The LDs seem to lurch from one trough to another - the postponement of this year's locals was probably to their benefit (just) but they havent really gone anywhere since Dec 2019. Starmer as leader will be tricky to counter and in the SW where I watch events... things seem dire. Davey (or Moran) will need more than a rabbit out of a hat come the Autumn.....
The LDs seem to lurch from one trough to another - the postponement of this year's locals was probably to their benefit (just) but they havent really gone anywhere since Dec 2019. Starmer as leader will be tricky to counter and in the SW where I watch events... things seem dire. Davey (or Moran) will need more than a rabbit out of a hat come the Autumn.....
They need the governing party to do something unpopular - the equivalent of the poll tax or invading Iraq. And governing parties usually do something unpopular at some point or another. (It may not, of course, be the LDs who benefit, but if their leader is Davey, and if the Greens continue to be invisible, and if the Brexit Party isn't around, then they will be in a good position to get the traditional NOTA vote.)
Counterfactual: what if Farron had lost to Normal Lamb in 2015? He would likely not have been forced out post 2017, and had a much more nuanced view on the EU. Might the LibDems have managed a more meaningful recovery in the intervening period?
Counterfactual: what if Farron had lost to Normal Lamb in 2015? He would likely not have been forced out post 2017, and had a much more nuanced view on the EU. Might the LibDems have managed a more meaningful recovery in the intervening period?
In Dec 2019, the Lib Dems got 11.5% of the vote, up 4.2%, the best result since 2010. In the Euros they came second nationally. Obviously not good enough in FPTP, but a start of a meaningful recovery. There are a lot of potential LD voters out there.
I voted Lamb in 2015, and Davey in 2019, so don't have a great track record in backing the right candidate. I voted Davey again.
Counterfactual: what if Farron had lost to Normal Lamb in 2015? He would likely not have been forced out post 2017, and had a much more nuanced view on the EU. Might the LibDems have managed a more meaningful recovery in the intervening period?
Very hard to say, isn't it - though FWIW I think that, if Lamb had indeed gone into the 2019 GE as leader, then he could have been chopped the same way as Swinson was.
North Norfolk is a strong Leave-leaning constituency with an exceptionally high age profile, which became a Tory safe seat last year on a huge swing. Even if Lamb had stood again his incumbency might very well have been insufficient to save the seat. It didn't help Jo Swinson, after all.
What niche can the Lib Dems calve out? They've lost the centre-left one surely with Starmer.
Is it being centre right? Is that appealing to their voters bearing in mind by implication they're putting Starmer into No 10?
The problem with the Lib Dems isn't the voters, it's the members.
The section of the electorate where they are likely to get furthest in making converts - if they decide to go after them - are well-to-do, moderate, wet centre-right voters who can be prized from the Tories. Johnson's populism has created a potential opening in the market there.
The members, however, are centre-left and will therefore want to go fishing in the same pond as Starmer's Labour.
If they won't work to attract the soft Tories then their only hope of getting anywhere lies in persuading enough Labour voters in places where that party is currently in third place to switch to them in a bid to chuck the Tories out (and hope that those voters have by now forgiven them for the Coalition.) Except, if the Lib Dems are effectively going to be a smaller, weaker copy of Labour, then why shouldn't their voters go in the other direction and unite behind Labour's candidates instead?
Which is why as a Labour to LibDem convert I voted for Ed Davey and want us to go fishing for sane Tories. Which BTW can include a large number of former Labour voters...
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What niche can the Lib Dems calve out? They've lost the centre-left one surely with Starmer.
Is it being centre right? Is that appealing to their voters bearing in mind by implication they're putting Starmer into No 10?
The problem with the Lib Dems isn't the voters, it's the members.
The section of the electorate where they are likely to get furthest in making converts - if they decide to go after them - are well-to-do, moderate, wet centre-right voters who can be prized from the Tories. Johnson's populism has created a potential opening in the market there.
The members, however, are centre-left and will therefore want to go fishing in the same pond as Starmer's Labour.
If they won't work to attract the soft Tories then their only hope of getting anywhere lies in persuading enough Labour voters in places where that party is currently in third place to switch to them in a bid to chuck the Tories out (and hope that those voters have by now forgiven them for the Coalition.) Except, if the Lib Dems are effectively going to be a smaller, weaker copy of Labour, then why shouldn't their voters go in the other direction and unite behind Labour's candidates instead?
Which is why as a Labour to LibDem convert I voted for Ed Davey and want us to go fishing for sane Tories. Which BTW can include a large number of former Labour voters...
Though of course no path is straightforward. If you're going to aim your party at English Tory converts, then forming a left-wing alliance (especially one that includes Scottish nationalism) after a future GE may be a hard sell for your new voters.
What niche can the Lib Dems calve out? They've lost the centre-left one surely with Starmer.
Is it being centre right? Is that appealing to their voters bearing in mind by implication they're putting Starmer into No 10?
The problem with the Lib Dems isn't the voters, it's the members.
The section of the electorate where they are likely to get furthest in making converts - if they decide to go after them - are well-to-do, moderate, wet centre-right voters who can be prized from the Tories. Johnson's populism has created a potential opening in the market there.
The members, however, are centre-left and will therefore want to go fishing in the same pond as Starmer's Labour.
If they won't work to attract the soft Tories then their only hope of getting anywhere lies in persuading enough Labour voters in places where that party is currently in third place to switch to them in a bid to chuck the Tories out (and hope that those voters have by now forgiven them for the Coalition.) Except, if the Lib Dems are effectively going to be a smaller, weaker copy of Labour, then why shouldn't their voters go in the other direction and unite behind Labour's candidates instead?
Which is why as a Labour to LibDem convert I voted for Ed Davey and want us to go fishing for sane Tories. Which BTW can include a large number of former Labour voters...
Though of course no path is straightforward. If you're going to aim your party at English Tory converts, then forming a left-wing alliance (especially one that includes Scottish nationalism) after a future GE may be a hard sell for your new voters.
I joined a party of the centre. I am centre left. Others are centre right. We should be taking the best ideas from both left and right and leaving out the ideological and stupid. I think most normals aren't politically ideological so it should be an easier sell. A government that is caring and compassionate but encourages work and aspiration. Wanting to not be an IDS to the poor and disabled doesn't mean you can't support business and capitalism and honest graft.
What niche can the Lib Dems calve out? They've lost the centre-left one surely with Starmer.
Is it being centre right? Is that appealing to their voters bearing in mind by implication they're putting Starmer into No 10?
The problem with the Lib Dems isn't the voters, it's the members.
The section of the electorate where they are likely to get furthest in making converts - if they decide to go after them - are well-to-do, moderate, wet centre-right voters who can be prized from the Tories. Johnson's populism has created a potential opening in the market there.
The members, however, are centre-left and will therefore want to go fishing in the same pond as Starmer's Labour.
If they won't work to attract the soft Tories then their only hope of getting anywhere lies in persuading enough Labour voters in places where that party is currently in third place to switch to them in a bid to chuck the Tories out (and hope that those voters have by now forgiven them for the Coalition.) Except, if the Lib Dems are effectively going to be a smaller, weaker copy of Labour, then why shouldn't their voters go in the other direction and unite behind Labour's candidates instead?
Which is why as a Labour to LibDem convert I voted for Ed Davey and want us to go fishing for sane Tories. Which BTW can include a large number of former Labour voters...
Though of course no path is straightforward. If you're going to aim your party at English Tory converts, then forming a left-wing alliance (especially one that includes Scottish nationalism) after a future GE may be a hard sell for your new voters.
I joined a party of the centre. I am centre left. Others are centre right. We should be taking the best ideas from both left and right and leaving out the ideological and stupid. I think most normals aren't politically ideological so it should be an easier sell. A government that is caring and compassionate but encourages work and aspiration. Wanting to not be an IDS to the poor and disabled doesn't mean you can't support business and capitalism and honest graft.
Good, indeed excellent, post. However, as the Tories move well away from 'traditional' Conservatism to become a strange alliance of tax-avoiding exploitative capitalists and Little Englanders, Labour is going tom move towards the same, more rational, ground.
What niche can the Lib Dems calve out? They've lost the centre-left one surely with Starmer.
Is it being centre right? Is that appealing to their voters bearing in mind by implication they're putting Starmer into No 10?
The problem with the Lib Dems isn't the voters, it's the members.
The section of the electorate where they are likely to get furthest in making converts - if they decide to go after them - are well-to-do, moderate, wet centre-right voters who can be prized from the Tories. Johnson's populism has created a potential opening in the market there.
The members, however, are centre-left and will therefore want to go fishing in the same pond as Starmer's Labour.
If they won't work to attract the soft Tories then their only hope of getting anywhere lies in persuading enough Labour voters in places where that party is currently in third place to switch to them in a bid to chuck the Tories out (and hope that those voters have by now forgiven them for the Coalition.) Except, if the Lib Dems are effectively going to be a smaller, weaker copy of Labour, then why shouldn't their voters go in the other direction and unite behind Labour's candidates instead?
Which is why as a Labour to LibDem convert I voted for Ed Davey and want us to go fishing for sane Tories. Which BTW can include a large number of former Labour voters...
Though of course no path is straightforward. If you're going to aim your party at English Tory converts, then forming a left-wing alliance (especially one that includes Scottish nationalism) after a future GE may be a hard sell for your new voters.
I joined a party of the centre. I am centre left. Others are centre right. We should be taking the best ideas from both left and right and leaving out the ideological and stupid. I think most normals aren't politically ideological so it should be an easier sell. A government that is caring and compassionate but encourages work and aspiration. Wanting to not be an IDS to the poor and disabled doesn't mean you can't support business and capitalism and honest graft.
Some posters are over-thinking this. Starting from the position that "we must attract one particular group or another in order to win", they move on to the image they want to create and therefore the policies they need to put forward. This is the essence of the Johnson-Cummings Conservative approach.
The result is that they end up with a party that does not know what it wants to do. Individual politicians may do, but what they want and what the electors who voted for them want, are two entirely different things. They maintain their polling position by lying and spinning their way out of trouble (some of the time), and the PB Tories fool themselves into thinking they are doing well.
What the country needs is a system of parties with honestly-held beliefs - not the manipulations of spin doctors with short-term objectives. This is where the Lib Dems have strength. The Lib Dem Party Conference still has the chance to decide party policy, which is adopted because it is needed to solve a problem, not because some puppet-master has decided what policies are needed to boost the short-term poll ratings.
The need for the Liberal Democrats has never been stronger than it is today.
We've only had one poll on this, and it's very old. I'm on Moran for a small amount as I'm not convinced Betfair isn't simply money following other money thinking that money knows more than it actually does.
I don't think Nevada is comfortably blue but for two elections in a row now Nevada has outperformed the polling for the Dems.
In 2016 the polling average had it as a narrow Trump win, in 2018 the polling average was a tie (with a 7 point GOP lead at one point) and the Dems won by 5.
The key thing to look at is voter registration. It maps to votes cast in presidential election.
We've only had one poll on this, and it's very old. I'm on Moran for a small amount as I'm not convinced Betfair isn't simply money following other money thinking that money knows more than it actually does.
I fear you will lose your money. Everything I hear from within the party points to Davey, and Davey has run an energetic campaign with emails, mailshots, reminders to vote and the rest. After a single election address, Moran appears to have given up.
Disclosure: I voted for Davey although am on the point of ceasing my membership after 41 years.
What niche can the Lib Dems calve out? They've lost the centre-left one surely with Starmer.
Is it being centre right? Is that appealing to their voters bearing in mind by implication they're putting Starmer into No 10?
The problem with the Lib Dems isn't the voters, it's the members.
The section of the electorate where they are likely to get furthest in making converts - if they decide to go after them - are well-to-do, moderate, wet centre-right voters who can be prized from the Tories. Johnson's populism has created a potential opening in the market there.
The members, however, are centre-left and will therefore want to go fishing in the same pond as Starmer's Labour.
If they won't work to attract the soft Tories then their only hope of getting anywhere lies in persuading enough Labour voters in places where that party is currently in third place to switch to them in a bid to chuck the Tories out (and hope that those voters have by now forgiven them for the Coalition.) Except, if the Lib Dems are effectively going to be a smaller, weaker copy of Labour, then why shouldn't their voters go in the other direction and unite behind Labour's candidates instead?
Which is why as a Labour to LibDem convert I voted for Ed Davey and want us to go fishing for sane Tories. Which BTW can include a large number of former Labour voters...
Though of course no path is straightforward. If you're going to aim your party at English Tory converts, then forming a left-wing alliance (especially one that includes Scottish nationalism) after a future GE may be a hard sell for your new voters.
I joined a party of the centre. I am centre left. Others are centre right. We should be taking the best ideas from both left and right and leaving out the ideological and stupid. I think most normals aren't politically ideological so it should be an easier sell. A government that is caring and compassionate but encourages work and aspiration. Wanting to not be an IDS to the poor and disabled doesn't mean you can't support business and capitalism and honest graft.
Good, indeed excellent, post. However, as the Tories move well away from 'traditional' Conservatism to become a strange alliance of tax-avoiding exploitative capitalists and Little Englanders, Labour is going to move towards the same, more rational, ground.
Below is the text from an email from the University of Southampton to all Practice Managers in the Southampton area:
Dear Practice Managers,
The University of Southampton testing team wanted to share an update with you about the results of the testing programme you took part in;
• The Southampton COVID-19 Testing Programme was successfully completed on July 31, with more than 16,850 individual tests for COVID-19 carried out over four weeks, contributing to local and national testing and tracing of the disease.
• The results found no evidence of active COVID-19 infection in the participants tested and no false positive tests occurred.
• Demonstrating for the first time the potential of saliva testing as a reliable, convenient large-scale approach, the programme also provided further evidence for the accuracy of the rapid, lower cost RT-LAMP lab test in detecting coronavirus. The data systems developed by the programme effectively returned results within hours of sampling to those tested, the NHS and public health authorities.
• Based on this evaluation and the feedback of participants, the programme team have identified key areas for further development, particularly in further refinement of the laboratory testing and data systems, and are working with Government/DHSC on ways of taking this forward.
I just wanted to thank you all again for your time, effort, and support with the programme which is really appreciated by both the CCG and University of Southampton
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What you miss in your plan for the Tees Valley is that such a plan would simply create Thornabys throughout the Valley.
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
We've only had one poll on this, and it's very old. I'm on Moran for a small amount as I'm not convinced Betfair isn't simply money following other money thinking that money knows more than it actually does.
I fear you will lose your money. Everything I hear from within the party points to Davey, and Davey has run an energetic campaign with emails, mailshots, reminders to vote and the rest. After a single election address, Moran appears to have given up.
Disclosure: I voted for Davey although am on the point of ceasing my membership after 41 years.
Sorry to hear that. Why?
Post Brexit will require a re-think of policy. Many of the newer members join specifically to fight Brexit, and it will be interesting to see where they go next. I suspect they are the ones drifting back to Starmer's Labour (such as Mrs Foxy). I am not, as I don't like Labour's nationalisation plans, there being higher priorities.
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What you miss in your plan for the Tees Valley is that such a plan would simply create Thornabys throughout the Valley.
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
Are these places getting investment as is?
Isn’t the new Tees Valley mayor doing a pretty good job at attracting investment etc?
I don’t know much about the Tees Valley but its the lack of joined up thinking that is the problem on Tyneside. North Tyneside council trying to “compete” with Newcastle by building huge business parks, depriving the actual urban core of prime locations for good quality housing, and leaving city centre office space empty.
Another example is Gateshead trying to “divert” traffic out of their “town centre” despite their “town centre” being essentially the approach road for the Tyne Bridge.
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
The Government needs two things to occur, firstly schools need to be open, secondly parents need to be encouraged to get their children to go back to school.
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
It is all the CMO saying this and in these circumstances HMG is absolutely right to affirm their get back to school message
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What you miss in your plan for the Tees Valley is that such a plan would simply create Thornabys throughout the Valley.
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
The Government needs two things to occur, firstly schools need to be open, secondly parents need to be encouraged to get their children to go back to school.
And by the way this applies across all four nations and is backed by all the First Ministers and Boris
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
Obviously when I ran for election I didn't call my neighbours "morons". I called the independents morons. They held a referendum calling for Thornaby to secede from Stockton. 80% didn't bother to vote. So they then demanded the council accede to their demands.
That the council has no such power, that the Boundary Commission had already laughed in their face at their previous "CITY" idea (Communities of Inglebly, Thornaby and Yarm - rejected by Ingleby and Yarm but that didn't stop his Eminence the Mayor for Life going on and on about it) - these didn't matter.
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
Obviously when I ran for election I didn't call my neighbours "morons". I called the independents morons. They held a referendum calling for Thornaby to secede from Stockton. 80% didn't bother to vote. So they then demanded the council accede to their demands.
That the council has no such power, that the Boundary Commission had already laughed in their face at their previous "CITY" idea (Communities of Inglebly, Thornaby and Yarm - rejected by Ingleby and Yarm but that didn't stop his Eminence the Mayor for Life going on and on about it) - these didn't matter.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Stockton high street was actually destroyed by teesside park, which was built by the development corporation over the heads of the desires of Stockton Council who could see what the end result would be.
Likewise Bishop Auckland town centre was destroyed by the county Council approving the St Helens development ignoring local protests - had St Helens been proposed prior to the Durham Council merger it would never have been approved.
I have often thought that Brexit was as much a danger to the Lib Dems as an opportunity because it turned them into what they've always tried to avoid being, an ideological party. The Lib Dems did well when they were essentially a localist party even if it did make them hard to lead. For example during the hunting ban debates you had West Country Lib Dem MPs against and metropolitan MPs speaking out in favour. It didn't seem to do them any harm at the ballot box. The Lib Dems should focus on building up their local councillor base and then start identifying plausible prospective parliamentary candidates from among their ranks.
Trip to the pub yesterday afternoon. Gave my name and phone number to the'masked receptionist, bought my pint from the unmasked but shielded barman. Paid by tapping credit card on machine. Then went out to garden area, and sat at a table to chat with three acquaintancies, about a metre apart. All very cheerful, quite a few people about, all behaving similarly.
We, and several others who stopped 'to pass the time of day', had 'left' the pub where we usually drink because there was no evidence there of of any restrictions or contact tracing.
Apparently, though it was 'rammed' a day or so ago.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Stockton high street was actually destroyed by teesside park, which was built by the development corporation over the heads of the desires of Stockton Council who could see what the end result would be.
Likewise Bishop Auckland town centre was destroyed by the county Council approving the St Helens development ignoring local protests - had St Helens been proposed prior to the Durham Council merger it would never have been approved.
How do you find the balance? I bet you that Labour dominance in Co Durham local government has contributed more to poor quality local government than “being ruled from the city”.
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
Whilst I believe that schools returning is the right thing to do, the line they were spinning over the weekend that "children are more likely to catch the virus at home" was rather typical of this government that struggles with both honesty and accuracy, with its implication that children will be safer at school.
Even if it is the case that the virus is more likely to be caught at home, being out at school during the day isn't reducing that risk, and being both at home and at school is clearly more likely to generate infections than staying at home only.
There are plenty of good reasons why schools should return, but avoiding the risk of catching the virus at home isnt one of them.
I have often thought that Brexit was as much a danger to the Lib Dems as an opportunity because it turned them into what they've always tried to avoid being, an ideological party. The Lib Dems did well when they were essentially a localist party even if it did make them hard to lead. For example during the hunting ban debates you had West Country Lib Dem MPs against and metropolitan MPs speaking out in favour. It didn't seem to do them any harm at the ballot box. The Lib Dems should focus on building up their local councillor base and then start identifying plausible prospective parliamentary candidates from among their ranks.
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What you miss in your plan for the Tees Valley is that such a plan would simply create Thornabys throughout the Valley.
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Rochdale isn't quite the shithole you left in all honesty now. I believe it is closer to becoming the commuter town it was always going to be; modest town centre for local shopping and some independents and lots of new housing going up. It's still not fantastic, but there's green shoots of improvement.
Bury has always been more affluent - Oldham itself (not Saddleworth, which is tacked onto it despite the wishes of its residents) is poorer even than Rochdale and comes across far more decrepit when you visit these days.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Stockton high street was actually destroyed by teesside park, which was built by the development corporation over the heads of the desires of Stockton Council who could see what the end result would be.
Likewise Bishop Auckland town centre was destroyed by the county Council approving the St Helens development ignoring local protests - had St Helens been proposed prior to the Durham Council merger it would never have been approved.
Did many shops transfer out of the high street onto Teesside Park? I know this happened in Sheffield, but from what I could see Stockton had different shops anyway. To wrap up my comments on this we then had the hoo hah about hotels. Boro has chain hotels in the centre of town, with demand outstripping supply. Stockton - in the middle of a massive regeneration of the town centre - decides to build a chain hotel in the town centre.
No say the Thornaby Independents, put the hotel on Teesside Park (cos its in Thornaby). Never mind that it would be in the middle of nowhere and wouldn't help with regeneration it had to be in OUR town. Cos apparently Thornaby folk don't cross the bridge into Stockton as there's Trolls under it.
I'll shut up now. Did I say that I hate local politics?
Are the government overplaying their hand on the ‘little risk’ in returning to school? It has the potential to seriously rebound and slap them in the face. If there are multiple school closures with associated infections it will be described as another disaster. I’m not saying they shouldn’t open but the positioning strikes me as rather silly.
Whilst I believe that schools returning is the right thing to do, the line they were spinning over the weekend that "children are more likely to catch the virus at home" was rather typical of this government that struggles with both honesty and accuracy, with its implication that children will be safer at school.
Even if it is the case that the virus is more likely to be caught at home, being out at school during the day isn't reducing that risk, and being both at home and at school is clearly more likely to generate infections than staying at home only.
There are plenty of good reasons why schools should return, but avoiding the risk of catching the virus at home isnt one of them.
Jenny Harries has such a good track record on these issues as well.
I have often thought that Brexit was as much a danger to the Lib Dems as an opportunity because it turned them into what they've always tried to avoid being, an ideological party. The Lib Dems did well when they were essentially a localist party even if it did make them hard to lead. For example during the hunting ban debates you had West Country Lib Dem MPs against and metropolitan MPs speaking out in favour. It didn't seem to do them any harm at the ballot box. The Lib Dems should focus on building up their local councillor base and then start identifying plausible prospective parliamentary candidates from among their ranks.
They could actually do with a bit more ideology.
The danger is that it has turned them into the status quo party. The seats they have left are almost all slices of the country stuffed full of winners from the current economic settlement.
“According to the Government’s own testing figures, 87 of Birmingham’s 132 neighbourhoods did not record a single tested positive case of Covid-19 in the last week, so 716,000 Brummies live in a neighbourhood where there were no positive tests in the last week.
Most English neighbourhoods haven't had a Covid case for a month, says academic
“According to the Government’s own testing figures, 87 of Birmingham’s 132 neighbourhoods did not record a single tested positive case of Covid-19 in the last week, so 716,000 Brummies live in a neighbourhood where there were no positive tests in the last week.
Most English neighbourhoods haven't had a Covid case for a month, says academic
The ZOE app now shows, fairly crudely, where their positive reports have been in the last two weeks. Quite widely spread over England, although very few in East Anglia, Lincolnshire and the S.West. Wales has very few and Scotland's few are in the central belt and around Aberdeen. That is, I emphasise, their reported data. Not necessarily a true picture.
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What you miss in your plan for the Tees Valley is that such a plan would simply create Thornabys throughout the Valley.
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Rochdale isn't quite the shithole you left in all honesty now. I believe it is closer to becoming the commuter town it was always going to be; modest town centre for local shopping and some independents and lots of new housing going up. It's still not fantastic, but there's green shoots of improvement.
Bury has always been more affluent - Oldham itself (not Saddleworth, which is tacked onto it despite the wishes of its residents) is poorer even than Rochdale and comes across far more decrepit when you visit these days.
Blimey. I went to college in Oldham. The difference between Oldham and Rochdale was marked in the mid 90s...
Did many shops transfer out of the high street onto Teesside Park? I know this happened in Sheffield, but from what I could see Stockton had different shops anyway. To wrap up my comments on this we then had the hoo hah about hotels. Boro has chain hotels in the centre of town, with demand outstripping supply. Stockton - in the middle of a massive regeneration of the town centre - decides to build a chain hotel in the town centre.
No say the Thornaby Independents, put the hotel on Teesside Park (cos its in Thornaby). Never mind that it would be in the middle of nowhere and wouldn't help with regeneration it had to be in OUR town. Cos apparently Thornaby folk don't cross the bridge into Stockton as there's Trolls under it.
I'll shut up now. Did I say that I hate local politics?
Teesside Park took the customers away then over time the shops disappear.
As for the hotel that Hilton us a white elephant. As someone who travels a lot it fails every rule when I'm picking a hotel for work - I won't drive into a town centre for a hotel and I can't think of anyone else who would.
To a large extent it reminds me of an old Travelodge I used once in Wakefield. It closed during Travelodges first set of closures as no one would drive to a town centre hotel.
Can I recommend the map data from the gov corona dashboard? Shows cases in the last week to local ward level. I’ve followed this since it became available and seen no cases in our area in that time (~ 2 months). What is clear though is the potential for cases to pop up almost anywhere, presumably from travel, both within the uk and wider.
Regarding the debate on the prefios thread about regionalism - the old boundaries are interesting historically but thats all. I live in Thornaby-on-Tees, a royal charter town in North Yorkshire. It has a Town Council (which I was elected to for 4 years) who is now 100% "Thornaby Independent Association". They are almost all ex-Labour and wage a war against Stockton-on-Tees (directly across the river from their town hall which incidentally was built as "South Stockton...".
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
What you miss in your plan for the Tees Valley is that such a plan would simply create Thornabys throughout the Valley.
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
The reason to do it is the utter lack of coordination up here. The combined authority is finally managing to plug different council areas together. Different trusts etc is hardly new - when we lived in Houghton-le-Spring we were City of Sunderland council, had a Durham Post Code, Northumbrian Water & Police etc. Cleveland Police is a disaster area that needs to be abolished.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
Rochdale isn't quite the shithole you left in all honesty now. I believe it is closer to becoming the commuter town it was always going to be; modest town centre for local shopping and some independents and lots of new housing going up. It's still not fantastic, but there's green shoots of improvement.
Bury has always been more affluent - Oldham itself (not Saddleworth, which is tacked onto it despite the wishes of its residents) is poorer even than Rochdale and comes across far more decrepit when you visit these days.
Blimey. I went to college in Oldham. The difference between Oldham and Rochdale was marked in the mid 90s...
My wife comes from Rochdale. We hadn't been back for ages, though, until a couple of years ago when we were advised to do so and see the improvement in the Town Centre. And it is a great deal more open, cleaner and fresher than when she last saw it, in the late 80's when her parents moved away.
@Pulpstar - America is just a highly armed and violent society. That's the root cause.
Nevertheless, given that the police officer was only inches behind him and could have tasered/manhandled or cuffed him it doesn't seem necessary to have peppered him with bullets at short range, unless he'd actually picked up a weapon and him turning around to fire was imminent.
Been a Liberal/Lib Dem since the 60's. I see no future for them. Astonished that Davey is even in the running, he has really led the party since December and has seen the level of support halve, now on the verge of being overtaken by the Greens. All Labour have to do is throw the coalition at him. Looks like the end of the line to me. Some really radical change is required, Davey is just more of the same, uninspiring to say the least. Moran carries too much baggage. Suspect there will be a very low turnout, I have abstained.
I don't think Nevada is comfortably blue but for two elections in a row now Nevada has outperformed the polling for the Dems.
In 2016 the polling average had it as a narrow Trump win, in 2018 the polling average was a tie (with a 7 point GOP lead at one point) and the Dems won by 5.
The key thing to look at is voter registration. It maps to votes cast in presidential election.
I think the Democrats are ridiculosuly complaeent.
They are relying on pumping up turning amongst Democrats that didn't turn out for Hillary in 2016.
Biden also needs to leave his comfort zone and target WWC floating voters in the swing states *directly* as well.
@Pulpstar - America is just a highly armed and violent society. That's the root cause.
Nevertheless, given that the police officer was only inches behind him and could have tasered/manhandled or cuffed him it doesn't seem necessary to have peppered him with bullets at short range, unless he'd actually picked up a weapon and him turning around to fire was imminent.
Can I recommend the map data from the gov corona dashboard? Shows cases in the last week to local ward level. I’ve followed this since it became available and seen no cases in our area in that time (~ 2 months). What is clear though is the potential for cases to pop up almost anywhere, presumably from travel, both within the uk and wider.
My wife comes from Rochdale. We hadn't been back for ages, though, until a couple of years ago when we were advised to do so and see the improvement in the Town Centre. And it is a great deal more open, cleaner and fresher than when she last saw it, in the late 80's when her parents moved away.
They ripped out a lot of the decking over the Roch in the town centre. Which then allowed the river to flood the town centre a few years ago! Demolishing local "landmarks" like the Black Box and bus station are positives, but as with the removed decking it did lead to just a windswept open area.
As for the latest scheme of "lets build a shopping centre" the 70s shopping centre is half empty. The 80s shopping centre is 3/4 empty. And on the main shopping street what isn't shuttered is charity or vape shops.
Did many shops transfer out of the high street onto Teesside Park? I know this happened in Sheffield, but from what I could see Stockton had different shops anyway. To wrap up my comments on this we then had the hoo hah about hotels. Boro has chain hotels in the centre of town, with demand outstripping supply. Stockton - in the middle of a massive regeneration of the town centre - decides to build a chain hotel in the town centre.
No say the Thornaby Independents, put the hotel on Teesside Park (cos its in Thornaby). Never mind that it would be in the middle of nowhere and wouldn't help with regeneration it had to be in OUR town. Cos apparently Thornaby folk don't cross the bridge into Stockton as there's Trolls under it.
I'll shut up now. Did I say that I hate local politics?
Teesside Park took the customers away then over time the shops disappear.
As for the hotel that Hilton us a white elephant. As someone who travels a lot it fails every rule when I'm picking a hotel for work - I won't drive into a town centre for a hotel and I can't think of anyone else who would.
To a large extent it reminds me of an old Travelodge I used once in Wakefield. It closed during Travelodges first set of closures as no one would drive to a town centre hotel.
Yes, when visiting an unfamiliar town it was always the chain hotel on the outskirts or at the business park.
The central hotels inevitably were in the 'wrong' part of town after dark, you got sprung the evening's beer budget for overnight parking, or there was no parking at all and you had to walk half a mile with your bag.
The problem I see for the Lib Dems I am afraid - and I say this having voted for them in December, albeit tactically, I did not support Jo Swinson - is that are there really enough voters that are likely to think "I really don't want the Tories, so I'll vote Lib Dem" which by implication means they want PM Starmer?
What will become of the Union Jack if Scotland secedes? It’s a cracking flag.
Maybe the blue can be taken out and the green of Wales finally added.
The cross of St Patrick remained, but it would be hard to justify keeping the Saltire.
Perhaps a style like the white ensign, but with a Welsh flag in the top corner rather than a Union Flag?
A number of other flags such as Austalia and NZ may want to update too.
Oz and NZ will actually be better off with the symbol on their flags becoming that of a historical curiosity rather than a current other country. I dont see any need for them to change.
Making it green for Wales is an interesting idea, except that the Welsh haven't to my knowledge ever had an X flag. Perhaps we could pretend it's a green background showing through
One of the best policies Labour could do is federalism including an English Parliament. Basically no downside and they look more pro-English and patriotic.
I am surprised the Tories have not implemented it yet
Exactly. HYUFD is practicxally blaming me for it.
There's been markedly little enthusiasm on the part of anyone in authority to endorse any kind of national vision for England. One of the things I think some Scots understand little is the extent to which their sense of nationality is actively supported and nurtured and has been for decades. England isn't like that. And you can say that's because English nationalism is all lager louts and footie violence, and it's right that it isn't encouraged, but it's a circular argument. It's only celebrated by those at the fringes *because* it's never been encouraged elsewhere.
There's something quite beautiful about aspects of Englishness - though it is very bound up in Britishness. Things like pubs with horse brasses, cricket, Sandy Denny etc.
Its very true and I say that as a non english person. The english have always been derided for celebrating their nation. From Thornberry's contempt for someone flying england flags to the utter despising of celebrating st Georges day. As a cornish person I have never been derided for displaying my flag no celebrating that which makes us different and I feel I can be both cornish and part of the uk.
Er... If you're Cornish, you are surely English.
Well the english think so, I dont know any cornish people that do.
None? Sounds incredibly implausible, or else politics in the penninsula would be very very different to what it is and has been.
Yes none is an exaggeration we do have immigrants. Most cornish born and bred though are immensely proud of being cornish not english. That doesn't mean they want to be separate merely they are cornish then british. The view that cornwall was part of england is something very much put forward by the english not the cornish.
Cornwall has always been quite different politically which is why we had so many lib dem mps when the rest of the country didnt. It is only post brexit we stopped electing them
Cornwall was absorbed into Wessex after the Battle of Hingston Down in 838 and then was part of England from 886 when the House of Wessex produce the first King of the whole of England, Alfred the Great
Your point is? The scots and welsh both got conquered by english kings too. You want to tell them they cant be a nation on those bounds?
FPT - HYUFD ought to be asked whether the conquest of England by Danish, Norman Danish, French, and Dutch kings, not to mention peaceful takeovers by Scottish and Hanoverian kings, means that England should be a subordinate colony of one or all of those.
What will become of the Union Jack if Scotland secedes? It’s a cracking flag.
Maybe the blue can be taken out and the green of Wales finally added.
Don't forget to leave a space for orange when Ireland inevitably begs to rejoin the (r)UK.
I have to say, that is one of the more odd things I see Brexiteers saying, that Ireland will be next to leave and they will want to rejoin the UK. Very strange
I don't think Nevada is comfortably blue but for two elections in a row now Nevada has outperformed the polling for the Dems.
In 2016 the polling average had it as a narrow Trump win, in 2018 the polling average was a tie (with a 7 point GOP lead at one point) and the Dems won by 5.
The key thing to look at is voter registration. It maps to votes cast in presidential election.
I think the Democrats are ridiculosuly complaeent.
They are relying on pumping up turning amongst Democrats that didn't turn out for Hillary in 2016.
Biden also needs to leave his comfort zone and target WWC floating voters in the swing states *directly* as well.
So far, I see little sign of that.
I'm seeing a number of independent and left-leaning commentators (the likes of Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin and Tim Pool) saying that people are moving away from the Dems, because of their implicit support for what's going on in Portland and other cities, as well as the wider culture war stuff, that they seem unwilling to condemn in order to keep their left wing on side.
There could be a lot of non-voters among the centrists, who see two extreme positions and can't be bothered with it - but there's also an opportunity for both parties to try attract these swing voters in the next two months. Turnout was barely 50% last time out, there's tens of millions of these mostly non-political centrists, and whichever party reaches out to them could be rewarded.
I think the main Presidential race is closer than most people think.
Comments
Sorry but the leadership of the lib dems is now only relevant to punters betting on it. It is not relevant to the electorate in the least
I voted Lamb in 2015, and Davey in 2019, so don't have a great track record in backing the right candidate. I voted Davey again.
North Norfolk is a strong Leave-leaning constituency with an exceptionally high age profile, which became a Tory safe seat last year on a huge swing. Even if Lamb had stood again his incumbency might very well have been insufficient to save the seat. It didn't help Jo Swinson, after all.
https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1297659391374757889
https://twitter.com/TheViewFromLL2/status/1297666610677899272
https://twitter.com/marklewismd/status/1297734625511518208
The Yorkshire identity is something they wear as war paint because there are plenty of olf parochial bogots in the town still alive in enough numbers to vote them in. That the Chair of the Yorkshire Ridings Society keeps publically correcting his Eminence the Mayor for life's rantings about boundaries just makes it funnier. He campaigns to make Thornaby part of "North Yorkshire" again. We have never been in North Yorkshire. Nor would making the town part of North Yorkshire County Council make any sense - we are Teesside. A "city" region for this area matters far more than historic links to the white rose. Surely the same is true with Gateshead and Newcastle vs Durham.
So in principle I agree with the Tory proposal to rip up administrative counties again and the suggestion on the overnight thread to just overrule the local councils. The best thing for Teesside would be to demolish the failed councils and create Tees Valley. Without regional coordination we will continue to have idiot councillors be the big fish in an ever smaller pond and stupid planning decisions.
The result is that they end up with a party that does not know what it wants to do. Individual politicians may do, but what they want and what the electors who voted for them want, are two entirely different things. They maintain their polling position by lying and spinning their way out of trouble (some of the time), and the PB Tories fool themselves into thinking they are doing well.
What the country needs is a system of parties with honestly-held beliefs - not the manipulations of spin doctors with short-term objectives. This is where the Lib Dems have strength. The Lib Dem Party Conference still has the chance to decide party policy, which is adopted because it is needed to solve a problem, not because some puppet-master has decided what policies are needed to boost the short-term poll ratings.
The need for the Liberal Democrats has never been stronger than it is today.
I don't think Nevada is comfortably blue but for two elections in a row now Nevada has outperformed the polling for the Dems.
In 2016 the polling average had it as a narrow Trump win, in 2018 the polling average was a tie (with a 7 point GOP lead at one point) and the Dems won by 5.
The key thing to look at is voter registration. It maps to votes cast in presidential election.
Disclosure: I voted for Davey although am on the point of ceasing my membership after 41 years.
There is no guarantee of that.
Dear Practice Managers,
The University of Southampton testing team wanted to share an update with you about the results of the testing programme you took part in;
• The Southampton COVID-19 Testing Programme was successfully completed on July 31, with more than 16,850 individual tests for COVID-19 carried out over four weeks, contributing to local and national testing and tracing of the disease.
• The results found no evidence of active COVID-19 infection in the participants tested and no false positive tests occurred.
• Demonstrating for the first time the potential of saliva testing as a reliable, convenient large-scale approach, the programme also provided further evidence for the accuracy of the rapid, lower cost RT-LAMP lab test in detecting coronavirus. The data systems developed by the programme effectively returned results within hours of sampling to those tested, the NHS and public health authorities.
• Based on this evaluation and the feedback of participants, the programme team have identified key areas for further development, particularly in further refinement of the laboratory testing and data systems, and are working with Government/DHSC on ways of taking this forward.
I just wanted to thank you all again for your time, effort, and support with the programme which is really appreciated by both the CCG and University of Southampton
https://twitter.com/kimKBaltimore/status/1295461903268040707
Ignoring the fundamental issue that the Tees Valley gateway (Darlington) isn't even in Cleveland - we have a different NHS trust and police force (thankfully in the latter case) Thornaby's annoyance is that they feel second class citizens to those in Stockton (or even Yarm). And merging Darlington Stockton, Hartlepool, Boro and Redcar into a single Council opens up the question which places will get the focus for investment and which won't.
And I suspect that focus would be Boro and Darlington no matter what others hope as those places have the prime connection links.
Post Brexit will require a re-think of policy. Many of the newer members join specifically to fight Brexit, and it will be interesting to see where they go next. I suspect they are the ones drifting back to Starmer's Labour (such as Mrs Foxy). I am not, as I don't like Labour's nationalisation plans, there being higher priorities.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/aug/24/staying-on-usual-drugs-helps-hypertension-patients-survive-covid-19-study
Isn’t the new Tees Valley mayor doing a pretty good job at attracting investment etc?
I don’t know much about the Tees Valley but its the lack of joined up thinking that is the problem on Tyneside. North Tyneside council trying to “compete” with Newcastle by building huge business parks, depriving the actual urban core of prime locations for good quality housing, and leaving city centre office space empty.
Another example is Gateshead trying to “divert” traffic out of their “town centre” despite their “town centre” being essentially the approach road for the Tyne Bridge.
https://twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1297793483013533697?s=09
The video is easy to find on twitter.
Yes some of my neighbours whine about lack of investment. But they are morons. Thornaby may have been a royal charter town 800 years ago. But in 2020 its a suburb of Stockton which is a smaller neighbour to Middlesbrough - and half of "Thornaby" was "South Stockton"... I grew up in Rochdale (obviously) which similarly was a town surrounded by smaller towns and villages all competing for money and all losing out. Rochdale is a shithole completely surpassed by neighbouring Bury and Oldham, which in turn are commuter towns for Manchester.
Accepting this reality and building accordingly has to be the solution regardless of a few local idiots. Shops closing in Stockton is not indicative of a failing council, its indicative of the general rolling back of the high street and bigger better Boro being a couple of miles away. Stockon cannot compete and should not try. Boro already is the big town in the Tees Valley.
https://twitter.com/kateferguson4/status/1297796038019907584
That the council has no such power, that the Boundary Commission had already laughed in their face at their previous "CITY" idea (Communities of Inglebly, Thornaby and Yarm - rejected by Ingleby and Yarm but that didn't stop his Eminence the Mayor for Life going on and on about it) - these didn't matter.
I hate local politics...
This is our children's future and back to school is a top priority
https://twitter.com/therealmissjo/status/1297795880578428928
Likewise Bishop Auckland town centre was destroyed by the county Council approving the St Helens development ignoring local protests - had St Helens been proposed prior to the Durham Council merger it would never have been approved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5Z6wdu1eI0
Then went out to garden area, and sat at a table to chat with three acquaintancies, about a metre apart.
All very cheerful, quite a few people about, all behaving similarly.
We, and several others who stopped 'to pass the time of day', had 'left' the pub where we usually drink because there was no evidence there of of any restrictions or contact tracing.
Apparently, though it was 'rammed' a day or so ago.
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1297798677457768448
Even if it is the case that the virus is more likely to be caught at home, being out at school during the day isn't reducing that risk, and being both at home and at school is clearly more likely to generate infections than staying at home only.
There are plenty of good reasons why schools should return, but avoiding the risk of catching the virus at home isnt one of them.
Bury has always been more affluent - Oldham itself (not Saddleworth, which is tacked onto it despite the wishes of its residents) is poorer even than Rochdale and comes across far more decrepit when you visit these days.
No say the Thornaby Independents, put the hotel on Teesside Park (cos its in Thornaby). Never mind that it would be in the middle of nowhere and wouldn't help with regeneration it had to be in OUR town. Cos apparently Thornaby folk don't cross the bridge into Stockton as there's Trolls under it.
I'll shut up now. Did I say that I hate local politics?
When does this interminable Liberal election end?
The danger is that it has turned them into the status quo party. The seats they have left are almost all slices of the country stuffed full of winners from the current economic settlement.
These people actively want to harm our children with their claptrap
Most English neighbourhoods haven't had a Covid case for a month, says academic
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/23/second-lockdownmost-english-neighbourhoods-havent-had-covid/
Maybe the blue can be taken out and the green of Wales finally added.
That is, I emphasise, their reported data. Not necessarily a true picture.
As for the hotel that Hilton us a white elephant. As someone who travels a lot it fails every rule when I'm picking a hotel for work - I won't drive into a town centre for a hotel and I can't think of anyone else who would.
To a large extent it reminds me of an old Travelodge I used once in Wakefield. It closed during Travelodges first set of closures as no one would drive to a town centre hotel.
Nevertheless, given that the police officer was only inches behind him and could have tasered/manhandled or cuffed him it doesn't seem necessary to have peppered him with bullets at short range, unless he'd actually picked up a weapon and him turning around to fire was imminent.
Suspect there will be a very low turnout, I have abstained.
They are relying on pumping up turning amongst Democrats that didn't turn out for Hillary in 2016.
Biden also needs to leave his comfort zone and target WWC floating voters in the swing states *directly* as well.
So far, I see little sign of that.
https://www.dezeen.com/2014/02/27/alternative-designs-proposed-for-a-union-jack-without-scotland/
This site is a bit better including the one Moonshine suggested
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/what-happens-to-the-union-jack-flag-if-scotland-leaves-the-united-kingdom/380279/
As for the latest scheme of "lets build a shopping centre" the 70s shopping centre is half empty. The 80s shopping centre is 3/4 empty. And on the main shopping street what isn't shuttered is charity or vape shops.
Perhaps a style like the white ensign, but with a Welsh flag in the top corner rather than a Union Flag?
A number of other flags such as Austalia and NZ may want to update too.
The central hotels inevitably were in the 'wrong' part of town after dark, you got sprung the evening's beer budget for overnight parking, or there was no parking at all and you had to walk half a mile with your bag.
Why not just vote Labour then?
Making it green for Wales is an interesting idea, except that the Welsh haven't to my knowledge ever had an X flag. Perhaps we could pretend it's a green background showing through
There could be a lot of non-voters among the centrists, who see two extreme positions and can't be bothered with it - but there's also an opportunity for both parties to try attract these swing voters in the next two months. Turnout was barely 50% last time out, there's tens of millions of these mostly non-political centrists, and whichever party reaches out to them could be rewarded.
I think the main Presidential race is closer than most people think.