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EXCLUSIVE: UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall admits his claims about losing close friends at #Hillsborough are false https://t.co/CtpCcAh7fA pic.twitter.com/jdzxz7C2aq
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Edit: and all part of the "first" game...
I think JK Rowling is fantastic.
You would have been quite happy with the threshold if Remain had won, and I dare say a 60% threshold would have been unacceptable if Leave won even so.
https://twitter.com/BrianReade/status/831517304093552640
https://twitter.com/Arron_banks/status/831593360242647040
https://twitter.com/YvetteCooperMP/status/831573755939917824
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”
https://twitter.com/WikiGuido/status/831597326913396737/photo/1
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/02/14/toshiba-takes-5bn-nuclear-writedown-chairman-resigns/
Too much money can be dangerous for one's soul. In the long run maybe she'll give most of her dough away. Lots of rich Americans do.
Just a working class pizza boy from Belfast my anus.
C 37.8%, L 31.2% - the same result as 2015 leads to a Con majority of 40 on the new boundaries
C 35.7%, L33.3% - Lab deprive Con of their majority by taking Broxtowe and Hucknall (projected maj 2,183)
C 34.4%, L34.6% - Lab become the largest party in terms of votes but are still 55 seats behind the Tories. They do pick up Ribble S (predicted maj 3,903)
C 32.2% L36.8% - Lab become the largest party in terms of seats (but are 40 short of a majority) by taking Northampton N (predicted maj 5,533). 3 prominent Con casualties are Rudd, Bojo and IDS (the latter two's seats have adverse boundary changes)
C 28.3% L40.7% - Lab match Tony's Blair's vote share in 2001but are still 6 short of a majority. Seats picked up include Cities of London and Westminster (maj 8,963) and Shrewsbury
C 27.9% L41.1% - Lab finally get a majority of 4 by picking up Gravesham (11,006)
It's striking how Lab would do much so worse now on a Blair style landslide vote. The main reasons for this are:
- The over-representation of Scotland has ended and that of Wales is going
- The loss of Scotland (even in the best scenario above Lab only pick up 2 seats from the SNP)
- The unwind of Lab/LD tactical voting
- Con vote is better distributed and Lab's is worse
- The South (outside London) is gaining electorate faster than other regions
So even if Corbyn goes, it looks very hard for Lab to win outright (they would probably need to run a minority government or coalition)
Or do we say that certain rights are inalieable, and a majority cannot wish them away?
MarqueeMark said:
I imagine the two resigning MPs must be thinking that it is all going nicely to plan.
One factor in Stoke I haven't seen mentioned - and that is Tristram Hunt leaving the job of MP for a cushy post at the V&A. People generally don't like by-elections where someone has tazzed off for a better offer. I was active in the 1977 Ashfield by-election, a rock-solid Labour seat where David Marquand went off to a job in the EEC (as it then was) to work for Roy Jenkins. The Tories won the seat with a 20% swing - speaking to Labour folks afterwards, they just couldn't get their voters out. Anybody who has been to Stoke/phone banked for it found this given as a reason for changed votes?
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No, I was looking out for it. One voter said that in general terms he hadn't much liked recent MPs and was pleased the candidate was a local bloke though he didn't know him. Nobody else commente positively or negatively about any candidate except Nuttall (about whom comments were 100% negative, even from people still planning to vote for him).
But I think everyone is going to struggle to get their vote out, frankly. It didn't feel like a constituency panting for the chance to cast February votes.
It's a thorny question, to what extent are majorities allowed to impose oppressive laws on minorities.
Fortunately, it doesn't arise in the case of Brexit (regardless of whether one is in favour or not). Nobody is being oppressed.
Democracy isn't perfect but the idea that the "little people" aren't up to the job of voting, and that we ought to have something like a plutocracy would be at least as bad.
http://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/stoke-on-trent-central-candidates-apologise-following-online-gaffes/story-30135853-detail/story.html
This is nowhere near the class of Jane Austen who, I seem to have read somewhere, had a critically useful though diffident editor.
Read an early book by him, fantasy stuff around the Burning Man event. Really quite good, better than when he got trapped in the Game of Thrones formula - it's readable in a what=happens-next? sense, but not relaly good writing.
I can understand why the books were popular. I can't understand why they were * so popular* (450 m sales). I certainly wouldn't rate her above authors like Ursula Le Guin, Dianne Wynne Jones, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alan Garner, who sold in the millions, but not the hundreds of millions.
J K Rowling plots well, brings everything together nicely without being too obvious, has a good twist, and an emotional punch for the ending.
She writes well.
She was lucky they caught on, of course, but that doesn't undermine her writing.
Angela Merkel was a dead cert a month ago.
And precisely no-one will have seen it coming.
Our story is not yet told.
Of course you can have a semi-democratic system as in Iran but you would quite quickly realise how limited that appearance of democracy was if you tried to get rid of the theocratic system that has ultimate control.
Having constructed an intricate valve preamplifier I decided to just play the CD and VHF directly into the amp with a simple potentiometer volume control. I can't tear myself away from the sound. I shall have to similarly refurbish its companion amp to achieve stereo.
These are keepers. They can bury me with 'em like Danes of old with their swords.
The potential for Flynn is that things may get worse as a private citizen because he has talked to the FBI and they wont be happy if he bullshitted them.
As for Spicer, Comical Ali wouldn't be in it. Trump tried to keep Flynn and Trump knew Flynn had bullshitted about the conversations with the Russians.
And that is only part of it.
The spooks, as I mentioned the other night, are heavily dependent on legislative branch doing their job, particularly in the Senate and there are some signs that enough GOP types there will break ranks.