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Remember that a CON-LD swing smaller than in C&A in 1990 led to Maggie going within a month – politi

SystemSystem Posts: 11,002
edited June 2021 in General
imageRemember that a CON-LD swing smaller than in C&A in 1990 led to Maggie going within a month – politicalbetting.com

Lots of excuses being made this morning by those trying to explain the Tory flop in C&A but surprisingly little on its impact on the position of the PM who has been riding high in recent months over the handling of the vaccine.

Read the full story here

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Comments

  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited June 2021
    The Community Charge = Extension of lockdown?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?

    But go to love Brits who go overseas and break local laws.

    A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.

    Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.

    Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.

    Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.

    That led to officers arresting him just hours later.

    After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.

    Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.

    He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645
  • DeClareDeClare Posts: 483
    I don't think Boris will be leaving immediately but I'd be willing to bet that he won't still be there in 2024.
    Starmer probably will be, the Labour party are notoriously slow to get rid of underperforming leaders.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    If LDs have won, what are we ascribing it to? HS2? Delay in re-opening? This week's Cummings revelations?

    Remainia still very much hates being bounced into Brexit and lying *******s who did it.

    Hartlepool and C&A both Brexit. Very little else.

    I didn’t stay up on the thread, what we’re GBN saying about strawberries?
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    edited June 2021
    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362
    DeClare said:

    I don't think Boris will be leaving immediately but I'd be willing to bet that he won't still be there in 2024.
    Starmer probably will be, the Labour party are notoriously slow to get rid of underperforming leaders.

    Is he underperforming? Or the Brexit lies yet to unwind in Labour seats and the credibility shredding of the Corbyn years and Covid surreal reality just on his back at the moment 😉
  • geoffwgeoffw Posts: 8,092
    DeClare said:

    geoffw said:

    Betfair have settled.

    Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?

    Its just more money in a pot to me.

    Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.

    Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions.
    The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable.
    Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
    Milty's theory assumes a one-off windfall. But to adapt it to your situation in which you make a series of bets one should consider just the *surprise* element in your winnings as the windfall. It seems that for you the surprise element is half of anything over £50. This would seem to imply that you typically bet at odds of around 2:1. Is that so?



  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?

    But go to love Brits who go overseas and break local laws.

    A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.

    Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.

    Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.

    Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.

    That led to officers arresting him just hours later.

    After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.

    Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.

    He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645

    Self inflected - no sympathy but also very funny
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826
    I'm amazed over 18,000 people bothered voting Tory a few days after the government lost its nerve and kept us under lockdown.

    But lets not overegg the pudding. Surely the Crosby by-election is the precedent here, not Eastbourne.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
  • TabmanTabman Posts: 1,046
    gealbhan said:

    If LDs have won, what are we ascribing it to? HS2? Delay in re-opening? This week's Cummings revelations?

    Remainia still very much hates being bounced into Brexit and lying *******s who did it.

    Anecdotal evidence from local friends in leafy Oxfordshire who run their own businesses and either relied on EU labour or EU export suggest this is true. Plus the serial incompetence of the Brexiteer loyalists Johnson has in his cabinet.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,913
    Congratulations to the LibDems!

    Will never make a dodgy bar chart reference again! :lol:
  • OllyTOllyT Posts: 4,911

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    Whilst we hear a lot about the new Tory leave vote in the old red wall seats there is a flip side to that which is the millions of voters ho will never forgive the Conservative Party for Brexit and for turning itself into UKIP-lite and foisting a buffoon on the country as PM.

    The Tories need to pray that their new found support in disadvantaged leave seats isn't as shallow as I suspect it is.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    eek said:

    Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?

    But go to love Brits who go overseas and break local laws.

    A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.

    Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.

    Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.

    Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.

    That led to officers arresting him just hours later.

    After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.

    Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.

    He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645

    Self inflected - no sympathy but also very funny
    You just know when he's in the UK and he reads a news story about a foreigner breaking the law in the UK he'd be on Facebook demanding a life sentence and deportation.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,913

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    Non-TSE = Non Tory-Supporting Europhile.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    If it was a disaster then it would have been predicted by local election results there a month ago.

    It wasn't.

    So we're back to LibDems imitating David Steel circa 1981.

    Now does the government have problems - most certainly.

    And anything which shakes them out of their complacent lethargy is good for them and, far more importantly, good for the country.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    OllyT said:

    The Tories need to pray that their new found support in disadvantaged leave seats isn't as shallow as I suspect it is.

    Lots of people voted BoZo to Get Brexit

    When they realise Brexit is a flaming bag on their doorstep, their votes will no longer be secure...
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    How does it feel to be traded for the Red Wall?
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    I'm amazed over 18,000 people bothered voting Tory a few days after the government lost its nerve and kept us under lockdown.

    But lets not overegg the pudding. Surely the Crosby by-election is the precedent here, not Eastbourne.

    Is that all you got today, Phil?
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    I wonder how good David Cameron feels today?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?

    But go to love Brits who go overseas and break local laws.

    A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.

    Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.

    Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.

    Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.

    That led to officers arresting him just hours later.

    After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.

    Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.

    He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645

    Idiot. Ignoring local laws on a point of principle, as a foreigner, is really bloody stupid. Foreign police and authorities really have no truck with people who visit their country and don’t want to behave appropriately.

    Hope he likes prison food - or worse, he’ll be bailed for a year, unable to work and unable to leave.

    I live in the city where Brits abroad are most likely to be arrested - but most of the time, the police are perfectly reasonable, so long as you respect them and don’t behave like a twat.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,913
    Scott_xP said:

    I wonder how good David Cameron feels today?

    "Vote Blue, go Yellow!"
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    edited June 2021
    OllyT said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    Whilst we hear a lot about the new Tory leave vote in the old red wall seats there is a flip side to that which is the millions of voters ho will never forgive the Conservative Party for Brexit and for turning itself into UKIP-lite and foisting a buffoon on the country as PM.

    The Tories need to pray that their new found support in disadvantaged leave seats isn't as shallow as I suspect it is.
    In both 2019 and the local council elections the Tories man aged to run messaging blaming Labour for local problems that are actually national level issues (i.e. in the recent locals Lab-to-Tory switchers in the Red Wall cited lack of investment in local NHS as reason to vote Conservative).

    That was an incredible, hugely productive, trick.

    But I wonder how that plays out at the next election when the Conservatives are the ones in power both at the council and constituency level.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Another covid increase in Russia:

    https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/russia/

    Perhaps the government wants a trade deal with Putin ?

    Or perhaps they're just utterly crap at border control.
  • Graphia2Graphia2 Posts: 1
    FPT
    rcs1000 said:

    Graphia said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Tabman said:

    FPT: Trinity College has more Nobel Laureates than Oxf*rd.

    Trinity has taken 22 students from Westminster School, which apparently is some sort of record for a single college/school pairing.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/17/revealed-link-westminster-school-cambridge/ (£££)
    They should be limited by law to taking no more than 7% from private schools.
    (...)
    No, they should take the students with the best potential.
    That's a fair point.

    (...)
    When I was there, there was a positive correlation between those Colleges that took the greatest number of people from State schools (and yes, Trinity was number one there) and the proportion of Firsts.
    "Greatest number" but what about the percentage, given that Trinity has more undergraduates than any other Cambridge college?

    Colleges should be deprived of the right to admit. The whole college system should be dumped. Turn them into halls of residence with randomised membership every term or year from among that portion of students who wish to live in a hall of residence in the first place. Seize their assets and fund their remaining undergraduate services - which would mostly be accommodation and board - centrally. Aside from anything else, think of how much money is wasted by all the duplication of functions at the moment. More importantly, who wants to encourage loyalty to institutions? Contrary to reactionary myth, that always cuts against the encouragement of independence of thought.

    As for admission, let it be run by departments using a numerus clausus and ban interviews. Tricky edge cases? Don't let the department know the school name.


    As a general rule, people should be allowed to do what they want, subject to certain conditions.

    I think the Oxbridge Colleges compete to offer the best education and experience they can to students. They compete to attract talent.

    I personally think that institutions competing to attract people is a good thing.
    The college system doesn't rest on inter-college competition. For example, it's not competition when Cambridge colleges divvy the country up into geographical sections for marketing purposes.

    In any case, few applicants choose a college for informed educational reasons - and mostly it's hard to see how they even could, given that most colleges are very similar to each other both educationally and in other respects.

    What typically happens is either the applicant knows someone who gives advice that they don't check out (for example some still say "King's is good for maths") or else somebody at the school heavily pushes one college, often on the basis of utterly crap beliefs that derive from their (poorly reflected-on) experience at Cambridge or Oxford a generation ago and whose advice probably also includes things like "wear a suit to the interview".

    I'm not sure what individual freedom has to do with it. The Oxford and Cambridge colleges are public bodies which supposedly serve the public interest and they should not be free to do what they want.

    Duplication of functions by the colleges (both in admissions and in the supervision of students) is highly wasteful of public funds but not a single time have I seen this undesirable effect of the college system put in the balance against alleged benefits.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    AlistairM said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    How does it feel to be traded for the Red Wall?
    Well I work in the Banking & Financial Services sector, we were traded for fish by this PM and Government during the Brexit deal, so on a par with that.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,913

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Captain Kirk reprogrammed the simulation so he could win :)
  • ridaligoridaligo Posts: 174
    Reply to AlistairM on previous thread ...

    My take on C&A is that the core Tory vote stayed at home because of four things they are pissed off about, which will be replicated across the south unless the Tories address them:

    1. Planning / Development - HS2, home building on the green belt. Tory voters don't want massive Wimpey estates swamping the countryside and feel powerless with local plans to do anything about it. Ditto new rail lines with questionable economic benefits.
    2. COVID - Tory voters have had enough and are dismayed at how unconservative the government is behaving. They worry about the economic damage and the bill to come and they worry about what kind of country we are bequeathing to children / grand-children.
    3. Green stuff - Tory voters are very sceptical about the justification for the Green agenda and worry they are going to be forced to pay for it.
    4. Woke stuff - this has gone beyond a joke for Tory voters who want politicians to clamp down hard on it.

    Political party positions on these 4 issues will play a big part in the next GE - it's going to be a divide based on Remainer / Brexit mindsets IMO ... and you're right that Labour doesn't have a strong brand in that debate.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    Sandpit said:


    I live in the city where Brits abroad are most likely to be arrested - but most of the time, the police are perfectly reasonable, so long as you respect them and don’t behave like a twat.

    I got arrested in Bahrain and it was brilliant. Even though I would only give them the "Geneva Convention Four" I got a cup of coffee and played darts in the police station until somebody from the British Embassy could be roused to exfil me.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Captain Kirk reprogrammed the simulation so he could win :)
    Yes and that's what Boris has done too. :)
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797
    edited June 2021
    Sandpit said:

    Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?

    But go to love Brits who go overseas and break local laws.

    A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.

    Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.

    Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.

    Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.

    That led to officers arresting him just hours later.

    After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.

    Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.

    He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645

    Idiot. Ignoring local laws on a point of principle, as a foreigner, is really bloody stupid. Foreign police and authorities really have no truck with people who visit their country and don’t want to behave appropriately.

    Hope he likes prison food - or worse, he’ll be bailed for a year, unable to work and unable to leave.

    I live in the city where Brits abroad are most likely to be arrested - but most of the time, the police are perfectly reasonable, so long as you respect them and don’t behave like a twat.
    By the looks of it he's been bailed - "claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return".

    But it really takes a certain level of stupidity to break a law that exists in both the UK and Singapore on a point of principle due to his inability to grasp basic science.

    I also suspect he most have truly annoyed the police when they arrested him as otherwise they would have gone for the far easier deportation approach.
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,451

    The Community Charge = Extension of lockdown?

    Extension of lockdown is a lot easier to u-turn on than community charge was.

    I think the Hancock thing played a (small) part too. It is surely untenable for him to stay in place as he will forever be known as Hopeless Hancock, and leaves Johnson as either weak or re-enforces the attack line that Boris does not care or take his role seriously. It wouldn't have been so bad for Hancock if the insult was not alliterative.
  • valleyboyvalleyboy Posts: 605
    As a Labour supporter I hope these last two results cause Keir Starmer to have a rethink on his silence towards Brexit. Red Wall voters may be largely lost, but there are clearly swathes of non Brexit voters out there waiting to be wooed back into the Labour fold.
    Well done Libs in Amersham.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    My hot take on Chesham and Amersham. One Tory told me recently that former Labour voters love Boris, but their constituency association members - traditional Tories - don't trust him and don't like him. Maybe that matters more than many of us realised?
    https://twitter.com/jonwalker121/status/1405818650834178049
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited June 2021
    True but Kinnock had a more than 10% Labour poll lead over Thatcher's Tories when the LDs won Eastbourne.

    Now the Tories still lead Labour in the polls who are making no progress whatsover on 2019, the only progress being made is by the LDs in Tory Remain seats in the South East with lots of Nimbys opposed to new development in the greenbelt like Chesham and Amersham
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    As TSE pointed out previous thread:

    This UEFA "where should we play the finals now that the UK is in a third/fourth wave?" story has all the ingredients of a massive kerfuffle....

    * The strong British preference for "fairness" (no special rules for VIPs).
    * The arguably Brexit-related status of borders/vaccine passports.
    * UK gov. lecturing others about "sticking to their agreements".
    * The British public misunderstanding of the virus situation in the EU.


    https://twitter.com/thomasforth/status/1405817315351044099?s=20

    Although I fear the EU's virus situation may catch up with the British public's understanding of it...
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735

    I think the Hancock thing played a (small) part too. It is surely untenable for him to stay in place as he will forever be known as Hopeless Hancock, and leaves Johnson as either weak or re-enforces the attack line that Boris does not care or take his role seriously. It wouldn't have been so bad for Hancock if the insult was not alliterative.

    ...
  • XtrainXtrain Posts: 337
    ridaligo said:

    Reply to AlistairM on previous thread ...

    My take on C&A is that the core Tory vote stayed at home because of four things they are pissed off about, which will be replicated across the south unless the Tories address them:

    1. Planning / Development - HS2, home building on the green belt. Tory voters don't want massive Wimpey estates swamping the countryside and feel powerless with local plans to do anything about it. Ditto new rail lines with questionable economic benefits.
    2. COVID - Tory voters have had enough and are dismayed at how unconservative the government is behaving. They worry about the economic damage and the bill to come and they worry about what kind of country we are bequeathing to children / grand-children.
    3. Green stuff - Tory voters are very sceptical about the justification for the Green agenda and worry they are going to be forced to pay for it.
    4. Woke stuff - this has gone beyond a joke for Tory voters who want politicians to clamp down hard on it.

    Political party positions on these 4 issues will play a big part in the next GE - it's going to be a divide based on Remainer / Brexit mindsets IMO ... and you're right that Labour doesn't have a strong brand in that debate.

    Yes I can see this change all boilers from gas to heat pumps seriously pissing off the faithful.
  • OnlyLivingBoyOnlyLivingBoy Posts: 14,911
    Graphia2 said:

    FPT

    rcs1000 said:

    Graphia said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Tabman said:

    FPT: Trinity College has more Nobel Laureates than Oxf*rd.

    Trinity has taken 22 students from Westminster School, which apparently is some sort of record for a single college/school pairing.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/17/revealed-link-westminster-school-cambridge/ (£££)
    They should be limited by law to taking no more than 7% from private schools.
    (...)
    No, they should take the students with the best potential.
    That's a fair point.

    (...)
    When I was there, there was a positive correlation between those Colleges that took the greatest number of people from State schools (and yes, Trinity was number one there) and the proportion of Firsts.
    "Greatest number" but what about the percentage, given that Trinity has more undergraduates than any other Cambridge college?

    Colleges should be deprived of the right to admit. The whole college system should be dumped. Turn them into halls of residence with randomised membership every term or year from among that portion of students who wish to live in a hall of residence in the first place. Seize their assets and fund their remaining undergraduate services - which would mostly be accommodation and board - centrally. Aside from anything else, think of how much money is wasted by all the duplication of functions at the moment. More importantly, who wants to encourage loyalty to institutions? Contrary to reactionary myth, that always cuts against the encouragement of independence of thought.

    As for admission, let it be run by departments using a numerus clausus and ban interviews. Tricky edge cases? Don't let the department know the school name.


    As a general rule, people should be allowed to do what they want, subject to certain conditions.

    I think the Oxbridge Colleges compete to offer the best education and experience they can to students. They compete to attract talent.

    I personally think that institutions competing to attract people is a good thing.
    The college system doesn't rest on inter-college competition. For example, it's not competition when Cambridge colleges divvy the country up into geographical sections for marketing purposes.

    In any case, few applicants choose a college for informed educational reasons - and mostly it's hard to see how they even could, given that most colleges are very similar to each other both educationally and in other respects.

    What typically happens is either the applicant knows someone who gives advice that they don't check out (for example some still say "King's is good for maths") or else somebody at the school heavily pushes one college, often on the basis of utterly crap beliefs that derive from their (poorly reflected-on) experience at Cambridge or Oxford a generation ago and whose advice probably also includes things like "wear a suit to the interview".

    I'm not sure what individual freedom has to do with it. The Oxford and Cambridge colleges are public bodies which supposedly serve the public interest and they should not be free to do what they want.

    Duplication of functions by the colleges (both in admissions and in the supervision of students) is highly wasteful of public funds but not a single time have I seen this undesirable effect of the college system put in the balance against alleged benefits.
    I chose my college based solely on its relatively advantageous sex ratio. Since I met the woman who is now my wife on my first day there I think it was one of the wisest calculations I ever made.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    If we are playing that game Cameron put it in the 2015 manifesto as an item to remove when coalition 2 was formed.

    Then Osbourne gutted the LD seats and Cameron won a majority so had to actually hold a referendum he really didn't want.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    Keep on enabling Boris, it leads to the recent extension of lockdown.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    eek said:

    Sandpit said:

    Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?

    But go to love Brits who go overseas and break local laws.

    A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.

    Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.

    Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.

    Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.

    That led to officers arresting him just hours later.

    After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.

    Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.

    He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.


    https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/dad-detained-singapore-after-video-20845645

    Idiot. Ignoring local laws on a point of principle, as a foreigner, is really bloody stupid. Foreign police and authorities really have no truck with people who visit their country and don’t want to behave appropriately.

    Hope he likes prison food - or worse, he’ll be bailed for a year, unable to work and unable to leave.

    I live in the city where Brits abroad are most likely to be arrested - but most of the time, the police are perfectly reasonable, so long as you respect them and don’t behave like a twat.
    By the looks of it he's been bailed - "claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return".

    But it really takes a certain level of stupidity to break a law that exists in both the UK and Singapore on a point of principle due to his inability to grasp basic science.

    I also suspect he most have really annoyed the police when they arrested him as otherwise they would have gone for the far easier deportation approach.
    In many ways, bail is a worse punishment than prison. He’ll have to stay in one of the world’s most expensive cities, at his own expense, for months on end. Then he’ll get a fine big enough to pay for his deportation flight, and a ride to the airport in a police car.

    Yes, police almost everywhere are nice enough people, and so long as you don’t escalate any given minor situation, you’ll usually be fine. I suspect in this case he made an arse of himself, and told the policemen that the law was rubbish.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Ed Davey knocks down the blue wall with an orange mallet! Hats off to whichever staffer sourced the mallet at a few hours notice. https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1405818512694779911/photo/1
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Interesting observations from Mr Herdson, late of this parish:

    https://twitter.com/DavidHerdson/status/1405816651841478656?s=20
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    Keep on enabling Boris, it leads to the recent extension of lockdown.
    I've said Boris has lost my support. 🥱
  • StockyStocky Posts: 9,653
    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    If we are playing that game Cameron put it in the 2015 manifesto as an item to remove when coalition 2 was formed.

    Then Osbourne gutted the LD seats and Cameron won a majority so had to actually hold a referendum he really didn't want.
    Yep, so we are out of the EU by accident.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164
    Scott_xP said:

    I wonder how good David Cameron feels today?

    He's still David Cameron, so pretty rubbish I guess.
  • TabmanTabman Posts: 1,046
    Graphia2 said:

    FPT

    rcs1000 said:

    Graphia said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Foxy said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Tabman said:

    FPT: Trinity College has more Nobel Laureates than Oxf*rd.

    Trinity has taken 22 students from Westminster School, which apparently is some sort of record for a single college/school pairing.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/17/revealed-link-westminster-school-cambridge/ (£££)
    They should be limited by law to taking no more than 7% from private schools.
    (...)
    No, they should take the students with the best potential.
    That's a fair point.

    (...)
    When I was there, there was a positive correlation between those Colleges that took the greatest number of people from State schools (and yes, Trinity was number one there) and the proportion of Firsts.
    "Greatest number" but what about the percentage, given that Trinity has more undergraduates than any other Cambridge college?

    Colleges should be deprived of the right to admit. The whole college system should be dumped. Turn them into halls of residence with randomised membership every term or year from among that portion of students who wish to live in a hall of residence in the first place. Seize their assets and fund their remaining undergraduate services - which would mostly be accommodation and board - centrally. Aside from anything else, think of how much money is wasted by all the duplication of functions at the moment. More importantly, who wants to encourage loyalty to institutions? Contrary to reactionary myth, that always cuts against the encouragement of independence of thought.

    As for admission, let it be run by departments using a numerus clausus and ban interviews. Tricky edge cases? Don't let the department know the school name.


    As a general rule, people should be allowed to do what they want, subject to certain conditions.

    I think the Oxbridge Colleges compete to offer the best education and experience they can to students. They compete to attract talent.

    I personally think that institutions competing to attract people is a good thing.
    The college system doesn't rest on inter-college competition. For example, it's not competition when Cambridge colleges divvy the country up into geographical sections for marketing purposes.

    In any case, few applicants choose a college for informed educational reasons - and mostly it's hard to see how they even could, given that most colleges are very similar to each other both educationally and in other respects.

    What typically happens is either the applicant knows someone who gives advice that they don't check out (for example some still say "King's is good for maths") or else somebody at the school heavily pushes one college, often on the basis of utterly crap beliefs that derive from their (poorly reflected-on) experience at Cambridge or Oxford a generation ago and whose advice probably also includes things like "wear a suit to the interview".

    I'm not sure what individual freedom has to do with it. The Oxford and Cambridge colleges are public bodies which supposedly serve the public interest and they should not be free to do what they want.

    Duplication of functions by the colleges (both in admissions and in the supervision of students) is highly wasteful of public funds but not a single time have I seen this undesirable effect of the college system put in the balance against alleged benefits.
    The college admissions system (declaration of interest - Mrs Tabman does admissions at an Oxbridge college) is hugely wasteful, and variable. Far more sensible would be to use the system at Durham - departments interview and allocate places, students select a preference and if their first choice is oversubscribed go to a college with a space,

    Many students choose on the basis of ex curricular factors, eg who is head of the river.
  • HYUFDHYUFD Posts: 116,709
    edited June 2021
    valleyboy said:

    As a Labour supporter I hope these last two results cause Keir Starmer to have a rethink on his silence towards Brexit. Red Wall voters may be largely lost, but there are clearly swathes of non Brexit voters out there waiting to be wooed back into the Labour fold.
    Well done Libs in Amersham.

    Yes but they will go LD, Labour are too common for posh Tory Remainers.

    The problem for Starmer Labour is it is too posh and anti Brexit for the Leave heavy Red Wall, not posh and anti Brexit enough for the Home Counties Remain seats
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Dura_Ace said:

    Sandpit said:


    I live in the city where Brits abroad are most likely to be arrested - but most of the time, the police are perfectly reasonable, so long as you respect them and don’t behave like a twat.

    I got arrested in Bahrain and it was brilliant. Even though I would only give them the "Geneva Convention Four" I got a cup of coffee and played darts in the police station until somebody from the British Embassy could be roused to exfil me.
    Your experience would be somewhat aypical, being as you were a representative of Her Majesty at the time. Civvies don’t get to see such niceties.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Interesting ZOE map of COVID vaccination - which suggests London might be more than a NIMS/ONS effect (under vaccination a function of over-estimation of population in NIMS):

    https://covid.joinzoe.com/data?mc_cid=b8bcef9ede&mc_eid=dc4978d054#vaccinations
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    Keep on enabling Boris, it leads to the recent extension of lockdown.
    I've said Boris has lost my support. 🥱
    That's my point, people like you denied stuff about the border in the Irish Sea and it enabled Boris Johnson to think he can lie and ignore evidence to do what he likes without consequence.
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    Sad. Pfizer all the way.

    Fans who had Oxford vaccine banned from Bruce Springsteen concert

    Only US-approved jabs will qualify people to attend, to the disappointment of many who had hoped to watch ‘The Boss’ on Broadway

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/17/oxford-astrazeneca-vaccine-fans-banned-bruce-springsteen-concert/
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    Keep on enabling Boris, it leads to the recent extension of lockdown.
    I've said Boris has lost my support. 🥱
    That's my point, people like you denied stuff about the border in the Irish Sea and it enabled Boris Johnson to think he can lie and ignore evidence to do what he likes without consequence.
    The only reason the Irish Sea became an issue was because Theresa May was weak and let it be one.

    By doing a Kirk and rewriting the rules of the simulation, the ball back in the court of the EU and a compromise is inevitable, which is how it should have always been.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,913
    VOTE LABOUR, FINISH FOURTH! :lol:
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Scott_xP said:

    I wonder how good David Cameron feels today?

    Have his Greensill share options paid out ?
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    AlistairM said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    How does it feel to be traded for the Red Wall?
    Well I work in the Banking & Financial Services sector, we were traded for fish by this PM and Government during the Brexit deal, so on a par with that.
    They traded your sole.

    And the fisherman aren’t even happy, not as happy as the Brexit government, who now have British fish swimming in British waters.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038
    Scott_xP said:

    Ed Davey knocks down the blue wall with an orange mallet! Hats off to whichever staffer sourced the mallet at a few hours notice. https://twitter.com/peterwalker99/status/1405818512694779911/photo/1

    I see "winning here" is back as a slogan.
  • XtrainXtrain Posts: 337
    valleyboy said:

    As a Labour supporter I hope these last two results cause Keir Starmer to have a rethink on his silence towards Brexit. Red Wall voters may be largely lost, but there are clearly swathes of non Brexit voters out there waiting to be wooed back into the Labour fold.
    Well done Libs in Amersham.

    If he does he won't mention it before B & Spen!
  • AlistairMAlistairM Posts: 2,004
    ridaligo said:

    Reply to AlistairM on previous thread ...

    My take on C&A is that the core Tory vote stayed at home because of four things they are pissed off about, which will be replicated across the south unless the Tories address them:

    1. Planning / Development - HS2, home building on the green belt. Tory voters don't want massive Wimpey estates swamping the countryside and feel powerless with local plans to do anything about it. Ditto new rail lines with questionable economic benefits.
    2. COVID - Tory voters have had enough and are dismayed at how unconservative the government is behaving. They worry about the economic damage and the bill to come and they worry about what kind of country we are bequeathing to children / grand-children.
    3. Green stuff - Tory voters are very sceptical about the justification for the Green agenda and worry they are going to be forced to pay for it.
    4. Woke stuff - this has gone beyond a joke for Tory voters who want politicians to clamp down hard on it.

    Political party positions on these 4 issues will play a big part in the next GE - it's going to be a divide based on Remainer / Brexit mindsets IMO ... and you're right that Labour doesn't have a strong brand in that debate.

    I definitely agree with #1. #2 is short term issue and will pass so long as we do open up soon. For #3 I believe that there is actually a lot of support for green policies. It aligns quite well with #1 and leaving our country in a good state for our children. On #4 it is clearly annoying many people but is it stopping people voting Tory over Labour and the LDs? I doubt it.

    For me, HS2 aligned directly with #1. Ironically I think HS2 will cause far less disruption to the countryside than the swathes of new housing estates obliterating the land. However, it is a totemic issue.
  • moonshinemoonshine Posts: 5,226
    ridaligo said:

    Reply to AlistairM on previous thread ...

    My take on C&A is that the core Tory vote stayed at home because of four things they are pissed off about, which will be replicated across the south unless the Tories address them:

    1. Planning / Development - HS2, home building on the green belt. Tory voters don't want massive Wimpey estates swamping the countryside and feel powerless with local plans to do anything about it. Ditto new rail lines with questionable economic benefits.
    2. COVID - Tory voters have had enough and are dismayed at how unconservative the government is behaving. They worry about the economic damage and the bill to come and they worry about what kind of country we are bequeathing to children / grand-children.
    3. Green stuff - Tory voters are very sceptical about the justification for the Green agenda and worry they are going to be forced to pay for it.
    4. Woke stuff - this has gone beyond a joke for Tory voters who want politicians to clamp down hard on it.

    Political party positions on these 4 issues will play a big part in the next GE - it's going to be a divide based on Remainer / Brexit mindsets IMO ... and you're right that Labour doesn't have a strong brand in that debate.

    If this take is right, at least among Tory members, it would seem to favour someone like Patel at the next leadership ballot.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Interesting ZOE map of COVID vaccination - which suggests London might be more than a NIMS/ONS effect (under vaccination a function of over-estimation of population in NIMS):

    https://covid.joinzoe.com/data?mc_cid=b8bcef9ede&mc_eid=dc4978d054#vaccinations

    It might be but I don't see how you can glean that from the map.
  • alex_alex_ Posts: 7,518

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Politicians of all stripes have been taking risks with the union for decades. There is a simple rule that all should follow - don’t feck around with constitutional issues for short term political gain.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    edited June 2021
    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    We support rail (but not here!)
    We support house building (but not here!)

    Not sure how you build a national platform off that....
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    If we are playing that game Cameron put it in the 2015 manifesto as an item to remove when coalition 2 was formed.

    Then Osbourne gutted the LD seats and Cameron won a majority so had to actually hold a referendum he really didn't want.
    The law of unintended consequences has had a few applications in recent years - Labour's Scottish devolution is a good example.

    Though I would say it was Clegg who gutted the LibDems over tuition fees.

    Incredible though it now seems many LibDems, including Mike Smithson, thought that was going to be a vote winner at the time.
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,038

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    Pulpstar said:

    Interesting ZOE map of COVID vaccination - which suggests London might be more than a NIMS/ONS effect (under vaccination a function of over-estimation of population in NIMS):

    https://covid.joinzoe.com/data?mc_cid=b8bcef9ede&mc_eid=dc4978d054#vaccinations

    It might be but I don't see how you can glean that from the map.
    It suggests London does have a low vaccination rate - and its not a function of over-estimation of population in NIMS.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704
    Terrible result for the tories and great and much needed fillip for the Lib Dems.

    I'm not sure its 'tectonic' but will start to frame the battleground for the next election, once COVID has passed.

    It does show the weakness the Tories has in terms of their small 'c' conservative base through, middle class older 'trad blue' voters which probably don't think highly of Boris and his macho. Those which might well vote for the 'nicer' Lib Dems and that nice Mr Davey.

  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,881

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    I can understand normal people not voting because they aren't that fussed... but for political obsessives... especially someone like you who is clearly unhappy about how things are going... how can you not want to vote for someone else?

    Lib Dem/Lab/Green/UKIP whoever... there's a wide range of choice out there.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704
    It is true from my experience in Mr Gove's patch of Surrey that people get very very het up about new housing and developments.
  • northern_monkeynorthern_monkey Posts: 1,493
    valleyboy said:

    As a Labour supporter I hope these last two results cause Keir Starmer to have a rethink on his silence towards Brexit. Red Wall voters may be largely lost, but there are clearly swathes of non Brexit voters out there waiting to be wooed back into the Labour fold.
    Well done Libs in Amersham.

    Agreed. I posted this on the previous thread in rely to HYUFD but it fell down the New Thread hole:

    Starmer needs the plums to say, unequivocally, that Labour, as a party, believes Brexit is a catastrophic error. If that leads to losing more red wall seats (including my own, and I don't particularly want to have a Tory MP) then, sadly, that is a symptom of politics shifting to a Leave/Remain divide.

    Because Labour are trying to ignore Brexit, and pleasing no-one. They're not Brexity enough for Leavers, everyone knows there's no conviction, and they're repelling Remainers for not being anti-Brexit enough.

    The Tories have screwed Labour good and proper. Their austerity pissed the Red Wall off, they blamed a lot of it on forrins (so many people up here think they can't get a doctor's appointment for weeks because we're swamped with immigrants, esp Muslim immigrants), the two Leave campaigns promised everything to everyone. It's shameless, opportunistic. mendacious and brilliant.

    And yes, the Remain campaign was shite. But, ultimately, it was headed by Tories. So it couldn't say stuff like, for example, 'Don't vote Leave 'cos the Tories will, given half a chance, take an axe to worker's rights the EU protects' or 'Don't vote Leave cos, given half a chance, the Tories will go for Thatcherism on steroids and happily lay waste to things like the fishing industry', because it was ultimately headed by... Tories.
  • gealbhangealbhan Posts: 2,362

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    If we are playing that game Cameron put it in the 2015 manifesto as an item to remove when coalition 2 was formed.

    Then Osbourne gutted the LD seats and Cameron won a majority so had to actually hold a referendum he really didn't want.
    The law of unintended consequences has had a few applications in recent years - Labour's Scottish devolution is a good example.

    Though I would say it was Clegg who gutted the LibDems over tuition fees.

    Incredible though it now seems many LibDems, including Mike Smithson, thought that was going to be a vote winner at the time.
    But it was. Say no to tuition fees, say no to Iraq war, were voter winners for an opposition, standing on those principles.

    What swung it was entering into government and abandoning those principled stands, abandoning everyone who stood with you on each principled position now dumped into the trash.
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Howard Beckett had pulled out of the race to become the next Unite general secretary, Sky News understands
    https://twitter.com/RaynerSkyNews/status/1405824969108508672
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,749
    FPT
    IshmaelZ said:



    Ascot?

    I am going surfing. Owing to a premature withdrawal on my part my c & a winnings will cover about 40% of my Bude Town Council carpark ticket.

    Paraphrasing the the Duke of Wellington "Believe me, nothing except a wager lost can be half so melancholy as a small wager won:"

    says the lord of the £5 bet.....
  • TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 113,957
    rkrkrk said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    I can understand normal people not voting because they aren't that fussed... but for political obsessives... especially someone like you who is clearly unhappy about how things are going... how can you not want to vote for someone else?

    Lib Dem/Lab/Green/UKIP whoever... there's a wide range of choice out there.
    I can’t vote Labour, I’m opposed to socialism.

    The Lib Dems have Vera Hobhouse on their front bench. She’s a conspiracy theorist.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/technology-55399513.amp

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/26/why-would-the-lib-dems-hook-up-with-5g-cranks-it-can-only-be-cowardice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    Can’t vote for the Greens as they are watermelons.

    Can’t vote for UKIP or any Farage type party.

    I live in a Lab/LD marginal so it doesn’t really matter to the Tories who wins this seat.

    For the foreseeable future I shall be spoiling my ballot paper in increasingly amusing ways.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704
    Scott_xP said:

    Howard Beckett had pulled out of the race to become the next Unite general secretary, Sky News understands
    https://twitter.com/RaynerSkyNews/status/1405824969108508672

    Oh dear, what a shame...
  • Philip_ThompsonPhilip_Thompson Posts: 65,826

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
    And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦‍♂️

    Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.

    People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,451
    rkrkrk said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    I can understand normal people not voting because they aren't that fussed... but for political obsessives... especially someone like you who is clearly unhappy about how things are going... how can you not want to vote for someone else?

    Lib Dem/Lab/Green/UKIP whoever... there's a wide range of choice out there.
    There is a wide choice but it is incredibly uninspiring, particularly if you are looking to vote for something as opposed to against something.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    rkrkrk said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    I can understand normal people not voting because they aren't that fussed... but for political obsessives... especially someone like you who is clearly unhappy about how things are going... how can you not want to vote for someone else?

    Lib Dem/Lab/Green/UKIP whoever... there's a wide range of choice out there.
    I can’t vote Labour, I’m opposed to socialism.

    The Lib Dems have Vera Hobhouse on their front bench. She’s a conspiracy theorist.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/technology-55399513.amp

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/26/why-would-the-lib-dems-hook-up-with-5g-cranks-it-can-only-be-cowardice?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

    Can’t vote for the Greens as they are watermelons.

    Can’t vote for UKIP or any Farage type party.

    I live in a Lab/LD marginal so it doesn’t really matter to the Tories who wins this seat.

    For the foreseeable future I shall be spoiling my ballot paper in increasingly amusing ways.
    With 12 MPs and the need to cover 22 different areas - the LDs have little choice but to have everyone on their "front" bench
  • mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,089

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    We support rail (but not here!)
    We support house building (but not here!)

    Not sure how you build a national platform off that....

    LDs don't need to build a national platform. They need to go back to their old contradictory but effective approach of building local platforms in (now) winnable seats. Having to be a national party of government with a de facto national platform was their undoing. This may be the start of that unwinding again.
  • eekeek Posts: 24,797

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    As I suggested earlier: Jenrick gone in next reshuffle and some kind of 'review' of planning changes.
    And yet the LDs were in Parliament yesterday calling for more immigration for low skilled low wage jobs. Because supporting that while opposing planning will do the housing market wonders. 🤦‍♂️

    Some people act as if planning changes will mean the whole country would turn into concrete, that's not what it means, its not what it could ever mean. 5% of land is housing now, even if we added 3 million extra homes not 300k at the same density, all on greenfield farming land, it would mean 5.5% of the country being housing and 69.5% of the country being agriculture.

    People who abjectly fear construction, or who use such fear to protect their house prices, are the real ones who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
    There are two conflicting demands in the South.

    Cheap labour because no-one local is willing to work for the low rates on offer.

    No additional housing because the rich people like their existing views.

    While both demands are contradictory you need to join the dots to see that fact and most people simple aren't interested or capable of doing so.
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535
    I generally don't mind Lib Dems winning things, as I consider them to generally be a decent bunch, but if they are winning things by appealing to the NIMBYs who are against building almost anything, never mind such vital things as transport infrastructure and homes, that is depressing. This country is held back by appealing to the selfish already well-off, one thing Boris has got right is "levelling up", and the Lib Dems should be supporting such an agenda not appealing to the opponents of it.
  • RochdalePioneersRochdalePioneers Posts: 27,013
    Isn't "Lady Whiplash" from that by-election now manifesting as the Secretary of State for the Home Department?
  • glwglw Posts: 9,535

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    We support rail (but not here!)
    We support house building (but not here!)

    Not sure how you build a national platform off that....

    It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    gealbhan said:

    eek said:

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    Cameron weakened the Union by having an EU Referendum where England and Wales voted one way and Scotland and NI the other.

    May weakened the Union by agreeing to solve the NI issue first, rather than getting a general compromise.

    Boris inherited NI as an ongoing Kobayashi Maru unwinnable problem and he has done the only responsible thing to win: he cheated. He got the EU to replace the backstop with a protocol, but a protocol only he can implement, without any intention of implementing it the way they wanted it implementing. That leaves the ball in their court, they have no choice but to compromise, rolling back the mistakes of prior Prime Ministers.
    Inherited? Boris Johnson created it, people did warn that Brexiting would screw the Union and Northern Ireland.

    But people like you enabled it.
    Cameron's the one who organised, held and lost the referendum, not Boris.
    If we are playing that game Cameron put it in the 2015 manifesto as an item to remove when coalition 2 was formed.

    Then Osbourne gutted the LD seats and Cameron won a majority so had to actually hold a referendum he really didn't want.
    The law of unintended consequences has had a few applications in recent years - Labour's Scottish devolution is a good example.

    Though I would say it was Clegg who gutted the LibDems over tuition fees.

    Incredible though it now seems many LibDems, including Mike Smithson, thought that was going to be a vote winner at the time.
    But it was. Say no to tuition fees, say no to Iraq war, were voter winners for an opposition, standing on those principles.

    What swung it was entering into government and abandoning those principled stands, abandoning everyone who stood with you on each principled position now dumped into the trash.
    They thought the INCREASE in tuition fees would be a vote winner - the 'logic' being that students don't vote but university workers do.
  • RogerRoger Posts: 18,891
    Even on here you can see the division. The bright Tories have no time for Johnson correctly identifying him as a charlatan and the less cerebral-the Guido crowd-love him. It nice that this site represents the country at large.

    1-0 to the NOT Hartlipudlians.
  • darkagedarkage Posts: 4,746

    DavidL said:

    It's funny, there's a type of Tory that Boris Johnson puts off like no other.

    Take PB, David Herdson and myself are lifelong Tories, we've spent most of our adult lives campaigning for the Tory party, helping lots of councillors and MPs get elected, yet we fled the Tory party when BJ became PM, we knew this is what would happen.

    Boris Johnson does many deeply unConservative things.

    Mrs Thatcher would be spinning in her grave at his electoral and fuck business policies for example.

    I'm not going back to the Tory party for a while.

    Not voting for anyone else mind.

    He does the most Conservative thing of all. He wins.
    You mean like weakening the Union?
    The most unConservative government was that of David Cameron, in my opinon. It pursued an almost revolutionary hollowing out of the state and pursued very divisive and nasty policies towards poor people. People could bask in their material wealth and ignore all of it and pretend that it was conservative - I did so myself - but on reflection it was anything but. Cameron was not a statesman although he did a good job of posing as one. He put the union and the EU at risk to try and shore up his own political position, leaving absolute chaos in his wake. The reinvention of the party by Boris makes it more conservative in my view, although it is not perfect and has many significant flaws, it is much more electable for a lot of people outside the south east.

    This is a brilliant article on David Cameron


    https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2021/04/david-cameron-and-great-sell-out


  • Dominic Grieve was a Tory I respected, it is a great loss he is gone
  • Big_G_NorthWalesBig_G_NorthWales Posts: 60,001
    There were so many issues in Chesham and Amersham, many local, but also Brexit and covid I doubt it is wise to extrapolate that large numbers of southern seats will go lib dem in 2024.

    However, for me I would be pleased to see Boris succeeded by Sunak, Hunt or even Truss and for a more conventual government than Boris, who is good at winning elections, apart from this one, but poor on anything to do with decision making, and in particular difficult decision making

    However, I doubt it will be Boris for the immediate high jump rather than Starmer, who has to win B & S as anything less would confirm labour as actually marginalised, not just in the north, but in the south and of course is nowhere in Scotland

    Interesting days
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,762
    glw said:

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    We support rail (but not here!)
    We support house building (but not here!)

    Not sure how you build a national platform off that....

    It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
    Pure NIMBYism at its very worst. Gosh these grapes are sour, almost bitter.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited June 2021
    Have we done this?

    https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1405815350118305794?s=20

    Although 1 dose does significantly reduce your protection against catching Indian variant COVID, it is basically still the same high level of protection against serious illness / hospitalization, and 2nd doses basically no difference...still upto 98% reduction against getting really ill.

    That is really positive news. Get everybody double dosed and basically the only people we should be seeing in hospital are morons and the unfortunate very old / very frail.
  • noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,451
    edited June 2021

    valleyboy said:

    As a Labour supporter I hope these last two results cause Keir Starmer to have a rethink on his silence towards Brexit. Red Wall voters may be largely lost, but there are clearly swathes of non Brexit voters out there waiting to be wooed back into the Labour fold.
    Well done Libs in Amersham.

    Agreed. I posted this on the previous thread in rely to HYUFD but it fell down the New Thread hole:

    Starmer needs the plums to say, unequivocally, that Labour, as a party, believes Brexit is a catastrophic error. If that leads to losing more red wall seats (including my own, and I don't particularly want to have a Tory MP) then, sadly, that is a symptom of politics shifting to a Leave/Remain divide.

    Because Labour are trying to ignore Brexit, and pleasing no-one. They're not Brexity enough for Leavers, everyone knows there's no conviction, and they're repelling Remainers for not being anti-Brexit enough.

    The Tories have screwed Labour good and proper. Their austerity pissed the Red Wall off, they blamed a lot of it on forrins (so many people up here think they can't get a doctor's appointment for weeks because we're swamped with immigrants, esp Muslim immigrants), the two Leave campaigns promised everything to everyone. It's shameless, opportunistic. mendacious and brilliant.

    And yes, the Remain campaign was shite. But, ultimately, it was headed by Tories. So it couldn't say stuff like, for example, 'Don't vote Leave 'cos the Tories will, given half a chance, take an axe to worker's rights the EU protects' or 'Don't vote Leave cos, given half a chance, the Tories will go for Thatcherism on steroids and happily lay waste to things like the fishing industry', because it was ultimately headed by... Tories.
    Not convinced by that, Brexit is done, yet the Tories want it front and centre of the next election, perhaps via its proxy, the culture war.

    There will be some localised seats where Labour can point to issues caused by Brexit and play on that.

    But nationally Labour needs to return to being about the balance between labour and capital. Not in the old fashioned divisive trade union ways, but simply about restoring hopes and dreams to the opportunities of ordinary working people, which means supporting education, businesses and investment, not class war.
  • SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 9,704
    glw said:

    Another take on C&A:

    https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1405814177281757184?s=20

    Southern Conservatives are very very worried this morning about planning reform and troubles for the next election. The Lib Dems will likely become the new Nimby party.

    We support rail (but not here!)
    We support house building (but not here!)

    Not sure how you build a national platform off that....

    It's nuts. How the hell can the Lib Dems be against public transport and building homes?
    They're not.. just umm in the right places. Over there....far over there...
  • Nigel_ForemainNigel_Foremain Posts: 13,766
    Feeling a bit silly! Just posted three times on an old thread lol!
  • Scott_xPScott_xP Posts: 32,735
    Here it is. The anti-planning reform leaflet the Libs were handing out during the Chesham by-election.

    Quotes from Theresa May (pictured) and IDS criticising the reforms. (One Tory MP who visited a dozen times told me these ‘cut through’)
    https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1405828787129008128/photo/1
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