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  • StereotomyStereotomy Posts: 4,092
    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    What a bizarre question. That's like hearing somebody talk approvingly about marchers on the PV march and asking if they'd approve if they had been marching with the EDL instead
    So you think it's okay for the police to join in with an illegal demonstration?
    Not implied by what I said at all. But to answer your question: it depends what the demonstration is for. I'm struggling to think of any example where I think it'd be okay for civilians to take part but not the police
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    Foxy said:

    The Samsung story seems a bit odd. Surely they would've/should've done a bucketload of testing?

    These are the people who gave the world the exploding Note 7.

    Samsung are awful. They release improperly tested phones to the world.
    And you suck up to an evil company, and pay 30-40% more for their gear. ;)

    (And gear which dies not always work, either.)
    Indeed rarely does one see an iphone in the wild without a cracked screen!
    I know you're joking, but I can't understand why people spend £500-1000 on a consumer device and don't put a case on it. All my phones have cases, and I've never suffered a broken screen despite some sometimes harsh handling. I also hate the trend for thinner phones, when what I need is increased battery life.

    Yet the trend is for style. When it's a trade-off between showing off and risking breakage, showing off wins. :(
    I have never broken a screen since I went Android. I speak of the rather fashion conscious spendthrift Fox jr, and our consumer obsessed Filipino nurses.

    I agree on battery life vs thinness. There is a market there to be had for a smartphone that lasts all day and fits in a pocket.

  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019
    There does seem to be an incredible double standard.

    If most groups want to have a protest, they have to coordinate with the police beforehand, they organize a time and route which minimises disruption etc etc etc, and they have to agree plans and stick to it, otherwise the police will a) no agree to them having a protest and / or b) shut it down.

    A load of eco-fascists turn up, cause major disruption and the police have a dance with them and use their skate-boards for 3 days
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    Sean_F said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6t9tsi

    These EDL members are in good voice
    Screwdriver had their following.
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,401
    On topic, I disagree slightly with Mike. The Euros have been a guide to the following elections but they shouldn't be read as a predictive poll. The messages have generally been more subtle.

    1999 showed that enthusiasm for Blair was already on the wane and the the public wasn't overly sold on Labour's keen pro-EUism. That played out with a much reduced turnout in 2001, and with 'Keep the Pound' keeping the Tory vote together sufficiently to maintain a viable opposition - something which wasn't guaranteed as Labour piled up 20%+ poll leads.

    2004 again showed that Labour's support was mainly transactional. Labour would go on to win in 2005 but on a low share and with a narrow lead. It also flagged up the public's increasing Euroscepticism with UKIP's gains, something which 2009 re-emphasised although the EU remained a second-order issue at the time.

    2014 did presage major UKIP gains in votes in 2015GE. It's true that very few of those votes went to elect an MP but that's not the point, given the differences in the electoral systems (had 2015GE been run with closed lists of 3-10 MPs per constituency, as with the EP elections, UKIP would have returned scores of MPs).

    So there are lessons that we can take from the EP results; it's just that we have to be cautious in interpreting them - and of course, it's a lot easier now that we have the results of the subsequent GE and can see the narrative in retrospect.
  • JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 38,517

    There does seem to be an incredible double standard.

    If most groups want to have a protest, they have to coordinate with the police beforehand, they organize a time and route which minimises disruption etc etc etc, and they have to agree plans and stick to it, otherwise the police will a) no agree to them having a protest and / or b) shut it down.

    A load of eco-fascists turn up, cause major disruption and the police have a dance with them and use their stakeboards for 3 days

    "Police have made nearly 400 arrests in London over the protests."
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,880

    Mr. JohnL, and yet he isn't sharing it. Osborne made all the running on the economy, Hammond's a gloom merchant who rarely speaks up, and when he does it's about mitigating the woe.

    Osborne was a disaster for the economy, at least at first. Ed Balls' hand gestures were right. Osborne's Plan A would only have worked when Europe was expanding, and the Germans put the kibosh on that.
    I've seen the cost of Osborne's austerity put at 10k/household. That's much more than Brexit, although I suppose in the long run Brexit will probably do the greater economic damage.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274

    There does seem to be an incredible double standard.

    If most groups want to have a protest, they have to coordinate with the police beforehand, they organize a time and route which minimises disruption etc etc etc, and they have to agree plans and stick to it, otherwise the police will a) no agree to them having a protest and / or b) shut it down.

    A load of eco-fascists turn up, cause major disruption and the police have a dance with them and use their stakeboards for 3 days

    "Police have made nearly 400 arrests in London over the protests."
    And they haven't cleared the disruption (nor do they appear serious in doing so) and most have been released and just gone back to the protests.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019

    The Samsung story seems a bit odd. Surely they would've/should've done a bucketload of testing?

    The Samsung is partly fake news. Half of those reported to be faulty, aren't faulty at all, the tech vloggers didn't read the instructions and decided to pull what they thought was a screen protector off (which was in fact the screen).

    So we are talking 2 faulty ones out of 100s of review units.

    That been said, the crease is a far bigger issue. Who wants a phone that you have this horrid crease down the middle, which apparently you can feel when you swipe across.

    It seems they have rushed this to market, because competition also having a similar product.
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880
    edited April 2019
    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6t9tsi

    These EDL members are in good voice
    Screwdriver had their following.
    It was spelled with a 'k' - Skrewdriver. Appreciating the need for an easily google-able name was highly prescient in the late 70s.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    There does seem to be an incredible double standard.

    If most groups want to have a protest, they have to coordinate with the police beforehand, they organize a time and route which minimises disruption etc etc etc, and they have to agree plans and stick to it, otherwise the police will a) no agree to them having a protest and / or b) shut it down.

    A load of eco-fascists turn up, cause major disruption and the police have a dance with them and use their stakeboards for 3 days

    "Police have made nearly 400 arrests in London over the protests."
    What I want to know is, why haven't they all been arrested? And one girl on the news last night was arrested and back on the demo the next day. It's all very odd.

    FWIW I don't care if it's hurting London. It's not my city, I only have to come here for work. If London's residents want to f*** it up and the local police aren't bothered, neither am I.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Crossrail 'could be delayed until 2021'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47967766

    Oops. Although I do wonder if there is some expectations management going on.


    Not really. That is my expectation.
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021

    Perhaps Crossrail 2 should be cancelled before it is allowed to begin.

    So speaks a voice of ignorance.

    We get this all the time.
    What are you complaining about ?

    Its over budget and years behind schedule.

    You get this all the time because these projects go wrong all the time.

    Why don't you try under-promising and over-delivering if you want praise.
  • brendan16brendan16 Posts: 2,315
    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    Foxy said:

    isam said:

    “In 2014 Farage’s UKIP came out top with 27% of the vote winning most MEPs. This was, of course, no indicator to what would happen at GE2015 when the party just picked up one seat – Douglas Carswell’s and losing the other one it held. Carswell later quit UKIP.”

    🤔

    UKIP got 13% (+10) in the 2015 GE, with 3.8m votes after winning the Euros with 4.3m in 2014. I’d say that was a fair indicator of increasing Eurosceptism

    Leave winning the 2016 referendum was only such a surprise because the politically engaged downplayed both results IMO

    I agree, but I think it over egging it to say the 2016 result was a surprise. The polls in the run up had the result as a coin toss, with a main PB theme of whether online polls were as reliable as phone polls. I think that discussion is concluded.

    As turnout was roughly double in 2015 GE to Euros 2014, I suspect the votes were from the same 3.8 million people.

    In these Euros, turnout will be key, but likely to be low overall. People are just sick of Brexit, so only the fanatics on each side will turnout.
    Yes they probably were the same people, that’s the point!

    I have to disagree about the referendum result not being a surprise, Leave were 14/1 on the day, and never shorter than 11/8ish during the campaign.
    Polls began to turn some way out from polling day.

    eg https://standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-poll-most-brits-do-want-to-leave-one-week-to-go-before-eu-referendum-vote-a3273141.html
    My God, are people really trying to say Leave winning wasn’t a surprise now?!?!
    The referendum results shows are all on you tube and the betting trends are online. Everyone was surprised at the result.
  • tlg86tlg86 Posts: 25,164

    Crossrail 'could be delayed until 2021'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47967766

    Oops. Although I do wonder if there is some expectations management going on.


    Not really. That is my expectation.
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021

    Perhaps Crossrail 2 should be cancelled before it is allowed to begin.

    So speaks a voice of ignorance.

    We get this all the time.
    What are you complaining about ?

    Its over budget and years behind schedule.

    You get this all the time because these projects go wrong all the time.

    Why don't you try under-promising and over-delivering if you want praise.
    To be fair to those working on Crossrail, I don't think it's their fault. It's the obsession with cost-benefit analysis that leads to very optimistic timescales and budgets. Ultimately Crossrail will be worth it when it's open, it'll be worth the wait. HS2 on the other hand...
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    tlg86 said:

    There does seem to be an incredible double standard.

    If most groups want to have a protest, they have to coordinate with the police beforehand, they organize a time and route which minimises disruption etc etc etc, and they have to agree plans and stick to it, otherwise the police will a) no agree to them having a protest and / or b) shut it down.

    A load of eco-fascists turn up, cause major disruption and the police have a dance with them and use their stakeboards for 3 days

    "Police have made nearly 400 arrests in London over the protests."
    What I want to know is, why haven't they all been arrested? And one girl on the news last night was arrested and back on the demo the next day. It's all very odd.

    FWIW I don't care if it's hurting London. It's not my city, I only have to come here for work. If London's residents want to f*** it up and the local police aren't bothered, neither am I.
    There is another issue...like the London riots, where the police went softly softly for far too long. It just sends all the wrong messages and emboldens bad actors to repeat things.
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,847
    edited April 2019

    Do the EDL dance and sing?

    Bet they don't 'do' music generally.

    I'd be surprised if a single member of the EDL was proficient on, for example, violin, or even the double bass.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
  • This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019
    kinabalu said:

    Do the EDL dance and sing?

    Bet they don't 'do' music generally.

    I'd be surprised if even a single member of the EDL was proficient on, for example, violin, or even the double bass.
    Its that because state school music lesson are crap / non-existent, compared to all the privileged Harvey-Symth eco-fascists having attended top private schools?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    Crossrail 'could be delayed until 2021'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47967766

    Oops. Although I do wonder if there is some expectations management going on.


    Not really. That is my expectation.
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021

    Perhaps Crossrail 2 should be cancelled before it is allowed to begin.

    So speaks a voice of ignorance.

    We get this all the time.
    What are you complaining about ?

    Its over budget and years behind schedule.

    You get this all the time because these projects go wrong all the time.

    Why don't you try under-promising and over-delivering if you want praise.
    Are we speaking of Brexit again?
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    kinabalu said:

    Do the EDL dance and sing?

    Bet they don't 'do' music generally.

    I'd be surprised if a single member of the EDL was proficient on, for example, violin, or even the double bass.
    Though they can make a good estimation of german aircraft numbers, and have 'TR' in rhyming verse down pat.
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786
    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    The triple ripple thurrock, dagenham, barking etc bulldog pricks. They are a stain on this country. And Farage will hoover them up.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019
    Somebodies got a few quid to spend...

    Seattle Seahawks quarterback signs NFL's most lucrative deal

    Wilson, 30, signed a four-year, $140m (£107m) contract extension with a $65m (£50m) signing bonus.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/american-football/47973374

    £50m upfront...his agent has done really well.
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786
    edited April 2019

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Foxy said:

    Crossrail 'could be delayed until 2021'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47967766

    Oops. Although I do wonder if there is some expectations management going on.


    Not really. That is my expectation.
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021

    Perhaps Crossrail 2 should be cancelled before it is allowed to begin.

    So speaks a voice of ignorance.

    We get this all the time.
    What are you complaining about ?

    Its over budget and years behind schedule.

    You get this all the time because these projects go wrong all the time.

    Why don't you try under-promising and over-delivering if you want praise.
    Are we speaking of Brexit again?
    The ironic thing being that Brexit would have been delivered on time and under budget but the customers had a tantrum and said they now wanted it to a different design.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    I think we will see in the Locals who is dying, and who is reviving.
  • anothernickanothernick Posts: 3,545

    Crossrail 'could be delayed until 2021'

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-47967766

    Oops. Although I do wonder if there is some expectations management going on.


    Not really. That is my expectation.
    2018
    2019
    2020
    2021

    Perhaps Crossrail 2 should be cancelled before it is allowed to begin.

    So speaks a voice of ignorance.

    We get this all the time.
    What are you complaining about ?

    Its over budget and years behind schedule.

    You get this all the time because these projects go wrong all the time.

    Why don't you try under-promising and over-delivering if you want praise.
    Project timetables are invariably over-optimistic as clients want to be told that everything can happen tomorrow and contractors minimise difficulties and submit unrealistic schedules in order to get work. This is true everywhere (the new Berlin airport is a prime example). Crossrail is far from unique, the fault lies with those who did not challenge the plans at the beginning - I would always add 50% to any time estimate given for a construction project.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    Also, like the Tories, what do the Lib Dems stand for these days. Remain and....with snoozer Cable at the helm, there is no policy ideas or direction other than to stop Brexit.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    edited April 2019
    Dura_Ace said:

    TOPPING said:

    Sean_F said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6t9tsi

    These EDL members are in good voice
    Screwdriver had their following.
    It was spelled with a 'k' - Skrewdriver. Appreciating the need for an easily google-able name was highly prescient in the late 70s.
    The approved pronunciation was with a stutter.

    Sk-k-krewdriver.

    With his attempts to claim Oi wasn't racist, Garry Bushell truly was a prophet for our 'good people on both sides' times.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786
    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
    Watsons ridiculous scooby gang shot their bolt, and has now faded away allowing the lunatics of momentum free reign.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    Some of the splitters look like they could fit into the LibDems quite easily, others less so.
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    Also, like the Tories, what do the Lib Dems stand for these days. Remain and....with snoozer Cable at the helm, there is no policy ideas or direction other than to stop Brexit.
    Yep, cable is still dining out on his Mr Bean gag and the 149 recessions he predicted
    Next up it's the idiot Swinson or Eric Clapton
    Change for the win
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019
    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786

    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    edited April 2019
    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
    They are invisible. "Change UK" and "Change UK website" do not find them on google (at least not on the first 3 pages). "Change UK TIG website" brings up theindependentgroup at the bottom of the first page. Incredibly amateurish.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841

    Somebodies got a few quid to spend...

    Seattle Seahawks quarterback signs NFL's most lucrative deal

    Wilson, 30, signed a four-year, $140m (£107m) contract extension with a $65m (£50m) signing bonus.

    https://www.bbc.com/sport/american-football/47973374

    £50m upfront...his agent has done really well.

    It's a lot of money, but who could the Seahawks replace him with ?

    When you've got Jimmy G, Stafford and Kirk Cousins on almost the same money...

    Patrick Mahomes will bust $200 million I think
  • UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
    Please.

    It is His Excellency Professor Sir Paul Nuttall KCVO, DSO, MBE.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    Also, like the Tories, what do the Lib Dems stand for these days. Remain and....with snoozer Cable at the helm, there is no policy ideas or direction other than to stop Brexit.
    Yep, cable is still dining out on his Mr Bean gag and the 149 recessions he predicted
    Next up it's the idiot Swinson or Eric Clapton
    Change for the win
    I think you mean Eric Slapton.
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    Also, like the Tories, what do the Lib Dems stand for these days. Remain and....with snoozer Cable at the helm, there is no policy ideas or direction other than to stop Brexit.
    Yep, cable is still dining out on his Mr Bean gag and the 149 recessions he predicted
    Next up it's the idiot Swinson or Eric Clapton
    Change for the win
    I think you mean Eric Slapton.
    Eric Crapton?
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019

    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
    To be fair, I think the media are going somewhat OTT on Carl Benjamin. Most of the stuff he has been picked up on reminds we somewhat of when SeanT gets going on here. His twitter was notorious for deliberately picking fights with people and fruity "put-downs".

    He is a professional provocateur and makes a living out of YouTube, but from everything I have seen of him he isn't exactly Tommy Robinson, Milo, etc and unlike say Milo when he is interviewed properly he isn't mental (although I certainly don't agree with a lot of his views).
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,401
    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    I think we will see in the Locals who is dying, and who is reviving.
    If the Lib Dems want the limit of their ambitions to be pointing at potholes, then that will indeed be the limit of their ambition. They might well make some gains on councils where they've historically had some strength but nationally, their brand is tarnished beyond repair and their infrastructure shot to pieces.

    By far the best way to revive would be to merge the Lib Dems, their members, data and infrastructure into a new party with Change UK. However, Change have probably screwed that possibility up by making such a horlicks of their own strategy: launching late with a silly name and no attempt to build a movement. If they'd ridden the Revoke wave, they could have 100k+ members now.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    edited April 2019

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    Some Chelsea supporters seem to be to the right of the BNP! And, AIUI, they're Tory supporters. But Spurs have been known as the Kids for years. No idea, quite frankly, why.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    Foxy said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    TOPPING said:

    isam said:

    Foxy said:

    isam said:

    “In 2014 Farage’s UKIP came out top with 27% of the vote winning most MEPs. This was, of course, no indicator to what would happen at GE2015 when the party just picked up one seat – Douglas Carswell’s and losing the other one it held. Carswell later quit UKIP.”

    🤔

    UKIP got 13% (+10) in the 2015 GE, with 3.8m votes after winning the Euros with 4.3m in 2014. I’d say that was a fair indicator of increasing Eurosceptism

    Leave winning the 2016 referendum was only such a surprise because the politically engaged downplayed both results IMO

    I agree, but I think it over .
    Yes they probably were the same people, that’s the point!

    I have to disagree about the referendum result not being a surprise, Leave were 14/1 on the day, and never shorter than 11/8ish during the campaign.
    Polls began to turn some way out from polling day.

    eg https://standard.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-poll-most-brits-do-want-to-leave-one-week-to-go-before-eu-referendum-vote-a3273141.html
    My God, are people really trying to say Leave winning wasn’t a surprise now?!?!
    I'm pointing to an opinion poll (one of several) that showed a Leave preference.

    I think there was plenty of ingrained knowledge/thinking that meant that for many Leave winning was indeed a surprise but if anyone took any heed of the polls and took any heed of what they were saying, it was indeed not too surprising.
    Indeed, and in that eve of poll PB thread there are many interesting comments, but not a lot of conviction by either side that they had won. This is an interesting one from @Sandpit for example:

    "I worry that a 51-49 is going to end up in court one way or the other. The campaigns have both been a disgrace to democracy with bogus statistics, baseless scaremongering and abuse of process.

    I have my side, but would much rather it were a decisive 55-45 either way than a very marginal result. Also hoping for high turnout to add legitimacy"
    That’s one of the better looking comments, with the benefit of nearly three years’ hindsight ;)
  • TheWhiteRabbitTheWhiteRabbit Posts: 12,387

    The Samsung story seems a bit odd. Surely they would've/should've done a bucketload of testing?

    The Samsung is partly fake news. Half of those reported to be faulty, aren't faulty at all, the tech vloggers didn't read the instructions and decided to pull what they thought was a screen protector off (which was in fact the screen).

    So we are talking 2 faulty ones out of 100s of review units.

    That been said, the crease is a far bigger issue. Who wants a phone that you have this horrid crease down the middle, which apparently you can feel when you swipe across.

    It seems they have rushed this to market, because competition also having a similar product.
    You don't think that a product that people can rip the screen off with the ease of a screen protector might be a bit of a problem?
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786

    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
    To be fair, I think the media are going somewhat OTT on Carl Benjamin. Most of the stuff he has been picked up on reminds we somewhat of when SeanT gets going on here. His twitter was notorious for deliberately picking fights with people and fruity "put-downs".

    He is a professional provocateur and makes a living out of YouTube, but from everything I have seen of him he isn't exactly Tommy Robinson, Milo, etc and unlike say Milo when he is interviewed properly he isn't mental (although I certainly don't agree with a lot of his views).
    Perfectly valid to point it out and that his leader supports it by inaction. Show voters the sort of people they are.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    Also, like the Tories, what do the Lib Dems stand for these days. Remain and....with snoozer Cable at the helm, there is no policy ideas or direction other than to stop Brexit.
    Yep, cable is still dining out on his Mr Bean gag and the 149 recessions he predicted
    Next up it's the idiot Swinson or Eric Clapton
    Change for the win
    I think you mean Eric Slapton.
    Eric Crapton?
    ' Liberal Democrat leader hopeful Layla Moran has admitted she was arrested and detained by police slapping her ex-boyfriend.

    The MP for Oxford West and Abingdon said she was coming clean after rumours began circulating about the incident, which took place at a party conference in Glasgow.

    She said she had slapped the man, identified only as Richard, following a row over a lost computer cable.

    The revelation prompted some activists to praise her honesty, describing her as brave and courageous.

    But many others demanded that Ms Moran, 36, step down, noting that domestic violence should be condemned, regardless of the circumstances and the gender of the perpetrator.
    '

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/24/lib-dem-leadership-hopeful-layla-moran-admits-slapping-boyfriend/
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    It was better than my first ever visit to Upton Park in 1977, where someone had spray-painted "Hitler was Right. Gas the Jews" above one of the entrances, and the approaches were full of people selling paper for the National Front and British Movement.
  • Ishmael_Z said:

    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
    They are invisible. "Change UK" and "Change UK website" do not find them on google (at least not on the first 3 pages). "Change UK TIG website" brings up theindependentgroup at the bottom of the first page. Incredibly amateurish.
    Is it too late for CHUK to admit their mistakes and join the Lib Dems? After the humiliation of the locals, of course. They don’t seem to do humility all the easily, but they seem a bit pointless to me. Rather like the old SDP carrying on after the formation of the SLD, it just becomes embarrassing, it’s the infrastructure problem, mainly. As to policies? Sure there are differences, but so there are in all parties.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,910

    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
    Please.

    It is His Excellency Professor Sir Paul Nuttall KCVO, DSO, MBE.
    I loved it when he was in "Bottom" :)
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    edited April 2019

    The Samsung story seems a bit odd. Surely they would've/should've done a bucketload of testing?

    The Samsung is partly fake news. Half of those reported to be faulty, aren't faulty at all, the tech vloggers didn't read the instructions and decided to pull what they thought was a screen protector off (which was in fact the screen).

    So we are talking 2 faulty ones out of 100s of review units.

    That been said, the crease is a far bigger issue. Who wants a phone that you have this horrid crease down the middle, which apparently you can feel when you swipe across.

    It seems they have rushed this to market, because competition also having a similar product.
    You don't think that a product that people can rip the screen off with the ease of a screen protector might be a bit of a problem?
    I am not sure they ripped it off with ease. They thought it was a screen protector (despite there being big warnings, which they didn't read / ignored) and yanked at it and then went oh shit the screen isn't working now.

    https://twitter.com/MKBHD/status/1118580472576118787
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,847
    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    But the Lib Dems are still doing really badly, even in EU polling where they are the absolute Remain party.
    Yes Change want to absorb them once past them, why join a dying brand?
    I think we will see in the Locals who is dying, and who is reviving.
    If the Lib Dems want the limit of their ambitions to be pointing at potholes, then that will indeed be the limit of their ambition. They might well make some gains on councils where they've historically had some strength but nationally, their brand is tarnished beyond repair and their infrastructure shot to pieces.

    By far the best way to revive would be to merge the Lib Dems, their members, data and infrastructure into a new party with Change UK. However, Change have probably screwed that possibility up by making such a horlicks of their own strategy: launching late with a silly name and no attempt to build a movement. If they'd ridden the Revoke wave, they could have 100k+ members now.
    I have always said it will be a slow rebuild, but winning over councils is a very good place to start.

    I know that you are just getting your excuses in early, but the Locals are likely to be less diastrous for the Tories than any national election.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    It was better than my first ever visit to Upton Park in 1977, where someone had spray-painted "Hitler was Right. Gas the Jews" above one of the entrances, and the approaches were full of people selling paper for the National Front and British Movement.
    Some West Ham fans were a disgrace. And some still are.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    Maybe you realise at heart that the demands of the protesters are anti-humane.
  • david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,401
    rkrkrk said:

    Mr. JohnL, and yet he isn't sharing it. Osborne made all the running on the economy, Hammond's a gloom merchant who rarely speaks up, and when he does it's about mitigating the woe.

    Osborne was a disaster for the economy, at least at first. Ed Balls' hand gestures were right. Osborne's Plan A would only have worked when Europe was expanding, and the Germans put the kibosh on that.
    I've seen the cost of Osborne's austerity put at 10k/household. That's much more than Brexit, although I suppose in the long run Brexit will probably do the greater economic damage.
    At the peak, the government was *borrowing* around £10k per family of 4, per year. It's hardly surprising that getting the books back close to balance has involved spending reductions and tax increases of around that order. But this is not a 'cost' as such; it's simply reining back previous overspending. Setting the entitlement at that baseline is something that has bedevilled politics in this country for a decade. We were paying ourselves an income that we weren't earning.
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,910

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    It was better than my first ever visit to Upton Park in 1977, where someone had spray-painted "Hitler was Right. Gas the Jews" above one of the entrances, and the approaches were full of people selling paper for the National Front and British Movement.
    Some West Ham fans were a disgrace. And some still are.
    Um, West Ham are my nearest Premier League side...
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274

    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
    To be fair, I think the media are going somewhat OTT on Carl Benjamin. Most of the stuff he has been picked up on reminds we somewhat of when SeanT gets going on here. His twitter was notorious for deliberately picking fights with people and fruity "put-downs".

    He is a professional provocateur and makes a living out of YouTube, but from everything I have seen of him he isn't exactly Tommy Robinson, Milo, etc and unlike say Milo when he is interviewed properly he isn't mental (although I certainly don't agree with a lot of his views).
    Perfectly valid to point it out and that his leader supports it by inaction. Show voters the sort of people they are.
    I find Batten's support / emboldening of Tommy Robinson far more concerning.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    The Samsung story seems a bit odd. Surely they would've/should've done a bucketload of testing?

    These are the people who gave the world the exploding Note 7.

    Samsung are awful. They release improperly tested phones to the world.
    And you suck up to an evil company, and pay 30-40% more for their gear. ;)

    (And gear which dies not always work, either.)
    Since 2010 I’ve bought around 25 iPhones of which only one developed an issue which Apple replaced straight away.

    I’ve bought a similar amount of iPads in that time not a single issue with any of them.

    I’m on my fourth Apple Watch, again no issues

    Most importantly I’ve been buying Macs or MacBooks every other year since the mid 90s, not one developed an issue. Nor have I had the blue screen of death.
    You should work out how much you've spent - that's essentially three phones a year. One of my phones lasts three years.

    For one thing, buying so much kit means that you're hardly getting into the rear end of the bathtub curve. You're turning tech into a disposable product - so no wonder you rarely see it go wrong ...
    Last year when I traded in the three phones I got back over £2,000 which paid for two new handsets.

    That’s one of the good things about Apple they keep their value.

    Some of the iPads are old as they get passed down to the kids.

    PS - The three phones a year aren’t for me, I get my parents a brand new phone every year because I’m an awesome son.
    How can you be sure they're not having issues - especially with software - if you're not the one using them? Do you ask your relatives to report all issues to you?

    You are an inveterate show-off. There's nothing wrong with that, just as there's nothing wrong for gently taking the mick out of you for your rampant consumerism and fanaticism. ;)

    (As an aside, Mrs J has now worked on tech that is in Apple, Samsung, Google and generic Android products. I'm now fairly manufacturer agnostic from that pov.) :)
    I know people who have older iPhones and they still love them.
    I have an iPhone SE (last of the smaller form factor ones). Its replacement will be another iPhone SE that’s sitting in the drawer waiting.
  • _Anazina__Anazina_ Posts: 1,810

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    Some Chelsea supporters seem to be to the right of the BNP! And, AIUI, they're Tory supporters. But Spurs have been known as the Kids for years. No idea, quite frankly, why.
    There is a severely racist element at Chelsea still now, hence why they are called The Racists by Spurs fans (as well as The Chavs). Spurs have a big Jewish following and are based close to a Jewish area but, actually, their fan base is very multiethnic. It was notable last week at the City game (first leg) just how diverse the crowd were compared to my days watching Forest as a kid.
  • NickPalmerNickPalmer Posts: 21,263
    Scott_P said:
    Interesting series of tweets. The reluctance to embrace one faction and throw the other overboard has lots of human factors against it - do we really say to MPs X and Y who we've worked with happily for decades that we no longer care about their voters and they can get lost? But there's also a risk in embracing one issue and deciding it's The Key to the Future, when maybe it isn't. We are all neurotic about Brexit, but in reality the outcome is likely to be fudged enough not to seem that different, and by 2022 a party that has defined itself by Brexit may look quite quaint.
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786

    UKIP campaign not getting off to a good start...

    https://youtu.be/Maa_ViTKHPc

    Who knew they could make Nuttall look like a halcyon time of great UKIP statesmen? Lol
    To be fair, I think the media are going somewhat OTT on Carl Benjamin. Most of the stuff he has been picked up on reminds we somewhat of when SeanT gets going on here. His twitter was notorious for deliberately picking fights with people and fruity "put-downs".

    He is a professional provocateur and makes a living out of YouTube, but from everything I have seen of him he isn't exactly Tommy Robinson, Milo, etc and unlike say Milo when he is interviewed properly he isn't mental (although I certainly don't agree with a lot of his views).
    Perfectly valid to point it out and that his leader supports it by inaction. Show voters the sort of people they are.
    I find Batten's support / emboldening of Tommy Robinson far more concerning.
    I'd suggest both are good reasons to denigrate and deny them
  • Sunil_PrasannanSunil_Prasannan Posts: 48,910
    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    Maybe you realise at heart that the demands of the protesters are anti-humane.
    Not quite sure why they want to target public transport (like the DLR).
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Palmer, that's the problem. Conservatives/Labour don't want to lose a third or so of their support by going all in for Remain/Leave, but smaller parties can be 100% focused on either side, leaving the main parties looking like the diet coke options.
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    rkrkrk said:

    Mr. JohnL, and yet he isn't sharing it. Osborne made all the running on the economy, Hammond's a gloom merchant who rarely speaks up, and when he does it's about mitigating the woe.

    Osborne was a disaster for the economy, at least at first. Ed Balls' hand gestures were right. Osborne's Plan A would only have worked when Europe was expanding, and the Germans put the kibosh on that.
    I've seen the cost of Osborne's austerity put at 10k/household. That's much more than Brexit, although I suppose in the long run Brexit will probably do the greater economic damage.
    At the peak, the government was *borrowing* around £10k per family of 4, per year. It's hardly surprising that getting the books back close to balance has involved spending reductions and tax increases of around that order. But this is not a 'cost' as such; it's simply reining back previous overspending. Setting the entitlement at that baseline is something that has bedevilled politics in this country for a decade. We were paying ourselves an income that we weren't earning.
    Were ???

    The balance of accounts shows we still are:

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/timeseries/aa6h/ukea
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715

    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    It was better than my first ever visit to Upton Park in 1977, where someone had spray-painted "Hitler was Right. Gas the Jews" above one of the entrances, and the approaches were full of people selling paper for the National Front and British Movement.
    Some West Ham fans were a disgrace. And some still are.
    Um, West Ham are my nearest Premier League side...
    Mine, too. And where I was brought up they were the Premier/Div 1 team of choice for many.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,841
    Notice how she blames him in the statement she put out too - there is no way on God's green earth a male politician could have come out with "we both needed to calm down" after a DV incident and not be hounded to high heaven for it....
  • Ishmael_ZIshmael_Z Posts: 8,981
    edited April 2019
    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    As for (ii), Andrea Leadsom would be asking whether you have children.

    On (i) it depends how serious you think the threat is. Not much point in the long term elimination of xenophobia if there won't be any more foreigners.

    My view is the defeatist one that if it is a real problem, it may be too big a problem for us to solve. The thing about catastrophes is, they are usually irreversible - you can steam full speed into the iceberg, you can't extricate yourself by going full speed astern.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    Sean_F said:

    Sean_F said:

    Foxy said:

    tlg86 said:

    tlg86 said:

    _Anazina_ said:

    Fair play to the Met dancing with the protestors.

    Make love not war.

    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8128139/yellow-vest-protest-london-brexit-police-attacked/

    Would you approve of them joining in with the EDL?
    Do the EDL dance and sing?
    More grunts and salutes with that lot.
    Mostly football chants from the pre enlightenment era when they came to Leicester.

    I was on call in casualty that day in Leicester. EDL are a truly embareassing bunch for any real Englishman. The fear in the faces of our BME staff is something I never want to see again. It is easy to be blase about those arseholes when you are not on the receiving end.
    A few years ago, I went to Chelsea v Spurs, and was treated to chants of "The Yids, The Yids, We've Gotta Get Rid of the Yids" as well as the old favourite "Spurs Are on their way to Auschwitz".
    Were the Labour Party having a day out at the football?
    It was better than my first ever visit to Upton Park in 1977, where someone had spray-painted "Hitler was Right. Gas the Jews" above one of the entrances, and the approaches were full of people selling paper for the National Front and British Movement.
    We have become a bit more mealy mouthed about such things as real memories of the war fade. Remember the Sex Pistols singing "Belsen was a Gas"?

    Though Right wing and Left wing anti semitism do significantly differ. The latter is mostly directed at Israel, the former at diaspora Jews.
  • rkrkrkrkrkrk Posts: 7,880

    rkrkrk said:

    Mr. JohnL, and yet he isn't sharing it. Osborne made all the running on the economy, Hammond's a gloom merchant who rarely speaks up, and when he does it's about mitigating the woe.

    Osborne was a disaster for the economy, at least at first. Ed Balls' hand gestures were right. Osborne's Plan A would only have worked when Europe was expanding, and the Germans put the kibosh on that.
    I've seen the cost of Osborne's austerity put at 10k/household. That's much more than Brexit, although I suppose in the long run Brexit will probably do the greater economic damage.
    At the peak, the government was *borrowing* around £10k per family of 4, per year. It's hardly surprising that getting the books back close to balance has involved spending reductions and tax increases of around that order. But this is not a 'cost' as such; it's simply reining back previous overspending. Setting the entitlement at that baseline is something that has bedevilled politics in this country for a decade. We were paying ourselves an income that we weren't earning.
    That's an estimate of the lost output from the way Osborne went about things.
    It's not an estimate of how much he cut back spending by.

    https://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-economic-and-political-cost-of-uk.html?m=1
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    Maybe you realise at heart that the demands of the protesters are anti-humane.
    Not quite sure why they want to target public transport (like the DLR).
    There's no need for public transport if you want to get rid of over 90% of the population.
  • OblitusSumMeOblitusSumMe Posts: 9,143

    Scott_P said:
    Interesting series of tweets. The reluctance to embrace one faction and throw the other overboard has lots of human factors against it - do we really say to MPs X and Y who we've worked with happily for decades that we no longer care about their voters and they can get lost? But there's also a risk in embracing one issue and deciding it's The Key to the Future, when maybe it isn't. We are all neurotic about Brexit, but in reality the outcome is likely to be fudged enough not to seem that different, and by 2022 a party that has defined itself by Brexit may look quite quaint.
    The bigger problem is that May tried this strategy in 2017 and it failed.

    Maybe it failed because of May, and the next person to try will succeed. I know I make similar arguments about all sorts of things that haven't worked on the first (or tenth) attempt. But you can see why that would put people off.
  • TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 39,748
    Rumours that it was an argument about who was going to tell Police Scotland that the LDs weren't going cough up £800k for the security at their Glasgow conference are still to be confirmed.
  • anothernickanothernick Posts: 3,545

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
    They are invisible. "Change UK" and "Change UK website" do not find them on google (at least not on the first 3 pages). "Change UK TIG website" brings up theindependentgroup at the bottom of the first page. Incredibly amateurish.
    Is it too late for CHUK to admit their mistakes and join the Lib Dems? After the humiliation of the locals, of course. They don’t seem to do humility all the easily, but they seem a bit pointless to me. Rather like the old SDP carrying on after the formation of the SLD, it just becomes embarrassing, it’s the infrastructure problem, mainly. As to policies? Sure there are differences, but so there are in all parties.
    CHUK are not standing in the locals so that won't be a decision point for them. But I agree they are a complete shambles organisationally (which does not surprise me as I know of some of their behind the scenes people - a collection of overpromoted SPADS who have never run anything larger than a backbench MPs office). They couldn't even come up with an acceptable logo FFS. I guess some of them will fold into the LDs (Soubry, Allen, Wollaston?) but others will drop out altogether and either retire or get jobs outside politics (Leslie, Umunna, Gapes, Coffey, Berger).
  • another_richardanother_richard Posts: 24,967
    Pulpstar said:

    Notice how she blames him in the statement she put out too - there is no way on God's green earth a male politician could have come out with "we both needed to calm down" after a DV incident and not be hounded to high heaven for it....
    Indeed.

    The 'nagging wife' excuse is a bit 1950s.
  • XtrainXtrain Posts: 337
    They'd be far better off blocking the M25 but then theyd be out of their Central London comfort zone.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052
    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    The reason that we are less bothered by the climate change potential catastrophe, is much the same reason we pile on the pounds knowing that junk food is bad for us. Consumerist pleasure now beats long term interest fairly easily most of the time.
  • rpjsrpjs Posts: 3,787
    Scott_P said:
    Another interesting metaphor is that Beaucaire was once one of the most important towns in France, hosting Europe’s largest trade fair. Then the trading patterns changed and now it’s a sleepy backwater.
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    Rumours that it was an argument about who was going to tell Police Scotland that the LDs weren't going cough up £800k for the security at their Glasgow conference are still to be confirmed.
    I am not unsympathetic to Layla. A slap on the face when feeling under physical threat seems not unreasonable act of self defence, as indeed the Glasgow police concluded.

    While obviously all domestic violence is to be deplored, and there are significant cases of female on male domestic violence, the vastt majority of such violence is on women. I know from seeing the consequences first hand rather too many times when working in casualty.
  • FrancisUrquhartFrancisUrquhart Posts: 76,274
    Facebook has imposed a ban on a dozen far-right individuals and organisations that it says "spread hate". The ban includes the British National Party and Nick Griffin, the English Defence League and the National Front.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47974579
  • isamisam Posts: 40,725
    _Anazina_ said:

    isam said:
    Yes, I too am shocked and disgusted that the cameraman is holding his phone the wrong way around.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2picMQC-9E
    The families of the dead stabbed kids must be splitting their sides as they recall the police blaming it on cuts to their budget
  • logical_songlogical_song Posts: 9,669

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    Maybe you realise at heart that the demands of the protesters are anti-humane.
    Not quite sure why they want to target public transport (like the DLR).
    There's no need for public transport if you want to get rid of over 90% of the population.
    Of course that's rubbish.
    I'm with kinabalu here, Climate Change should be taken much more seriously.
    The present government has if anything rowed back recently e.g on solar feed in tariff which ended in March and the cancelled Swansea Bay tidal lagoon. Government action is needed for large projects and for helping in the introduction of new clean technologies such as electric cars and buses and hydrogen powered trains.
    Extinction Rebellion's plans are unattainable over their timescale, but we need to get there quicker than we are doing. I hope that all of the protesters and their sympathisers also vote. The politicians take notice of votes.
  • OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 31,715
    edited April 2019

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common they should form a single party, which would be of even more use in FPTP elections than those conducted under some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
    They are invisible. "Change UK" and "Change UK website" do not find them on google (at least not on the first 3 pages). "Change UK TIG website" brings up theindependentgroup at the bottom of the first page. Incredibly amateurish.
    Is it too late for CHUK to admit their mistakes and join the Lib Dems? After the humiliation of the locals, of course. They don’t seem to do humility all the easily, but they seem a bit pointless to me. Rather like the old SDP carrying on after the formation of the SLD, it just becomes embarrassing, it’s the infrastructure problem, mainly. As to policies? Sure there are differences, but so there are in all parties.
    CHUK are not standing in the locals so that won't be a decision point for them. But I agree they are a complete shambles organisationally (which does not surprise me as I know of some of their behind the scenes people - a collection of overpromoted SPADS who have never run anything larger than a backbench MPs office). They couldn't even come up with an acceptable logo FFS. I guess some of them will fold into the LDs (Soubry, Allen, Wollaston?) but others will drop out altogether and either retire or get jobs outside politics (Leslie, Umunna, Gapes, Coffey, Berger).
    IMHO, for what it's worth, independents without a solid local base (think Kidderminster) have got nowhere in British politics since 1945. Martin Bell had a base, in that some at least of the local Lab and LD machines worked for him, and of course the national press gave both him, and his opponent's peccadillos, lots of coverage.

    Edited FFS.
  • Sean_FSean_F Posts: 35,765
    edited April 2019
    Th

    Sean_F said:

    kinabalu said:

    Well the Climate protest is certainly working in the sense of garnering attention. Me, I'm conflicted on it. I think the cause is important and just. I accept the consensus view that the issue must be tackled as a matter of great urgency. I think those who do not accept this are deniers not skeptics.

    However, despite that I cannot get enthused about the green agenda. I've tried, since I know I should be into it, but in all honesty I can't. I can fake it to virtue signal but that's about it.

    Not sure why this is, but I have a couple of theories.

    (i) I have no room for it. I get myself in a total tizz about inequality, xenophobia, reactionary social attitudes, all of that, and it leaves very little left over for other progressive concerns such as the environment.

    (ii) I am old in body and spirit, in the process of 'going over', at the start of it at least, and therefore not enormously invested in the long term future. The idea of the planet struggling with dangerously rising temperatures over the next century or so does not feel real to me because it never will be.

    I would like to think it's more (i), but if I was betting on it I would go with (ii).

    Maybe you realise at heart that the demands of the protesters are anti-humane.
    Not quite sure why they want to target public transport (like the DLR).
    There's no need for public transport if you want to get rid of over 90% of the population.
    Of course that's rubbish.
    I'm with kinabalu here, Climate Change should be taken much more seriously.
    The present government has if anything rowed back recently e.g on solar feed in tariff which ended in March and the cancelled Swansea Bay tidal lagoon. Government action is needed for large projects and for helping in the introduction of new clean technologies such as electric cars and buses and hydrogen powered trains.
    Extinction Rebellion's plans are unattainable over their timescale, but we need to get there quicker than we are doing. I hope that all of the protesters and their sympathisers also vote. The politicians take notice of votes.
    Extinction Rebellion sound like Khmer Rouge.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,957

    Facebook has imposed a ban on a dozen far-right individuals and organisations that it says "spread hate". The ban includes the British National Party and Nick Griffin, the English Defence League and the National Front.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47974579

    ""Individuals and organisations who spread hate, or attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are, have no place on Facebook," the social network added in a statement."

    The Labour Party must be shitting themselves then......
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,761
    At the risk of repeating points already made on the thread it is telling that the governing party has not won any of these elections. They are a free opportunity to give the government of the day the kicking they undoubtedly deserve without even risking something as important as the bin collection arrangements.

    Not good news for the Tories of course but can Labour seize the FU vote this time having failed to do so last time out? I have my doubts. The Lib Dem’s also seem to have lost their NOTA status for good.
  • brokenwheelbrokenwheel Posts: 3,352
    edited April 2019
    Xtrain said:

    They'd be far better off blocking the M25 but then theyd be out of their Central London comfort zone.

    It’s really all irrelevant anyway, since it doesn’t matter how much the U.K. government does, it will do naff all to global emissions. They’d be better off protesting in China.

    https://www.twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1116597323344142337

  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786

    Ishmael_Z said:

    Foxy said:

    This assumes that voters can be pushed around like counters on a board, which is not a view that anyone who's ever had contact with them is likely to endorse.

    If LD+ChUK+Grn have so much in common nder some form of PR. They won't, of course, because they don't have so much in common.
    The splitters don't have much in common with each other never mind with the LibDems and Greens.
    Don’t they? It looks to me like a massive error by CHUK not to join the LibDems from the off. Unless they really thought dozens of other Labour MPs would join them at carefully calibrated intervals in the weeks following their departure.
    I agree. CHUK has no infrastructure.

    I think that rather like the original SDP, the idea of staying seperate was to encourge new defections.
    They are invisible. "Change UK" and "Change UK website" do not find them on google (at least not on the first 3 pages). "Change UK TIG website" brings up theindependentgroup at the bottom of the first page. Incredibly amateurish.
    Is it too late for CHUK to admit their mistakes and join the Lib Dems? After the humiliation of the locals, of course. They don’t seem to do humility all the easily, but they seem a bit pointless to me. Rather like the old SDP carrying on after the formation of the SLD, it just becomes embarrassing, it’s the infrastructure problem, mainly. As to policies? Sure there are differences, but so there are in all parties.
    CHUK are not standing in the locals so that won't be a decision point for them. But I agree they are a complete shambles organisationally (which does not surprise me as I know of some of their behind the scenes people - a collection of overpromoted SPADS who have never run anything larger than a backbench MPs office). They couldn't even come up with an acceptable logo FFS. I guess some of them will fold into the LDs (Soubry, Allen, Wollaston?) but others will drop out altogether and either retire or get jobs outside politics (Leslie, Umunna, Gapes, Coffey, Berger).
    And yet there is significant support and grass roots meetings etc being set up on social media and despite not getting their act together they are polling 8% for the Euros on almost zero media exposure.
    They are polling 4% or do for a GE, they are a factor and aren't just going to fold because Labour hate splitters. Once Watsons gang of nobodies does nothing further defections are possible.
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    The latest YouGov opinion poll records 45% as saying they are 10/10 certain to vote for the European elections. A further 20% say they are more than 5/10 certain to vote. Turnout in 2014 was 35.6%.

    Two questions:

    1) how likely does the brains trust think that turnout will be somewhere above 55%?
    2) if not, will any party be disproportionately likely to be overegged in the polls, and if so which?
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,957

    Xtrain said:

    They'd be far better off blocking the M25 but then theyd be out of their Central London comfort zone.

    It’s really all irrelevant anyway, since it doesn’t matter how much the U.K. government does it will do naff all to global emissions. They’d be better off protesting in China.

    https://www.twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1116597323344142337

    That would be fun.....
  • Dura_AceDura_Ace Posts: 12,880



    IMHO, for what it's worth, independents without a solid local base (think Kidderminster) have got nowhere in British politics since 1945. Martin Bell had a base, in that some at least of the local Lab and LD machines worked for him, and of course the national press gave both him, and his opponent's peccadillos, lots of coverage.

    Edited FFS.

    I reckon Hamilton will end up leader of UKIP at some point after Batten implodes (which can't be far away).
  • kinabalukinabalu Posts: 38,847
    Foxy said:

    The reason that we are less bothered by the climate change potential catastrophe, is much the same reason we pile on the pounds knowing that junk food is bad for us. Consumerist pleasure now beats long term interest fairly easily most of the time.

    Yes, that is the bottom line, I guess. Although, interestingly, deferred gratification is what contributes more than most things to upward social mobility. But it loses attraction as a concept when the gratification is deferred to beyond the grave.
  • MarqueeMarkMarqueeMark Posts: 49,957

    Xtrain said:

    They'd be far better off blocking the M25 but then theyd be out of their Central London comfort zone.

    It’s really all irrelevant anyway, since it doesn’t matter how much the U.K. government does, it will do naff all to global emissions. They’d be better off protesting in China.

    https://www.twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1116597323344142337

    Places to watch are those like Vietnam, who are powering their economic rise with coal-fired power stations, using coal imported from Indonesia.

    Of course, Wales could have been generating all its requirements from tidal power within the decade, if it weren't for our idiot of a Minister.....
  • FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,052

    The latest YouGov opinion poll records 45% as saying they are 10/10 certain to vote for the European elections. A further 20% say they are more than 5/10 certain to vote. Turnout in 2014 was 35.6%.

    Two questions:

    1) how likely does the brains trust think that turnout will be somewhere above 55%?
    2) if not, will any party be disproportionately likely to be overegged in the polls, and if so which?

    I suspect that the turnout will be lower than 2014, and that it will be Labour and Conservatives that suffer the most. Why would anyone bothered by Euro issues turn out for either?
  • dyedwooliedyedwoolie Posts: 7,786
    Dura_Ace said:



    IMHO, for what it's worth, independents without a solid local base (think Kidderminster) have got nowhere in British politics since 1945. Martin Bell had a base, in that some at least of the local Lab and LD machines worked for him, and of course the national press gave both him, and his opponent's peccadillos, lots of coverage.

    Edited FFS.

    I reckon Hamilton will end up leader of UKIP at some point after Batten implodes (which can't be far away).
    Hamilton will I think defect to Brexit, UKIP have no money and will soon have very little elected representation
This discussion has been closed.