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Labour has a much lower chance than 12% of winning a majority – politicalbetting.com

At the last election what was then Corbyn’s party came out with 203 MPs and since then Hartlepool has been lost. So to win on this bet what is now Starmer’s party has to gain 124 seats.
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Anne Frank is trending under 'Sports' on Twitter because Everton thinks she was someone who died of Covid during the pandemic.
What went wrong with the world?
Civilization is over.
We have now - after much work - become a venue for Crossfit Level 1 courses, and one of the people doing the Certificate on the last one moved gym because he liked the facilities. Which is great news.
Leeds have removed an image of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from their cardboard cut-out crowd ahead of football’s return to Elland Road.
Clubs up and down the country are encouraging fans to pay to have their picture in the crowds at their home stadiums while games are played behind closed doors.
https://talksport.com/football/efl/721994/osama-bin-laden-cardboard-cut-out-leeds-crowd/
So Osama Bin Laden supported Dirty Leeds and Arsenal, always knew he was a wrong'un.
Edit - The civilised world spells it civilisation. No z.
But Lisa Doyle, director of advocacy and engagement at the Refugee Council, said: "The government must change its approach. Instead of seeking to punish or push away people seeking safety because of the type of journey they have made to the UK, they must create and commit to safe routes."
She said: "While there is war, persecution and violence, people will be forced to take dangerous journeys to seek safety.
"We are talking about ordinary men, women and children who are forced to flee their home through no fault of their own."
They are taking the piss. No one in the English Channel was facing war, persecution or violence when they left shore. They are taking the British public for mugs.
“Not to be constantly correcting people, and in particular not to jump on them whenever they make an error of usage or a grammatical mistake or mispronounce something, but just answer their question or add another example, or debate the issue itself (not their phrasing), or make some other contribution to the discussion—and insert the right expression, unobtrusively.” Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 121 – 180
The 'franchise' is no longer owned by the founder.
If you don't have decent coaches and learn the ropes, then injury is easy to do in any sport.
I think the key attractions are that:
1 - There is a community working together, as opposed to rows of head down lonely drones gubbing away on horribly expensive torture machines. I know a large % of people in our gym.
2 - There is a strong aspect of small-group nearly personal training in every class.
3 - And that everything is scalable to any ability or fitness level.
And it is usually the case that membership is monthly and the business is built on people who want to come, rather than a lot of people who set up their monthly bank payments and never turn up. To me that seems healthier.
At ours we get something like 30% of the membership through the door every day.
I should think the real chance of a Labour majority (326 seats+) is somewhere between 2% and 4% and relies wholly upon a black swan. No foreseeable scenario gets them home. But of course 25/1 horses win most days.
49/49/2 would be nor far out IMHO.
The comparable postwar general elections therefore are 1964, 1992 and 2010.
In 1964 Wilson's Labour won with a majority of just 4 seats after 13 years in opposition over Home's Tories (and that was with Labour winning most Scottish seats, so Starmer would have to regain most Labour seats from the SNP to have even a chance of a majority).
In 1992 Kinnock's Labour made gains, again after 13 years of the Tories in power but Major's Tories were narrowly re elected with a majority of 21 (this election is what current polls suggest the next election will most resemble).
Finally in 2010 after 13 years of Labour in power Cameron's Tories failed to win a majority but did get enough seats to be able to form a government with the LDs. Even if Starmer did match the 96 seats Cameron gained in 2010, Labour would still only be on 298 seats and still well short of the 326 needed for an overall majority. They would need the LDs and most likely the SNP too to support them for Starmer to enter No 10.
Rory Stewart
There comes a point where this will happen. I’m trying to work out what the tipping point is.
Clearly, it’s more than what we experience now - at worst, 500 a day make it over?
But if it was 5,000 daily? Through the year? That’s an illegal immigration rate of 1.8 million a year. Utterly unsustainable and long before then we’d be shooting the boats and letting them drown, if we were unable to think of any other alternative
The tipping point is around 1000-2000 a day, I suspect. Which is scarily close to where we are already
1500 a day through the year is 550,000 annual illegal migrants, on top of normal immigration that would be way more immigration than the UK has ever experienced - and most of it entirely chaotic and unpoliced. We are near to something bad
This is also palpably an election loser for the Tories, unless they get a fix
I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't.
Hyman Roth:
What does that tell you?
Michael Corleone:
It means they could win.
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/liberal-democrat
So Labour still needs to gain Tory seats too for Starmer to become PM and there is little evidence in most current polls there has been any real swing from Tory to Labour since 2019. Indeed in a few strong Leave seats like Hartlepool the reverse as the by election there showed
And Labour wet their pants w faux outrage when the big bad wolf Nigel Farage points out the problem, so I can’t imagine they’re going to start acting tough
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-58213583
If it becomes utterly politically intolerable and the Tories don't sort it out, then a new party will come on the scene that will say it will do whatever it takes and then the law will be what bends.
I never knew “revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold” is also from The Godfather. Or so google has just told me, as I drink absurdly strong G&T in the quiet backstreets of Kolonaki
We Brexited, and menaced our entire economy, partly because of uncontrolled immigration. An actual sea-borne invasion?? Violence will follow
The only solution I can see is the Australian tow-them-away-somewhere-safe-but-unpleasant
Yes, but Nigel - or someone much nastier than him - will stand and win multiple Tory seats, on the promise of Stopping the Invasion. So the Tories will have to get tough, or lose the election
The danger to the conservatives are two fold: firstly, an economic downturn is always a risk, secondly, the focus on the red wall seats opens up a flank in the south for the libdems to take seats - albeit unless the libdems start polling in the high teens or better, they won’t take many conservative seats.
Obviously fewer people would die in the channel if we just had open borders. Who wants to argue for that?
If we're abandoning Afghanistan in the way we are then surely we're going to have to close our borders more in the future.
For a variety of reasons I have been asked to endorse several applications, I also get asked for passport pics etc, however, I have refused on some occasions, because there is no sensible reason to own one.
Who endorsed this guy to own one.
So there is an incentive for every EU country to just let them in, wave them through, let them go to northern France and Belgium, then make for the UK. Problem sorted - for the EU
Big big problem for the UK
Brazil's lower house of Congress has voted in favour of expelling a lawmaker who has been accused of ordering the murder of her husband.
Evangelical gospel singer and pastor turned politician Flordelis de Souza has always maintained she is innocent.
The 60-year-old's husband, Anderson do Carmo, was shot 30 times at their home in Rio de Janeiro in June 2019.
Prosecutors allege he was killed by Ms Souza's son on her orders with a gun purchased by one of her adopted sons.
The couple were famous for raising 55 children, most of whom they had adopted...
under Brazil's constitution, members of Congress enjoy parliamentary immunity which also extends to alleged crimes committed outside of their official duties
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-58171370
The Taliban have no allies, except a few mad rich saudis maybe. Yet they have defeated America
The loss of Afghanistan after a pointless 20 year war is not only costlier and sadder than the loss of Vietnam, it is more telling historically. It is the very end of the American century -1921-2021
The generals should, in my view, be attacking rather than defending. Attack 24x7.
I know little of these things though and I'm sure that Rory Stewart is roughly as good as it gets in terms of saving Afghanistan.
From you?
All that being said, however, it's clearly nonsense to state or imply that everyone making those particular journeys are asylum seekers, or escaping persecution and violence (though how many are, I could not say, but it cannot be all). Too often that is the implication, or people add in 'escaping poverty' and make emotional pleas about what we would do if we lived where they came from and wouldn't we want to seek to come here, which changes the subject to one of, in effect, being against any immigration policy at all, being against any restrictions whatsoever - some do hold that view, but not as many who imply it. And fundamentally I don't think it is wrong for any country to say no, even pretty harshly, to people who are coming out of desire. And that those people get mixed up with those who are fleeing violence (even though such has ended by the time they get to France), I find problematic.
A few years later the cold war was won.
@Leon is making a perfectly legitimate point, and a valid one.
There's no alternative, even for Lefties, but to engage with this. Argue for high immigration if you like, fine, but it must be controlled.
Philip supported a deal which BoJo now says is rubbish, Stewart at least supported something that was going to be deliverable forever. BoJo's deal didn't even last a year.
Stewart was literally the opposite of "driven mad", one of the few MPs actually trying to deliver a workable Brexit!
Take people in desperate need safely and humanely via aircraft from refugee camps.
Anyone who crosses the Channel instead, pick them up and offer them refuge in Rwanda or somewhere like that.
The Channel crossings would end overnight if they knew that doing so would see them ending up in Rwanda instead of England. The drownings in the Channel would end overnight too then.
There's going to be huge population growth in Africa over the next 30-50 years. Much of it is already baked in, with very high births over the last 5 years. But what if much of sub-Saharan Africa become uninhabitable, just as Russia and Europe become more fertile?
Trouble ahead. Big trouble.
Meanwhile the USA sinks into political turmoil, quasi-coups, ongoing plague, and the fatal distraction of enervating identity wars
The West is done as global leader. We can still have nice lives, however, if we learn to defend ourselves from idiots on right and left
Actually that’s not true. He was never a Remoaner, or at least not the worst kind. I believe he accepted the result but wanted to soften it, and he never campaigned for a 2nd referendum, let alone Revoke
I am happy to be proven wrong
Edit: but this implies I am right
‘For those who want a second referendum, you risk replacing a sensible Brexit with a No Deal: 'What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens' - Disraeli’
https://twitter.com/rorystewartuk/status/1069203194117537792?s=21
Boris's deal was absolutely massively superior than May's and it lasted as long as it needed to last.
The shorter the NI Protocol lasts the better, that's what you're failing to understand. That the backstop could have been delivered "forever" is a horrifyingly dreadful prospect, that is precisely why I opposed it. There was no way to end it.
Boris dumped the atrocious backstop with no unilateral exit that we could have been trapped in forever, and instead replaced it with the NI Protocol we could self-destruct after months not an eternity.
Since the backstop/protocol is a bad thing that the EU wanted, not what we wanted, it not lasting forever is a good thing.
Your logic is as insane as suggesting a law graduate getting an initial job for minimum wage while they get experience and then seeking a better a job after 6 months that pays better is a failure because their initial job didn't last forever. The whole point is the initial job was not meant to last forever.
Nothing is supposed to last forever.
Afghanistan is of course worse than Vietnam though, as North Vietnam never attacked the US or the West.
Al Qaeda however launched 9/11 from Afghanistan under Taliban protection and if the Taliban retake Kabul and allow the country to become a base for jihadis again it may sadly only be a matter of time until 9/11 2 and the next big terrorist attack on a major western city
So you campaigned on something that you knew that wasn't true. So why when the deal was going through the HoC did you not say then that it would be temporary? You said this was the end, only when BoJo changed his mind did you also.
When you don't have an actual ideology or set of beliefs, you don't have anything to anchor yourself to. Hence why you change your mind every day.
If the Brexit policy was good at GE19 and was finishing Brexit as you claimed, you should do the honourable thing and stick by it. Yet you don't.
The reality is that guerrilla warfare in this geographic environment is almost impossible to counter
May's deal was the only workable Brexit there ever was and that is becoming obviously clear as each day passes. And for that she has my respect - we should have voted it through.
This is obviously true that the advanced us military has been defeated by insurgents armed with fairly ancient weapons in vietnam, korea and in afghanistan. Yet people say the american second amendment is wrong because having guns in the hands of citizens of the us wont enable them to stand up to the us governement. I suggest they would do as well as the vietnames, koreans or afghani's