Lineker's tax problem was a straight IR35 issue, wasn't it, rather than one of these shady non-investment investments that used to be fashionable? Tbh I could never quite get my head around it.
The taxman is arguing that his BBC contract has been one of employment for many years, and are asking for around £1m extra from him in IT and NI.
Given he also has a deal with BT Sport for working on their live matches during the season, in my mind he pretty much meets the definition of a contractor under IR35.
The end result, for the rest of us, is that contractor rates have to go up; because everyone might end up being considered as an employee by the taxman, unless he can send a substitute.
Third labour loss in Durham. 1 seat to Lib Dem’s in Aycliffe north. It’s odd how the seats closer to Hartlepool are relatively good for labour.
What I found interesting that the urban core of Blyth and Ashington (in Northumberland) is still solidly Labour. It's the outskirts where the Persimmon new-builds are aplenty where the Tory vote is the strongest, like @Philip_Thompson says.
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.
That motley mix is quite a few people ... more than half the country?
Plain ignorant = someone who disagrees with you ;-)
But you make my argument for me with your point about people pushing back when their values and way of life are challenged. Do you think people will accept something that threatens them or that they disagree with? Maybe they will reject these ideas when given the opportunity to express themselves without fear of reprisal ... at the ballot box?
Lineker's tax problem was a straight IR35 issue, wasn't it, rather than one of these shady non-investment investments that used to be fashionable? Tbh I could never quite get my head around it.
Didn’t the BBC pay many of these liabilities in the past for wealthy ‘talent’ who fell foul of IR35 after the Christa Akroyd case got HMRC interested in this industry.
Yep because the BBC were the people who created the mess by insisting the presenters (and others) used limited companies in an attempt to reduce the BBCs costs.
Can anyone recommend me some good twitter handles or hashtags for latest results? I'm looking for one site with the latest coming in around the UK. Preferably troll free.
Bump. Anyone? Or a website. Somewhere which just gives a live feed of results as opposed to endless commentary and trolling.
Lineker's tax problem was a straight IR35 issue, wasn't it, rather than one of these shady non-investment investments that used to be fashionable? Tbh I could never quite get my head around 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.
The concern of course must be that this might result in a poorer service in some areas that currently have very good recycling systems.
Currently Lincolnshire has a brilliant system. They have a single bin which takes just about everything that can possibly be recycled and then it is sorted by the private contractor (Mountain in our area). This makes recycling quick, easy and efficient and you really see a difference with very little going into the landfill bin.
Across the border in Nottinghamshire they also have a single bin system but what you can recycle is severely limited. So no glass for example. Or tetrapacks. This means that my Mum saves all this stuff up and gives it to me to put in my recycling bin each time I see her.
So if the rationalising means Lincolnshire end up with the Nottinghamshire system then that would be a very retrograde step.
Speaking from Nottinghamshire I have a blue bin for my glass, which is collected once a fortnight.
Interestingly that doesn't exist in Newark and Sherwood. So the differences are down to district council level. Indeed my daughter is at Uni in Nottingham and they again have a completely different system.
Yes, and bin colours are inconsistent.
I (Ashfield) have:
Green lid recycling. Red lid general waste. Brown garden waste, which costs £28 a year. Smaller blue lid for glass every 8 weeks (not 2).
Since I started serious composting my recycling is 60% less. Which means that Ashfield's recycling performance is worse as the % in the green bin is now much lower. KPIs !
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.
Good point.
Lack of education doesn't equate to lack of intelligence. Some of the biggest idiots out there are the most educated *
* Let me qualify that, I should have omitted the "Some of"
It certainly does not equate - ridiculous to think so. But it does, I'd have thought, correlate to a significant extent. And this is what counts when making macro arguments.
Nick Eardley @nickeardleybbc · 11m Tories in Scotland fear increased turnout is translating to support for SNP, one senior source warning a SNP landslide in constituencies could be on the cards
SCon mood music was all good until the ballot boxes started opening.
Twas the grear unknown
was the unknown voter Better Together or coming out to ensure the SNP got such a majority a referendum is unavoidable.
And it seems to be the latter.
Too early to say. Could yet be either.
Not if the Tories are worried about Dumfries.
I was bemused by that. This bizarre campaign focused on the peach (list) vote was just bewildering.
Can you explain what the peach vote is please? For those of us not aware?
Is it seriously just the list vote?
I'm guessing it's just the colour of the list ballot.
Correct. That was the colour of the regional vote and the constituency was purple.
I assume old-fashioned white is just unacceptable these days?
I am not sure that white is an acceptable colour for anything in the new Scotland.
The Mayoral elections have been deferred from last year due to Covid. Does that mean that those elected today will have a reduced 3 year term with elections again due in 2024?
Lineker's tax problem was a straight IR35 issue, wasn't it, rather than one of these shady non-investment investments that used to be fashionable? Tbh I could never quite get my head around it.
Mandelson's deft political touch clearly deserted him a long time ago.
" Lord Mandleson, a former MP for Hartlepool and one of the architects of New Labour, said the party had to embrace “Brexit attitudes” if it wanted to win back voters in places like his old constituency. He said that during the campaign voters did not raise the issue of leaving the EU on the doorstep. But he suggested that “Brexit attitudes” were now more important than class in determining how people voted, and that Labour had to respond."
Such a one-dimensional strategy will just result in the loss of London and many similar places to the Lib Dems and Greens, and the reversal of the small inroads into the wider South Labour is making. Labour has to do something much more subtle and challenging than this - it needs to create a common thread between the two places. The Red Wall seats can't win it for Labour alone, clearly, if they lose large areas of metropolitan Britain, too. If Mandelson is advising Starmer purely on this basis, that doesn't inspire much confidence in Labour's future, to me.
What Mandelson doesn't acknowledge is that Hartlepool was mostly lost in the New Labour years and flatlined since, with a small bump under the coalition. The Coalition demolished the LDs, then the Tories swallowed UKIP/BXP.
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.
The concern of course must be that this might result in a poorer service in some areas that currently have very good recycling systems.
Currently Lincolnshire has a brilliant system. They have a single bin which takes just about everything that can possibly be recycled and then it is sorted by the private contractor (Mountain in our area). This makes recycling quick, easy and efficient and you really see a difference with very little going into the landfill bin.
Across the border in Nottinghamshire they also have a single bin system but what you can recycle is severely limited. So no glass for example. Or tetrapacks. This means that my Mum saves all this stuff up and gives it to me to put in my recycling bin each time I see her.
So if the rationalising means Lincolnshire end up with the Nottinghamshire system then that would be a very retrograde step.
Speaking from Nottinghamshire I have a blue bin for my glass, which is collected once a fortnight.
Interestingly that doesn't exist in Newark and Sherwood. So the differences are down to district council level. Indeed my daughter is at Uni in Nottingham and they again have a completely different system.
Yes, and bin colours are inconsistent.
I (Ashfield) have:
Green lid recycling. Red lid general waste. Brown garden waste, which costs £28 a year. Smaller blue lid for glass every 8 weeks (not 2).
Since I started serious composting my recycling is 60% less. Which means that Ashfield's recycling performance is worse as the % in the green bin is now much lower. KPIs !
They have an algorithm for factoring in the estimated amount composted.
Nick Eardley @nickeardleybbc · 11m Tories in Scotland fear increased turnout is translating to support for SNP, one senior source warning a SNP landslide in constituencies could be on the cards
SCon mood music was all good until the ballot boxes started opening.
Twas the grear unknown
was the unknown voter Better Together or coming out to ensure the SNP got such a majority a referendum is unavoidable.
And it seems to be the latter.
Too early to say. Could yet be either.
Not if the Tories are worried about Dumfries.
I was bemused by that. This bizarre campaign focused on the peach (list) vote was just bewildering.
Can you explain what the peach vote is please? For those of us not aware?
Is it seriously just the list vote?
I'm guessing it's just the colour of the list ballot.
Correct. That was the colour of the regional vote and the constituency was purple.
I assume old-fashioned white is just unacceptable these days?
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.
Good point.
Lack of education doesn't equate to lack of intelligence. Some of the biggest idiots out there are the most educated *
* Let me qualify that, I should have omitted the "Some of"
It certainly does not equate - ridiculous to think so. But it does, I'd have thought, correlate to a significant extent. And this is what counts when making macro arguments.
Correlation will have increased recently but it was not so long ago that post-15 or 16 education was largely determined by wealth and class.
The Mayoral elections have been deferred from last year due to Covid. Does that mean that those elected today will have a reduced 3 year term with elections again due in 2024?
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.
The concern of course must be that this might result in a poorer service in some areas that currently have very good recycling systems.
Currently Lincolnshire has a brilliant system. They have a single bin which takes just about everything that can possibly be recycled and then it is sorted by the private contractor (Mountain in our area). This makes recycling quick, easy and efficient and you really see a difference with very little going into the landfill bin.
Across the border in Nottinghamshire they also have a single bin system but what you can recycle is severely limited. So no glass for example. Or tetrapacks. This means that my Mum saves all this stuff up and gives it to me to put in my recycling bin each time I see her.
So if the rationalising means Lincolnshire end up with the Nottinghamshire system then that would be a very retrograde step.
Speaking from Nottinghamshire I have a blue bin for my glass, which is collected once a fortnight.
Interestingly that doesn't exist in Newark and Sherwood. So the differences are down to district council level. Indeed my daughter is at Uni in Nottingham and they again have a completely different system.
Is N&S Tory? Mansfield is currently Lab. Ashfield is Independent.
The only Ashfield changes have I think been "big spring clean" community skips, occasional free Bulky Waste collections.
The Mayoral elections have been deferred from last year due to Covid. Does that mean that those elected today will have a reduced 3 year term with elections again due in 2024?
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round: Con: 74,023 Lab: 39,467 IND: 16,667 LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
I've never had the opportunity to vote for a police and crime commissioner but really couldn't care what party they are a member of. Surely it should be a matter of What is their experience? and Did the incumbent do a good or bad job?
Mandelson's deft political touch clearly deserted him a long time ago.
" Lord Mandleson, a former MP for Hartlepool and one of the architects of New Labour, said the party had to embrace “Brexit attitudes” if it wanted to win back voters in places like his old constituency. He said that during the campaign voters did not raise the issue of leaving the EU on the doorstep. But he suggested that “Brexit attitudes” were now more important than class in determining how people voted, and that Labour had to respond."
Such a one-dimensional strategy will just result in the loss of London and many similar places to the Lib Dems and Greens, and the reversal of the small inroads into the wider South Labour is making. Labour has to do something much more subtle and challenging than this - it needs to create a common thread between the two places. The Red Wall seats can't win it for Labour alone, clearly, if they lose large areas of metropolitan Britain, too. If Mandelson is advising Starmer purely on this basis, that doesn't inspire much confidence in Labour's future, to me.
Quite. London will not be voting for a party that has "Brexit attitudes".
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
There is a good site I use called politicalbetting.com, a few overly obsessed with culture wars or pineapples but otherwise a lovely place and highly recommended.
Mandelson's deft political touch clearly deserted him a long time ago.
" Lord Mandleson, a former MP for Hartlepool and one of the architects of New Labour, said the party had to embrace “Brexit attitudes” if it wanted to win back voters in places like his old constituency. He said that during the campaign voters did not raise the issue of leaving the EU on the doorstep. But he suggested that “Brexit attitudes” were now more important than class in determining how people voted, and that Labour had to respond."
Such a one-dimensional strategy will just result in the loss of London and many similar places to the Lib Dems and Greens, and the reversal of the small inroads into the wider South Labour is making. Labour has to do something much more subtle and challenging than this - it needs to create a common thread between the two places. The Red Wall seats can't win it for Labour alone, clearly, if they lose large areas of metropolitan Britain, too. If Mandelson is advising Starmer purely on this basis, that doesn't inspire much confidence in Labour's future, to me.
Quite. London will not be voting for a party that has "Brexit attitudes".
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
I’m getting mine, not that many seem interested in labour likely,losing control in Durham, from the county council twitter feed.
Ah okay. I'm after preferably one site or twitter which streams latest results around the country. Not finding BBC or Sky easy to follow for raw results.
Mandelson's deft political touch clearly deserted him a long time ago.
" Lord Mandleson, a former MP for Hartlepool and one of the architects of New Labour, said the party had to embrace “Brexit attitudes” if it wanted to win back voters in places like his old constituency. He said that during the campaign voters did not raise the issue of leaving the EU on the doorstep. But he suggested that “Brexit attitudes” were now more important than class in determining how people voted, and that Labour had to respond."
Such a one-dimensional strategy will just result in the loss of London and many similar places to the Lib Dems and Greens, and the reversal of the small inroads into the wider South Labour is making. Labour has to do something much more subtle and challenging than this - it needs to create a common thread between the two places. The Red Wall seats can't win it for Labour alone, clearly, if they lose large areas of metropolitan Britain, too. If Mandelson is advising Starmer purely on this basis, that doesn't inspire much confidence in Labour's future, to me.
Quite. London will not be voting for a party that has "Brexit attitudes".
FFS.
If you interpret it as a "can do attitude" as opposed to an "EU/WTO/computer says no attitude" then it's universally applicable.
The "nice place to live" vote swinging firmly back behind the LibDems...
Or is it just that tories in the leafier enclaves are sitting on their hands?
Over 22 councils that have been called the Lib Dems are up a net 4 councillors compared to 71 for the Tories. They are holding their own but not really any more than that.
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
There is a good site I use called politicalbetting.com, a few overly obsessed with culture wars or pineapples but otherwise a lovely place and highly recommended.
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
There is a good site I use called politicalbetting.com, a few overly obsessed with culture wars or pineapples but otherwise a lovely place and highly recommended.
You also have to deal with the occasional mention of Radiohead, but otherwise, as said, a lovely place.
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
There is a good site I use called politicalbetting.com, a few overly obsessed with culture wars or pineapples but otherwise a lovely place and highly recommended.
It's not a results service and I said I'd like something without commentary or trolling
Seriously. Is there no one site in the UK which just gives the bloody results?!!!!!!
Will the Scottish constituencies be announced today? With just the List tomorrow?
It the SNP win a majority it's probably on Constituencies alone, so is it possible essentially for an SNP majority to be achieved today even before the List is counted?
Will the Scottish constituencies be announced today? With just the List tomorrow?
It the SNP win a majority it's probably on Constituencies alone, so is it possible essentially for an SNP majority to be achieved today even before the List is counted?
I think about 30 constituency seats are due tomorrow.
Mandelson's deft political touch clearly deserted him a long time ago.
" Lord Mandleson, a former MP for Hartlepool and one of the architects of New Labour, said the party had to embrace “Brexit attitudes” if it wanted to win back voters in places like his old constituency. He said that during the campaign voters did not raise the issue of leaving the EU on the doorstep. But he suggested that “Brexit attitudes” were now more important than class in determining how people voted, and that Labour had to respond."
Such a one-dimensional strategy will just result in the loss of London and many similar places to the Lib Dems and Greens, and the reversal of the small inroads into the wider South Labour is making. Labour has to do something much more subtle and challenging than this - it needs to create a common thread between the two places. The Red Wall seats can't win it for Labour alone, clearly, if they lose large areas of metropolitan Britain, too. If Mandelson is advising Starmer purely on this basis, that doesn't inspire much confidence in Labour's future, to me.
Quite. London will not be voting for a party that has "Brexit attitudes".
FFS.
Forget Brexit, the solution is for Labour to make a fresh new internationalist case from outside the EU. That way, you respect Leave and British independence but, crucially, you can also offer something to the core Labour base that the Tories never will as well - thus taking both sides with you.
This is so fricking obvious yet so few in Labour seem to get it.
Third labour loss in Durham. 1 seat to Lib Dem’s in Aycliffe north. It’s odd how the seats closer to Hartlepool are relatively good for labour.
What I found interesting that the urban core of Blyth and Ashington (in Northumberland) is still solidly Labour. It's the outskirts where the Persimmon new-builds are aplenty where the Tory vote is the strongest, like @Philip_Thompson says.
So, Bob has gone blue but Terry stays red?
I'm just old enough to get that, but only due to repeats and due to my parents watching it.
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round: Con: 74,023 Lab: 39,467 IND: 16,667 LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
I've never had the opportunity to vote for a police and crime commissioner but really couldn't care what party they are a member of. Surely it should be a matter of What is their experience? and Did the incumbent do a good or bad job?
I think they're hindered by novelty and a clunky name. That first time around turnout for these was very low. Its no surprise that its climbing upwards.
Will the Scottish constituencies be announced today? With just the List tomorrow?
It the SNP win a majority it's probably on Constituencies alone, so is it possible essentially for an SNP majority to be achieved today even before the List is counted?
Not all constituencies are declaring today as I understand it, so I doubt a result today will be clear, but perhaps inferrable.
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round: Con: 74,023 Lab: 39,467 IND: 16,667 LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
I've never had the opportunity to vote for a police and crime commissioner but really couldn't care what party they are a member of. Surely it should be a matter of What is their experience? and Did the incumbent do a good or bad job?
I think they're hindered by novelty and a clunky name. That first time around turnout for these was very low. Its no surprise that its climbing upwards.
Should have gone for "First Crime Lord" or some such.
Mandelson's deft political touch clearly deserted him a long time ago.
" Lord Mandleson, a former MP for Hartlepool and one of the architects of New Labour, said the party had to embrace “Brexit attitudes” if it wanted to win back voters in places like his old constituency. He said that during the campaign voters did not raise the issue of leaving the EU on the doorstep. But he suggested that “Brexit attitudes” were now more important than class in determining how people voted, and that Labour had to respond."
Such a one-dimensional strategy will just result in the loss of London and many similar places to the Lib Dems and Greens, and the reversal of the small inroads into the wider South Labour is making. Labour has to do something much more subtle and challenging than this - it needs to create a common thread between the two places. The Red Wall seats can't win it for Labour alone, clearly, if they lose large areas of metropolitan Britain, too. If Mandelson is advising Starmer purely on this basis, that doesn't inspire much confidence in Labour's future, to me.
Quite. London will not be voting for a party that has "Brexit attitudes".
FFS.
Forget Brexit, the solution is for Labour to make a fresh new internationalist case from outside the EU. That way, you respect Leave and British independence but, crucially, you can also offer something to the core Labour base that the Tories never will as well - thus taking both sides with you.
This is so fricking obvious yet so few in Labour seem to get it.
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.
Indeed. I think part of the challenge for those of us who recognise the benefits of diversity is that it is made harder as a message by people on the woke extreme. That said, today's "PC gone mad" may well be seen by future generations as perfectly normal. Look how perceptions have changed with respect to gay people.
To make a point the other way, I think a danger of woke is that the message, "just being not racist is a cop out, you must be an ANTI racist" can be (wrongly) taken as an instruction to view everything through the prism of race. You can then if you're not careful find yourself thinking about race all the time. Which is what racists do.
Good for you for posting that - that's progress.
Otherwise, I'm leaving the culture war stuff for today, as I'm focussing on the results and my betting.
Objective to a fault, all know that. My blessing. My curse.
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round: Con: 74,023 Lab: 39,467 IND: 16,667 LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
I've never had the opportunity to vote for a police and crime commissioner but really couldn't care what party they are a member of. Surely it should be a matter of What is their experience? and Did the incumbent do a good or bad job?
I think they're hindered by novelty and a clunky name. That first time around turnout for these was very low. Its no surprise that its climbing upwards.
Should have gone for "First Crime Lord" or some such.
Law abiding decent folk are rightly unwilling to vote for anyone who wants to be a "crime comissioner"
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round: Con: 74,023 Lab: 39,467 IND: 16,667 LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
I've never had the opportunity to vote for a police and crime commissioner but really couldn't care what party they are a member of. Surely it should be a matter of What is their experience? and Did the incumbent do a good or bad job?
I think they're hindered by novelty and a clunky name. That first time around turnout for these was very low. Its no surprise that its climbing upwards.
Whatever next, party political elections for headteacher of local school? If the two best candidates for police and crime commissioner happen to both be Tories, or both be Labour then the election should be between them, not one from each party for the sake of it.
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round: Con: 74,023 Lab: 39,467 IND: 16,667 LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
I've never had the opportunity to vote for a police and crime commissioner but really couldn't care what party they are a member of. Surely it should be a matter of What is their experience? and Did the incumbent do a good or bad job?
I think they're hindered by novelty and a clunky name. That first time around turnout for these was very low. Its no surprise that its climbing upwards.
I don't know why they didn't just go for Police Commissioner.
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
There is a good site I use called politicalbetting.com, a few overly obsessed with culture wars or pineapples but otherwise a lovely place and highly recommended.
It's not a results service and I said I'd like something without commentary or trolling
Seriously. Is there no one site in the UK which just gives the bloody results?!!!!!!
Third labour loss in Durham. 1 seat to Lib Dem’s in Aycliffe north. It’s odd how the seats closer to Hartlepool are relatively good for labour.
What I found interesting that the urban core of Blyth and Ashington (in Northumberland) is still solidly Labour. It's the outskirts where the Persimmon new-builds are aplenty where the Tory vote is the strongest, like @Philip_Thompson says.
So, Bob has gone blue but Terry stays red?
I'm just old enough to get that, but only due to repeats and due to my parents watching it.
Bob was only blue because Thelma would have killed him if he wasn't.
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....
Bloody far right pirates. Totenkopf isn't the sole preserve of the far right, nor Nazi's. Unless the No. 100 RAF Squadron isn't telling us something.
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
There is a good site I use called politicalbetting.com, a few overly obsessed with culture wars or pineapples but otherwise a lovely place and highly recommended.
It's not a results service and I said I'd like something without commentary or trolling
Seriously. Is there no one site in the UK which just gives the bloody results?!!!!!!
Seems not. I, too, would like one.
@britainelects on Twitter is probably the best but even that's just selected results.
Lineker's tax problem was a straight IR35 issue, wasn't it, rather than one of these shady non-investment investments that used to be fashionable? Tbh I could never quite get my head around it.
Didn’t the BBC pay many of these liabilities in the past for wealthy ‘talent’ who fell foul of IR35 after the Christa Akroyd case got HMRC interested in this industry.
Yep because the BBC were the people who created the mess by insisting the presenters (and others) used limited companies in an attempt to reduce the BBCs costs.
Yes, the BBC insisted on it for most presenters, and the individuals concerned are now on the wrong end of HMRC and IR35 regulations.
Comments
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/06/gary-lineker-pursued-hmrc-5m-tax-bill/
The taxman is arguing that his BBC contract has been one of employment for many years, and are asking for around £1m extra from him in IT and NI.
Given he also has a deal with BT Sport for working on their live matches during the season, in my mind he pretty much meets the definition of a contractor under IR35.
The end result, for the rest of us, is that contractor rates have to go up; because everyone might end up being considered as an employee by the taxman, unless he can send a substitute.
CONFIRMED: Tories win Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner on first round:
Con: 74,023
Lab: 39,467
IND: 16,667
LibDem: 6,540
Not the most exciting of elections but still....
Hartlepool was in the 40s on the tories target list. They won it by 7 chuffin' thousand.
Who am I to argue?
Plain ignorant = someone who disagrees with you ;-)
But you make my argument for me with your point about people pushing back when their values and way of life are challenged. Do you think people will accept something that threatens them or that they disagree with? Maybe they will reject these ideas when given the opportunity to express themselves without fear of reprisal ... at the ballot box?
Please. Someone?
On an unrelated note, as a PAYE tax-payer who was made redundant, presumably Rishi should be sending me a refund cheque soon.
Con 48.1% (+6.3)
Plaid 17.9 (+ 7.7)
LD 16.8 (-10.9)
Lab 14.3 (+8.4)
I (Ashfield) have:
Green lid recycling.
Red lid general waste.
Brown garden waste, which costs £28 a year.
Smaller blue lid for glass every 8 weeks (not 2).
Since I started serious composting my recycling is 60% less. Which means that Ashfield's recycling performance is worse as the % in the green bin is now much lower. KPIs !
(Though Danny Alexander is in with a shout, too.)
I have forgotten just how it worked.
https://twitter.com/ElectionsIan/status/1381514512893894656?s=19
The sitting MSP was ex of the SNP, resigning after allegation he was inappropriate with women.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/6637387.stm
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8856/CBP-8856.pdf
The only Ashfield changes have I think been "big spring clean" community skips, occasional free Bulky Waste collections.
The "nice place to live" vote swinging firmly back behind the LibDems...
Can someone please tell me where you are getting results? BBC and Sky are hopeless.
FFS.
SNP hold
SNP vote level, rise for the Indy
Seriously. Is there no one site in the UK which just gives the bloody results?!!!!!!
It the SNP win a majority it's probably on Constituencies alone, so is it possible essentially for an SNP majority to be achieved today even before the List is counted?
This is so fricking obvious yet so few in Labour seem to get it.
Not major, but hmmm
But an SNP hold
SNp 51.4 (-0.7)
Lab 27.7 (+2.1)
Con 14.6 (+3.2)
SNP hold
47% of the vote, down 3%, Labour up 10%, Tories down 7%
The SNP share does seem marginally down even although their votes are up (higher turnout). Not enough to move a lot of seats but some.
We could have had a Commissioner Gordon then.
SNP -1.6
Con +5.8
Lab -1.3
LD -1.9
Labour won 7, Conservatives won 2.
No changes
Same with Jerry and Margo.
SNP 47.2
Lab 33.2
Con 11
SNP -2
Lab +9.7
Con -7.4
Can someone please help me here? It's not a difficult question to answer, surely?
Just need a results service I can run in the background whilst I work hence something commentary free preferably.
Bloody hell. Just answer me plllllleeeeeeeeaaaaaaaasssssseeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!