The European Commission has rejected a UK compromise proposal on the Northern Ireland Protocol that would require the EU to take a more flexible approach to the issue of food safety and animal health, RTÉ News understands.
"The results so far from the BBC's key wards shows that Leave and working class areas are moving more strongly to the Conservatives than are Remain and more middle class places.
In the most Leave voting areas where the last local elections were in 2016, the swing from Labour to Conservative is averaging 12 points. In contrast, in the most Remain voting areas there is currently hardly any swing to Conservatives at all.
In those wards where the last electoral contest was in 2017, there is a four point swing to the Conservatives in the most pro-Leave areas, but a 5 point swing to Labour in the most pro-Remain wards.
This latter pattern means that we can anticipate some Labour gains in places where the last election was in 2017.
In the most working class wards the swing since 2016 is averaging 12 points, whereas it is only 3 points in more middle class areas.
In wards last contested in 2017, the swing to the Conservatives is 4 points in the most working class areas, while there is a 4 point swing to Labour in the most middle class ones.
These figures illustrate the lack of progress that Labour has made in reconnecting with working class voters since the general election."
So it just might get less bad as the results become more southern.
Put aside the Leave areas for a moment. Seeing no swing for or against the Conservatives in the areas which are performing worst for the Conservatives is an astoundingly good result for a party which is in government. After being in government for 11 years, even the areas which hate it most aren't moving against it.
Saying this is just down to the vaccine is all well and good, but it's saying that this is all down to the government getting the biggest call of all right - when it's loudest opponents were urging it to do the reverse. So 'just' is doing a lot of work in that analysis.
I say this as one who has swung against the Conservatives over the past year.
Oh I agree and it is even worse when you realise that the areas where there is no swing against are areas where the Tories did exceptionally well in 2017. Hanging on to those gains is a phenomenal result. Big swings in their favour from such a base is incredible.
Late to the fray, but I'd like to claim some bragging rights for my Hartlepool prediction yesterday, as I wasn't far off:
I expect Tories to sail home in Hartlepool with a majority of around 6,000. It will be a Labour massacre, but still unsurprising. Labour will lose some 2019 votes through indifference, some 2019 Labour will go Tory, and virtually all of the 2019 Brexit voters that bother to turn out will go Tory. Bad news for Labour, but not signifying a great deal in the medium to long term.
Were it not for the fact both Rochdale and myself called it without seconds of the byelection being announced I would give you that.
Thanks for the faint praise! I was also convinced from the moment it was announced that the Tories would win easily. But as I live currently in the deep south, I said nothing, preferring to leave it to the local NE experts like you.
Oh it wasn't meant as a dig - I hope you took some of the money Ladbrokes were offering on a 2000+ majority.
Being so close - it has been obvious to me that the Labour party really don't understand how bad their situation really is and it's only now they can deal with the fact they have 15-20 more seats than they should have (and they really do need to thank Farage for that) and work out policies that would allow them to keep a few of them.
They also need to make sure that expectations are set that they are going to lose Batley and Spen well before the election is called - and say use it to kill the left by giving one of their preferred candidates the chance to win it.
There has been a record turnout among postal voters in Edinburgh, BBC Scotland has learned. A total of 89.2% of people who had registered to vote by post returned their ballots.
(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 6m This is another key test for Starmer. Will he now purge Momentum. If you can be a member of Momentum and a member of Labour then the party has zero chance of recapturing seats like Hartlepool.
He should have done that already. It will be even harder now.
I kind of agree. The issue is will the Corbyites feel enboldened or not after last night.
The old 'winning cures everything' is the key story. If Starmer was 'winning' he would be stronger to shout them down.
When pundits who ‘explained’ why Vote Leave’s plan to realign politics was mad/stupid/impossible now give post hoc ‘explanations’ for why it’s all so logical/inevitable … ignore their babble… Pundits = noise not signal. Eg ‘the centre ground’ DOES NOT EXIST, it’s pundit fiction
Classic Dom
Is this Boris being lucky again? Now is the time for Dom to claim some reflected glory in the triumph, not throw his toys out the pram when no one is listening. He knows that, Boris knows that. The media may once again be disappointed.
KS is a beta-lawyer-gamma-politician, like ~all in SW1 he obsesses on Media Reality not Actual Reality, he’s played the lobby game (badly) for a year WITHOUT A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY, now the pundits will a/ savage him, b/ tell him he needs to focus on them more, more exclusives!
Whereas Dominic Cummings, of course, is not a SW1 pundit. He's an EC1 commentator. Entirely different creature.
Another election, media again shown to be out of touch...not just labour that needs to get off the twatter.
Not just the cash for cushions, but the circle jerk over Big Dom pyscho drama. People don't care about it, they do care what shambles of a bin system they might have to put up with.
When pundits who ‘explained’ why Vote Leave’s plan to realign politics was mad/stupid/impossible now give post hoc ‘explanations’ for why it’s all so logical/inevitable … ignore their babble… Pundits = noise not signal. Eg ‘the centre ground’ DOES NOT EXIST, it’s pundit fiction
Classic Dom
Is this Boris being lucky again? Now is the time for Dom to claim some reflected glory in the triumph, not throw his toys out the pram when no one is listening. He knows that, Boris knows that. The media may once again be disappointed.
KS is a beta-lawyer-gamma-politician, like ~all in SW1 he obsesses on Media Reality not Actual Reality, he’s played the lobby game (badly) for a year WITHOUT A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY, now the pundits will a/ savage him, b/ tell him he needs to focus on them more, more exclusives!
Whereas Dominic Cummings, of course, is not a SW1 pundit. He's an EC1 commentator. Entirely different creature.
The point he makes about swing voters not being moderate is a very good one.
So Labour lefties think that the reason they lost Hartlepool was because they weren't loony lefty enough? And the response to the huge defeat there is to double down on Corbyn policies? If that is the case they are deluded beyond belief. Sorry, Jezziah, but your diagnosis is so, so wrong.
In trying to hold both the metro elite and the working class Labour vote together SKS has an impossible task: you can't take the knee wrapped in the Union flag and please both constituencies; you end up alienating both of them. He needs to choose, as Casino mentioned upthread.
Despite people on the left of centre deriding the "culture war" as non-existent, to me it is very real. I was amazed by last evening's discussion on here that so many people had never experienced the impact of wokeness as work. I work for a large US (East Coast) global corporation and our senior management and HR are obsessed by it - our cooperate intranet is like the BBC home page with article after article on E, D & I. Maybe smaller UK firms have yet to be afflicted by it but if anyone has access to the CIPD magazine you will get an idea what is coming in terms of UK HR - the CIPD has bought into the woke agenda hook, line and sinker.
This stuff is not going away. The people of Hartlepool may not be exposed to it in the workplace (yet) but they can see the way it is affecting popular culture and they don't like it.
For now, the Conservatives have parked their tanks on Labour's lawn when it comes to government spending and Boris is seen as standing up for traditional British values. Labour's only response to government spending is to spend more, which lacks credibility, and it appears to be actively against traditional British values.
So what does Labour do? Is the plan to sit and wait for the Tories to implode (most likely when the COVID spending chickens come home to roost), keep the fragile coalition together and hope that by that time demographics have worked in its favour? It might work but it doesn't really address the fundamental issue of where it stands on the British values question.
Blair won for a reason; when the time came, mainstream Britain was not repelled by Labour. It is now.
I have worked in HR for many years. I am instinctively right of centre politically. Sorry to break it to you, but diversity and inclusion is not about "wokeness", it is about the fact that it has been clearly proven that diverse teams are more innovative, and paradoxically perhaps, more cohesive. Maintaining the team profiles (particularly senior ones) of yesteryear that were dominated by middle aged white men is not in any organisations' interest. Most companies are recognising this, though it is a difficult challenge to address without "positive discrimination" or "affirmative action" (as it is called in the US) which is illegal in this country. One of the ways to challenge it is to promote literature and documentation that promotes the change. Hope that helps!
box was good for the Tories in Coventry. Street more nailed on than a nailed on thing.
I lived in Tile Hill for a time, as a student. Mobile phones were just coming in and predictive text had a habit of changing it to "Vile Hill" and the name kind of stuck amongst us. Wasn't a big student area, more typical red wall, I guess. I wouldn't be at all surprised at Tories doing well there, now. Would have been deep red when I was there.
He expects Labour to absolutely smash Earlsdon. Problem is for Labour, at least in Coventry there are more places like Tile Hill than Earlsdon.
Politics will for a while resemble DC/GO vs EM: two groups focused on the media but not as good at it as Blair, neither focused on country or *being a serious gvt*
When pundits who ‘explained’ why Vote Leave’s plan to realign politics was mad/stupid/impossible now give post hoc ‘explanations’ for why it’s all so logical/inevitable … ignore their babble… Pundits = noise not signal. Eg ‘the centre ground’ DOES NOT EXIST, it’s pundit fiction
Classic Dom
Is this Boris being lucky again? Now is the time for Dom to claim some reflected glory in the triumph, not throw his toys out the pram when no one is listening. He knows that, Boris knows that. The media may once again be disappointed.
KS is a beta-lawyer-gamma-politician, like ~all in SW1 he obsesses on Media Reality not Actual Reality, he’s played the lobby game (badly) for a year WITHOUT A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY, now the pundits will a/ savage him, b/ tell him he needs to focus on them more, more exclusives!
Whereas Dominic Cummings, of course, is not a SW1 pundit. He's an EC1 commentator. Entirely different creature.
A massively successful political campaigner, probably the best since Bad Al Campbell. Didn’t get to that position by sitting in the Village bubble.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
It's good but why the translation? Why assume posters on here are unable to grasp the original ancient greek?
The contempt for the audience is palpable and will lose you much affection and respect.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
box was good for the Tories in Coventry. Street more nailed on than a nailed on thing.
I lived in Tile Hill for a time, as a student. Mobile phones were just coming in and predictive text had a habit of changing it to "Vile Hill" and the name kind of stuck amongst us. Wasn't a big student area, more typical red wall, I guess. I wouldn't be at all surprised at Tories doing well there, now. Would have been deep red when I was there.
He expects Labour to absolutely smash Earlsdon. Problem is for Labour, at least in Coventry there are more places like Tile Hill than Earlsdon.
Worked at Warwick Uni between 2013 and 2018. Bus route went via Earlsdon and Tile Hill, Earlsdon always seemed "posher"
Never heard of "Heritage" until this morning - they came fourth in Hartlepool!
Another "splitter" group of ex-UKIP nutters who would like us to all return to the 1930s where working class folk knew their place and touched the forelock to their betters.
While we are all busy writing the obituaries for Labour, I would be fascinated to see the comment thread following the 2005 Tory GE election defeat (did PB exist then - are the threads archived anywhere?).
End of the Conservatives? Lib Dems to replace Conservatives as main opposition? UK has forever moved away from Tory politics?
Labour have major problems. But nothing lasts forever.
Another election, media again shown to be out of touch...not just labour that needs to get off the twatter.
Not just the cash for cushions, but the circle jerk over Big Dom pyscho drama.
You may be right, but you are a bit previous. The fat lady has yet to sing either about Dom or about cushions, and both issues remain potential threats to Johnson.
Popular policies that led to historic defeats. I said it yesterday and will repeat. Burgon is less charming than Starmer! Take that in? He is the politics of Corbyn with the personal appeal of a kick in the nuts.
Nick Eardley @nickeardleybbc Scottish Tory source: We have made our whole campaign about the peach ballot and the early indicators are the message has landed to pro-UK voters
Late to the fray, but I'd like to claim some bragging rights for my Hartlepool prediction yesterday, as I wasn't far off:
I expect Tories to sail home in Hartlepool with a majority of around 6,000. It will be a Labour massacre, but still unsurprising. Labour will lose some 2019 votes through indifference, some 2019 Labour will go Tory, and virtually all of the 2019 Brexit voters that bother to turn out will go Tory. Bad news for Labour, but not signifying a great deal in the medium to long term.
Were it not for the fact both Rochdale and myself called it without seconds of the byelection being announced I would give you that.
Thanks for the faint praise! I was also convinced from the moment it was announced that the Tories would win easily. But as I live currently in the deep south, I said nothing, preferring to leave it to the local NE experts like you.
Yes, it was a slam dunk for the Cons. The margin was worse than I expected though. Ah well.
So, a Yeir for Keir, yes?
That's what I think anyway. We need eye-catching 'untory' policies plus a leader with personal cut-through, and over the next 12 months or so Starmer must show he ticks the latter box. If he can't, we'll have to make a change.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
Evidently. It's 35 years since I composed Latin verse, could not even attempt it now.
I am guessing Labour will be down 400-450 councillors by the time this is over. That's just appalling.
11 years into a Tory government; it is insane. And I actually say that as someone who is not particularly well-disposed to voting Labour, but we all have an interest in having a decent, functioning opposition party.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
Evidently. It's 35 years since I composed Latin verse, could not even attempt it now.
Late to the fray, but I'd like to claim some bragging rights for my Hartlepool prediction yesterday, as I wasn't far off:
I expect Tories to sail home in Hartlepool with a majority of around 6,000. It will be a Labour massacre, but still unsurprising. Labour will lose some 2019 votes through indifference, some 2019 Labour will go Tory, and virtually all of the 2019 Brexit voters that bother to turn out will go Tory. Bad news for Labour, but not signifying a great deal in the medium to long term.
Were it not for the fact both Rochdale and myself called it without seconds of the byelection being announced I would give you that.
Thanks for the faint praise! I was also convinced from the moment it was announced that the Tories would win easily. But as I live currently in the deep south, I said nothing, preferring to leave it to the local NE experts like you.
Oh it wasn't meant as a dig - I hope you took some of the money Ladbrokes were offering on a 2000+ majority.
Being so close - it has been obvious to me that the Labour party really don't understand how bad their situation really is and it's only now they can deal with the fact they have 15-20 more seats than they should have (and they really do need to thank Farage for that) and work out policies that would allow them to keep a few of them.
They also need to make sure that expectations are set that they are going to lose Batley and Spen well before the election is called - and say use it to kill the left by giving one of their preferred candidates the chance to win it.
Agreed. Though I think Labour has a much better chance in Batley & Spen than in Hartlepool - both because of the timing and because of the area. I reckon it will be close. I write as a true Yorkshire man, despite my current location.
Another election, media again shown to be out of touch...not just labour that needs to get off the twatter.
Not just the cash for cushions, but the circle jerk over Big Dom pyscho drama.
You may be right, but you are a bit previous. The fat lady has yet to sing either about Dom or about cushions, and both issues remain potential threats to Johnson.
The flat stuff is still a potential issue, but all the drama about things like Boris shouting something during heat of an argument stuff, people in Hartlepool don't care....as everybody has done something like that.
While we are all busy writing the obituaries for Labour, I would be fascinated to see the comment thread following the 2005 Tory GE election defeat (did PB exist then - are the threads archived anywhere?).
End of the Conservatives? Lib Dems to replace Conservatives as main opposition? UK has forever moved away from Tory politics?
Labour have major problems. But nothing lasts forever.
The Conservatives might, only one minor rebranding since 1685.
What are the views on high turnout in Scotland? Does it auger well for Nicola (I presumed so?)
Its hard to tell, my experience of high turn out in NE Scotland is that it tends to favour the Tories. Either way I think its going to be close. On the other hand it looks like a scare is coming for the Lib Dems in Shetland.
Labour have major problems. But nothing lasts forever.
Very true.
Did you mean Labour?
But the full demise of Labour needs a credible replacement and (probably) a non-FPTP electoral system.
There is of course precedent for one of the main parties to be replaced under FPTP: 2021 - to be seen as the year of the Lib Dems began to take their rightful place as the natural party of government?
It feels like a total realignment has taken place in UK politics in the last five years. OGH ends his header: "This exactly the divide we saw over Brexit." The traditional Left/Right divide hardly accounts for what we're seeing.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
Evidently. It's 35 years since I composed Latin verse, could not even attempt it now.
Actually 45 years. Fuck I am old
My knowledge of Latin poetry doesn't extend much further than "Ego pedicabo vos et irrumabo."
"Blaze rips through east London tower block flat 'with Grenfell-style cladding' as 100 firefighters battle flames
Crews were called around 9am after eighth, ninth and tenth floors set alight"
They are....it was a proper fire, but fire service there quickly, all sorted now. fuse box caused a fire, one person in hospital, expected to make a full recovery.
The building apparently had the dodgy cladding, work was due to start this week to remove it.
I quite like Starmer, but something has to change.
I MAY need to change my Avatar before the weekend...
Or you're going to have to design Starmer one of your Corbyn style bar charts.
You might want to change yours Philip. You often claim not to be of the extreme right, but your avatar looks like something Tommy Robinson might have as a tattoo!
When pundits who ‘explained’ why Vote Leave’s plan to realign politics was mad/stupid/impossible now give post hoc ‘explanations’ for why it’s all so logical/inevitable … ignore their babble… Pundits = noise not signal. Eg ‘the centre ground’ DOES NOT EXIST, it’s pundit fiction
Classic Dom
Is this Boris being lucky again? Now is the time for Dom to claim some reflected glory in the triumph, not throw his toys out the pram when no one is listening. He knows that, Boris knows that. The media may once again be disappointed.
KS is a beta-lawyer-gamma-politician, like ~all in SW1 he obsesses on Media Reality not Actual Reality, he’s played the lobby game (badly) for a year WITHOUT A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY, now the pundits will a/ savage him, b/ tell him he needs to focus on them more, more exclusives!
Whereas Dominic Cummings, of course, is not a SW1 pundit. He's an EC1 commentator. Entirely different creature.
A massively successful political campaigner, probably the best since Bad Al Campbell. Didn’t get to that position by sitting in the Village bubble.
Here's the thing though.
Dom and Boris are incredibly good at campaigning, but a lot of the evidence of the last few years is that they're much less good at governing. Dom's reforms cut through Whitehall like a knife through water.
That doesn't matter right now. Will it matter later?
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
Evidently. It's 35 years since I composed Latin verse, could not even attempt it now.
Actually 45 years. Fuck I am old
My knowledge of Latin poetry doesn't extend much further than "Ego pedicabo vos et irrumabo."
Forceful irrumation has always struck me as high risk. Catullus at his filthiest is not Catullus at his best, I prefer the ones about his boat and his brothers funeral.
The European Commission has rejected a UK compromise proposal on the Northern Ireland Protocol that would require the EU to take a more flexible approach to the issue of food safety and animal health, RTÉ News understands.
They are still insisting on alignment, which the UK has "long rejected"
The UK still thinks equivalence is the sensible way forward. But apparently that doesn't eliminate the need for checks because "equivalence" doesn't mean "equivalence". Or something.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
Evidently. It's 35 years since I composed Latin verse, could not even attempt it now.
Actually 45 years. Fuck I am old
My knowledge of Latin poetry doesn't extend much further than "Ego pedicabo vos et irrumabo."
Forceful irrumation has always struck me as high risk. Catullus at his filthiest is not Catullus at his best, I prefer the ones about his boat and his brothers funeral.
Ave atque vale (Hello and goodbye). Did it for O-level half a century ago. Just the right sentiment for Starmer and, appropriately, addressed to a 'brother'.
I hear so much genuine anger that different areas do this differently. This is an anger I simply can't understand. It's the work of minutes to understand your own area's recycling system. Still, the government appears to be responding to a genuine demand here.
People perceive the different rules as unfairness. I agree that it's trivial, but people like to have equal treatment.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
I hear so much genuine anger that different areas do this differently. This is an anger I simply can't understand. It's the work of minutes to understand your own area's recycling system. Still, the government appears to be responding to a genuine demand here.
People perceive the different rules as unfairness. I agree that it's trivial, but people like to have equal treatment.
It is much more important to many people than if their town is going to be twinned with Palestine to show solidarity....
I quite like Starmer, but something has to change.
I MAY need to change my Avatar before the weekend...
Or you're going to have to design Starmer one of your Corbyn style bar charts.
You might want to change yours Philip. You often claim not to be of the extreme right, but your avatar looks like something Tommy Robinson might have as a tattoo!
I don't have any tattoos but if you think that it says more about you than it does me. When I changed it many people here across the political spectrum said they liked it.
I hear so much genuine anger that different areas do this differently. This is an anger I simply can't understand. It's the work of minutes to understand your own area's recycling system. Still, the government appears to be responding to a genuine demand here.
I'm not bothered about councils doing their own thing (local democracy, innit?). I do wish our council would give a proper guide on which plastics are recyclable. Most things have the little number symbols now, so it would be a simple list: 1,2,5 yes, others no, for example.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
Interesting. I know it is a non-PC thing to say but it infers susceptibility to Boris Johnson's message is proportionate to the lack of education of the overall electorate. Combine this with the more educated folk that would never vote Labour (particularly the more prosperous) and it is a cynical but winning formula.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
Might be good for Labour in the long term assuming people are getting more educated. Perhaps Boris should revisit Theresa's plan of bringing back the Eleven Plus.
So Labour lefties think that the reason they lost Hartlepool was because they weren't loony lefty enough? And the response to the huge defeat there is to double down on Corbyn policies? If that is the case they are deluded beyond belief. Sorry, Jezziah, but your diagnosis is so, so wrong.
In trying to hold both the metro elite and the working class Labour vote together SKS has an impossible task: you can't take the knee wrapped in the Union flag and please both constituencies; you end up alienating both of them. He needs to choose, as Casino mentioned upthread.
Despite people on the left of centre deriding the "culture war" as non-existent, to me it is very real. I was amazed by last evening's discussion on here that so many people had never experienced the impact of wokeness as work. I work for a large US (East Coast) global corporation and our senior management and HR are obsessed by it - our cooperate intranet is like the BBC home page with article after article on E, D & I. Maybe smaller UK firms have yet to be afflicted by it but if anyone has access to the CIPD magazine you will get an idea what is coming in terms of UK HR - the CIPD has bought into the woke agenda hook, line and sinker.
This stuff is not going away. The people of Hartlepool may not be exposed to it in the workplace (yet) but they can see the way it is affecting popular culture and they don't like it.
For now, the Conservatives have parked their tanks on Labour's lawn when it comes to government spending and Boris is seen as standing up for traditional British values. Labour's only response to government spending is to spend more, which lacks credibility, and it appears to be actively against traditional British values.
So what does Labour do? Is the plan to sit and wait for the Tories to implode (most likely when the COVID spending chickens come home to roost), keep the fragile coalition together and hope that by that time demographics have worked in its favour? It might work but it doesn't really address the fundamental issue of where it stands on the British values question.
Blair won for a reason; when the time came, mainstream Britain was not repelled by Labour. It is now.
I have worked in HR for many years. I am instinctively right of centre politically. Sorry to break it to you, but diversity and inclusion is not about "wokeness", it is about the fact that it has been clearly proven that diverse teams are more innovative, and paradoxically perhaps, more cohesive. Maintaining the team profiles (particularly senior ones) of yesteryear that were dominated by middle aged white men is not in any organisations' interest. Most companies are recognising this, though it is a difficult challenge to address without "positive discrimination" or "affirmative action" (as it is called in the US) which is illegal in this country. One of the ways to challenge it is to promote literature and documentation that promotes the change. Hope that helps!
Excellent post, Nigel. There are valid concerns about woke but my strong sense of the more ardent antiwokerati is they are a motley mix of the plain ignorant and those more knowing who are eminently comfortable with the old hierarchies and affronted by them being challenged.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
Interesting. I know it is a non-PC thing to say but it infers susceptibility to Boris Johnson's message is proportionate to the lack of education of the overall electorate. Combine this with the more educated folk that would never vote Labour (particularly the more prosperous) and it is a cynical but winning formula.
Not this nonsense again...at its core it age related....when people in their 60s plus were 18, only ~10-15% went to uni, people in their 30s, its closer to 50%, so basing on who is "educated" and who isn't is comparing apples and oranges.
I quite like Starmer, but something has to change.
I MAY need to change my Avatar before the weekend...
Or you're going to have to design Starmer one of your Corbyn style bar charts.
You might want to change yours Philip. You often claim not to be of the extreme right, but your avatar looks like something Tommy Robinson might have as a tattoo!
I don't have any tattoos but if you think that it says more about you than it does me. When I changed it many people here across the political spectrum said they liked it.
I thought I was being nice to you there Philip! OK, so in more detail, historically skulls are associated with the far right. The Nazis referred to them as "Totenkopf" (think I have spelt that correctly) or "death's head", and it was most notably used as insignia for the SS. It is also favoured by white supremacists. Skinheads often use skulls as "cool" insignia and I think they are also used by Combat 18. Obviously if you are comfortable with those associations....
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
It's good but why the translation? Why assume posters on here are unable to grasp the original ancient greek?
The contempt for the audience is palpable and will lose you much affection and respect.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
Interesting. I know it is a non-PC thing to say but it infers susceptibility to Boris Johnson's message is proportionate to the lack of education of the overall electorate. Combine this with the more educated folk that would never vote Labour (particularly the more prosperous) and it is a cynical but winning formula.
Could just be another age marker. If you are currently in your 60s, a fair chunk of your cohort left school with no qualifications, because they didn't stay at school long enough to get them. Leave school now, and it's pretty much unthinkable.
And it's not "somewheres are thick". If anything, it's the other way round- people move around for HE and the sort of jobs that only happen in big cities, and that forces a degree of rootless cosmopolitanism on them.
Which is the difference between an economic drift right with age, and one based on values. There are goodish reasons to expect the first, but not the second.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
Interesting. I know it is a non-PC thing to say but it infers susceptibility to Boris Johnson's message is proportionate to the lack of education of the overall electorate. Combine this with the more educated folk that would never vote Labour (particularly the more prosperous) and it is a cynical but winning formula.
Not this nonsense again...at its core it age related....when people in their 60s plus were 18, only ~10-15% went to uni, people in their 30s, its closer to 50%, so basing on who is "educated" and who isn't is comparing apples and oranges.
Partly, but not entirely. There is plenty of history about the socio-demographic appeal of populist agendas
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
It's good but why the translation? Why assume posters on here are unable to grasp the original ancient greek?
The contempt for the audience is palpable and will lose you much affection and respect.
I'd struggle to translate the original using my (albeit limited) ancient Greek.
That's not something you would ever have expected to hear 20 years ago and I guess that's a crumb of comfort for Labour. Nothing lasts forever and in the end politics always moves on...
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
It's good but why the translation? Why assume posters on here are unable to grasp the original ancient greek?
The contempt for the audience is palpable and will lose you much affection and respect.
I think you have browser rendering issues. I am seeing cuneiform.
I quite like Starmer, but something has to change.
I MAY need to change my Avatar before the weekend...
Or you're going to have to design Starmer one of your Corbyn style bar charts.
You might want to change yours Philip. You often claim not to be of the extreme right, but your avatar looks like something Tommy Robinson might have as a tattoo!
I don't have any tattoos but if you think that it says more about you than it does me. When I changed it many people here across the political spectrum said they liked it.
I thought I was being nice to you there Philip! OK, so in more detail, historically skulls are associated with the far right. The Nazis referred to them as "Totenkopf" (think I have spelt that correctly) or "death's head", and it was most notably used as insignia for the SS. It is also favoured by white supremacists. Skinheads often use skulls as "cool" insignia and I think they are also used by Combat 18. Obviously if you are comfortable with those associations....
No I'm not ok with that association. 🙄
The association I'm going for, which I have done for a while, is pirates not anything extreme like that. Based yes on pirates being 'fun' nowadays but mainly on the "libertarian pirate island" remarks that kept being made.
I did a Google Image Search of pirate + cross of St George and this was the most suitable image I could find.
Mr. Leave, to be fair to Rose, his was the only political ad I watched. It was so daft I was unable to stop watching so I could report on it accurately here.
In honour of the glorious win in our new heartland of Hartlepool, I’ve had a go at immortalizing the political moment epigrammatically in the traditional manner of the old: with an elegiac couplet or two. Ahem:
INSTAR MERITUM:
principis aurata muros candescere charta ______ingemis, et quanti quis dederitque rogas. heu, tibi quid paries, partes cum sede repulsae? ______aurea dum spectas, moenia rubra cadunt.
A WELL-EARNED IMAGE:
‘The PM’s walls in Number 10 gleam bright with gilded leaf!’ _____you wail, and quiz ‘How much, and who’s been doling?’ Alas, what good’s a party-wall when your party’s lost its seat? _____While it’s at walls of gold you gape, the Red Wall keeps on falling.
As a onetime classics scholar I must say this is rather good.
Perhaps we can have a mournful farewell to Starmer done in the style of Catullus?
Outstandingly good.
Thank you. I do know a little bit more than just copying and pasting.
Evidently. It's 35 years since I composed Latin verse, could not even attempt it now.
Actually 45 years. Fuck I am old
You stopped composing Latin verse before I was born.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
Interesting. I know it is a non-PC thing to say but it infers susceptibility to Boris Johnson's message is proportionate to the lack of education of the overall electorate. Combine this with the more educated folk that would never vote Labour (particularly the more prosperous) and it is a cynical but winning formula.
Two problems with this thesis: Firstly it is not cynical for any political party to try to get any voters to vote for them. That's their big job. Either all parties are cynical in this way or none are.
Secondly Walton, Bootle and Knowsley don't seem particularly under Boris's spell but don't have conspicuously high levels of HFE and PhDs either. It's much more complicated than that.
So Labour lefties think that the reason they lost Hartlepool was because they weren't loony lefty enough? And the response to the huge defeat there is to double down on Corbyn policies? If that is the case they are deluded beyond belief. Sorry, Jezziah, but your diagnosis is so, so wrong.
In trying to hold both the metro elite and the working class Labour vote together SKS has an impossible task: you can't take the knee wrapped in the Union flag and please both constituencies; you end up alienating both of them. He needs to choose, as Casino mentioned upthread.
Despite people on the left of centre deriding the "culture war" as non-existent, to me it is very real. I was amazed by last evening's discussion on here that so many people had never experienced the impact of wokeness as work. I work for a large US (East Coast) global corporation and our senior management and HR are obsessed by it - our cooperate intranet is like the BBC home page with article after article on E, D & I. Maybe smaller UK firms have yet to be afflicted by it but if anyone has access to the CIPD magazine you will get an idea what is coming in terms of UK HR - the CIPD has bought into the woke agenda hook, line and sinker.
This stuff is not going away. The people of Hartlepool may not be exposed to it in the workplace (yet) but they can see the way it is affecting popular culture and they don't like it.
For now, the Conservatives have parked their tanks on Labour's lawn when it comes to government spending and Boris is seen as standing up for traditional British values. Labour's only response to government spending is to spend more, which lacks credibility, and it appears to be actively against traditional British values.
So what does Labour do? Is the plan to sit and wait for the Tories to implode (most likely when the COVID spending chickens come home to roost), keep the fragile coalition together and hope that by that time demographics have worked in its favour? It might work but it doesn't really address the fundamental issue of where it stands on the British values question.
Blair won for a reason; when the time came, mainstream Britain was not repelled by Labour. It is now.
I have worked in HR for many years. I am instinctively right of centre politically. Sorry to break it to you, but diversity and inclusion is not about "wokeness", it is about the fact that it has been clearly proven that diverse teams are more innovative, and paradoxically perhaps, more cohesive. Maintaining the team profiles (particularly senior ones) of yesteryear that were dominated by middle aged white men is not in any organisations' interest. Most companies are recognising this, though it is a difficult challenge to address without "positive discrimination" or "affirmative action" (as it is called in the US) which is illegal in this country. One of the ways to challenge it is to promote literature and documentation that promotes the change. Hope that helps!
Excellent post, Nigel. There are valid concerns about woke but my strong sense of the more ardent antiwokerati is they are a motley mix of the plain ignorant and those more knowing who are eminently comfortable with the old hierarchies and affronted by them being challenged.
I think this country had tremendous success in becoming socially more progressive in the last 20 years and by and large brought people along with it (yes there are always people dragging their knuckles but that happens in any society). I think it shows that people are willing to be educated and become more enlightened on social topics - in my experience people generally aren’t horrible and like to help and understand others.
Personally I think the objections to the woke narrative in the past few years has less to do with the actual principles that people are espousing, it’s more to do with the way these things are presented as if people need to self-flagellate or atone for their behaviours. It’s much easier to get people to get on board with things if you’re not implicitly or explicitly going on the attack about their “privilege”.
Comments
The European Commission has rejected a UK compromise proposal on the Northern Ireland Protocol that would require the EU to take a more flexible approach to the issue of food safety and animal health, RTÉ News understands.
https://www.rte.ie/news/brexit/2021/0507/1215936-northern-ireland-protocol/
https://www.londonelects.org.uk/im-voter/live-results
Being so close - it has been obvious to me that the Labour party really don't understand how bad their situation really is and it's only now they can deal with the fact they have 15-20 more seats than they should have (and they really do need to thank Farage for that) and work out policies that would allow them to keep a few of them.
They also need to make sure that expectations are set that they are going to lose Batley and Spen well before the election is called - and say use it to kill the left by giving one of their preferred candidates the chance to win it.
A wether is a castrated ram.
There has been a record turnout among postal voters in Edinburgh, BBC Scotland has learned.
A total of 89.2% of people who had registered to vote by post returned their ballots.
The old 'winning cures everything' is the key story. If Starmer was 'winning' he would be stronger to shout them down.
Thats harder to do now.
Not just the cash for cushions, but the circle jerk over Big Dom pyscho drama. People don't care about it, they do care what shambles of a bin system they might have to put up with.
Politics will for a while resemble DC/GO vs EM: two groups focused on the media but not as good at it as Blair, neither focused on country or *being a serious gvt*
The contempt for the audience is palpable and will lose you much affection and respect.
End of the Conservatives?
Lib Dems to replace Conservatives as main opposition?
UK has forever moved away from Tory politics?
Labour have major problems. But nothing lasts forever.
More hype.
https://twitter.com/nickeardleybbc/status/1390568240888287234?s=20
Nick Eardley
@nickeardleybbc
Scottish Tory source: We have made our whole campaign about the peach ballot and the early indicators are the message has landed to pro-UK voters
So, a Yeir for Keir, yes?
That's what I think anyway. We need eye-catching 'untory' policies plus a leader with personal cut-through, and over the next 12 months or so Starmer must show he ticks the latter box. If he can't, we'll have to make a change.
Did you mean Labour?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57016110
Let’s hope this isn’t a disaster.
Stop the count. 😂
Actually don't.
4 top reasons in no particular order -
Leave
Vaccines
"Boris"
Pork
2014 Indyref turnout 85%
2016 Holyrood turnout 55%
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9553339/Blaze-rips-tower-block-flat-Grenfell-style-cladding-100-firefighters-battle-flames.html
"Blaze rips through east London tower block flat 'with Grenfell-style cladding' as 100 firefighters battle flames
Crews were called around 9am after eighth, ninth and tenth floors set alight"
But I've seen other places report a big grey vote - which is bad for the Nats.
There is of course precedent for one of the main parties to be replaced under FPTP: 2021 - to be seen as the year of the Lib Dems began to take their rightful place as the natural party of government?
[Checks most local election results... Oh!]
The building apparently had the dodgy cladding, work was due to start this week to remove it.
Dom and Boris are incredibly good at campaigning, but a lot of the evidence of the last few years is that they're much less good at governing. Dom's reforms cut through Whitehall like a knife through water.
That doesn't matter right now. Will it matter later?
Well done on winning our bet.
And ahead of the nuttier Corbyn and Gammons
The UK still thinks equivalence is the sensible way forward. But apparently that doesn't eliminate the need for checks because "equivalence" doesn't mean "equivalence". Or something.
Latest from Sir John Curtice: In places last contested in 2016, there is a swing of 10 points from Labour to Tory in places where relatively large numbers of people have no qualifications, whereas there is a slight swing to Labour in places with a large number of graduates.
It's like watching false starts at the 1976 Olympics, before the rules changed.
https://twitter.com/jonnyross05/status/1390603925536088067
Conservatives GAIN 12 seats in Dudley whilst Labour LOSE 11 seats.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1390603750465748992
And it's not "somewheres are thick". If anything, it's the other way round- people move around for HE and the sort of jobs that only happen in big cities, and that forces a degree of rootless cosmopolitanism on them.
Which is the difference between an economic drift right with age, and one based on values. There are goodish reasons to expect the first, but not the second.
Current favourite is 64-65 at 3s, 62-63 at 3.3 and 66-67 at 4.6s.
Because it's in Latin...
The association I'm going for, which I have done for a while, is pirates not anything extreme like that. Based yes on pirates being 'fun' nowadays but mainly on the "libertarian pirate island" remarks that kept being made.
I did a Google Image Search of pirate + cross of St George and this was the most suitable image I could find.
Does that help?
Secondly Walton, Bootle and Knowsley don't seem particularly under Boris's spell but don't have conspicuously high levels of HFE and PhDs either. It's much more complicated than that.
Personally I think the objections to the woke narrative in the past few years has less to do with the actual principles that people are espousing, it’s more to do with the way these things are presented as if people need to self-flagellate or atone for their behaviours. It’s much easier to get people to get on board with things if you’re not implicitly or explicitly going on the attack about their “privilege”.