hope, the desire for hope, is what makes us survive, what makes life bearable.
The not so good is the desire to make some "good" action by a Muslim somehow emblematic. Silly because if you are going to do this you will have to accept that "bad" actions by Muslims are also emblematic and insulting also because there is the unstated assumption that somehow people should not feel furious about what has happened because, look, over there, is a nice Muslim not killing someone and that really is a pretty low bar, it's the poverty of low expectations and it's denying those to whom harm has done their right to feel exactly how they want about what has happened and about those behind it and not feel constrained just because others want to put a gloss on things or want to deny people the very real anger and fury they feel. And so we get fake emotion and feelings rather than real ones on one side and very real emotion and feelings on the other, so real in fact that they are made known through bullets and bombs and knives.
What is concerning is not the backlash that never comes after these attacks or the fear of the backlash which has everyone tiptoeing around but that there has not been enough anger and fury at what has gone on and why we have ended up in such a situation. And I say this not because I want a backlash against innocents - I absolutely do not - but because I worry about what will happen when eventually we get the proverbial straw breaking the camel's back. Better to let off steam early and in a controlled manner than have some uncontrolled explosion when it all finally gets too much.
Over 90% of my Christmas shopping is done online.
Madame Chestnut finally made up her mind, as is her perogative, on her preferred choice of gift this morning. A few clicks on a website later and thanks to the wonders on the internet and modern logistics it will be delivered later this evening.
Twenty years ago it would have been an unpleasant and god-forsaken trudge around the West End, a soulless retail park or the High Street.
National Crime Agency
89% of men that died were found in water. Please take extra care if drinking in bars & clubs near rivers or canals https://t.co/1zjc2FeUT4
https://twitter.com/GuidoFawkes/status/678906466783223809
His reported comments were the icing on the cake that led to Sean Fear leaving the Conservative Party.
Miss Plato, there's often a piece on Look North about men drowning, typically in York's river (the Ouse).
It was a great game for those of us interested in political outcomes and with it's league tables, added a competitive edge to our forecasts. If people are still interested in continuing this game, I would be happy to help run it. Has anyone else considered that and how could we arrange to take on the existing site and technical stuff as there is currently no reply to the holder of all that information?
I'll drop him an email tonight and see what his plans are.
Whilst not a player/member at The Election Game, I hope it can be restored and that the interlude is temporary and not a sign of anything ominous.
Of course some people will whistleblow without ever revealing their names but this does make it harder, sometimes and depending on the allegations, to investigate the matter properly.