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Is this a deliberate LAB move to help the LDs? – politicalbetting.com
Is this a deliberate LAB move to help the LDs? – politicalbetting.com
THANK YOU LABOUR(this is going on every lib dem squeeze leaflet) pic.twitter.com/d5BRviXcmN
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I do feel sorry for the no doubt hard-working Conservative candidates who’ve had their chances of victory denigrated by their own party’s website, and also for whichever Conservative website designer was responsible for this fairly spectacular cock-up.
https://wp.me/p1eVEL-by
Looking at the list I don't think the LDs have much chance in over half of them either. Though Bridgwater, Cheltenham, East Surrey, Eastbourne, Eastleigh, Esher and Walton, Farrnham and Borndon, Goldalming and Ash, Guildford, Harrogate and Knaresborough, Lewes, Maidenhead, Mid Dorset and North Poole, Newbury, North Devon, North Cornwall, North Dorset and North Norfolk from the list are former LD seats or on the LD target list where it will help the LDs if Labour just run a token campaign
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jul/27/george-russell-belgian-grand-prix-formula-one
...Russell acknowledged the circuit was hazardous but emphasised that it was the issue of visibility that was crucial.
“If you put a ranking of risk of all of the circuits, Spa is one of the riskiest,” he said. “Then when you have the combination of the weather it is very challenging. It is the visibility, we have no visibility whatsoever. For perspective it’s like driving down the motorway in pouring rain and turning your windscreen wipers off, that’s how it feels.”
Russell’s concerns were echoed by other drivers including Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Valtteri Bottas and he was unequivocal the sport could not risk a repeat of Van ’t Hoff’s tragic accident...
This hotel is intensely odd. It’s seriously chic. Wouldn’t be out of place in a very prosperous town in the Dolomites. It’s all designer sofas and fresh burrata and monsoon showers and granite and iron fire pits
The people look rich. They drink Aperol spritzers at noon on Friday. The sun shines on the bruschetta
Yet this is a pretty obscure Bukovinan Ukrainian city, in the middle of the terrible Ukrainian war, in an already poor country (GDP per capita: $5000)
Someone here is making a lot of money. The hotel owner and his clients. This elegant little city is about 30 minutes from the Romanian and Moldovan borders. The coffee is excellent
Hmmm
What’s going on?
Most can understand that Labour won't be spending a lot of effort trying to hold Liverpool Walton.
Anyway...as if the Lib Dems backing a Tory government has been completely ruled out, couldn't happen, not in a hundred years, not in any kind of hung parliament whatsoever, the Tories are so unpopular, and so on.
"You were in government with your friends the Tories for five years. Are you saying this time that people should trust you not to do the same again, and that if there's a hung parliament you'll support a government under Labour leader Keir Starmer?"
"Er - er - er ... but the list, the list! And something to do with Jeremy Corbyn!"
What's the factor that binds the seats on that list together? Is there anything else other than that a swing to Labour of >x% would be needed? (Apologies for being so non-nerdy!)
https://twitter.com/bphillipsonMP/status/1684845472735784961
Also, why do they always hold the event in rainy season? You can't race there, on this layout, in the rain.
Being so near two borders means there is money in smuggling and people trafficking (helping draft dodgers? Refugees? Gun running?) - that’s the money being spent here
Theory two: internal tourism and politicians
This is probably about as far from the front line as you can get. I doubt Putin will bomb Chernivtsi (unlike Lviv). Also the border is close if you need to flee. It’s historic, sunny and elegant
The coast is now dangerous, so this is where rich Ukrainians - who generally can’t get out of the country if they are male - come for hols and meetings
2) Russia's principal interest is in Eastern Ukraine
3) If you look at a historical map/atlas of Europe, what is now Ukraine has been in culturally different bits though most of history. This is feature and a bug of most of Europe's landmass.
4) In wars people take bits of peace if they can
5) In many rural parts of the UK WWII is not huge in folk memory because life went on in farms much as ever
6) Ukraine is so large that there are lots of places where war is elsewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqQiMp03n2c
The driver was airlifted to hospital. I think the tarmac encourages drivers to try to save it, whereas, in the old days, the gravel trap would reduce the impact of the accident.
I guess even during World War 2 there were bits of europe where an affluent life went on. Switzerland of course (and this hotel feels like somewhere in Ticino)
Or Cascais and Sintra in Portugal (where Ian Fleming was posted as a spy). There would have been others
How much is a pint these days, 30 grivnas or so?
(I might be heading there in a couple of weeks’ time).
If she wants to play to the gallery she should at least have tried acting.
It’s also worth noting that George Russell is the drivers’ representative on safety issues, so it’s obviously a wider feeling among the drivers that they need to stop for excessive rain, and the organisers need to be willing to be flexible when it comes to the event timings over the weekend.
It’s wet but drizzle there at the moment, F3 and F2 have been practicing with no issues.
“There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money.”
Capitalism is not an unalloyed good, nor all forms of money making, but the ways in which it can penetrate the darkest and obscurest places to provide the coffee and the cake is remarkable.
A favourite of mine, for no special reason except that it is there, - very simple but obscurely placed at the end of the road to nowhere - is the old post office at Lochbuie.
https://www.oldpostofficelochbuie.co.uk/
On topic: whatever the criteria are for that list, there's clearly a southern bias -- and without looking too closely into the new boundaries, of the two northern constituencies I'm surprised there isn't some hope for Labour in Brigg and Immingham. (Goole and Pocklington must win some sort of award for the unlikeliest bedfellows in a constituency name ever...)
Besides which, as we saw the other year when its really wet all that happens is that the available light drops below a workable threshold...
https://www.mywanderlust.pl/chernivtsi-ukraine/
Have Kami and Leon been seen in the same Bukovinan hotel room?
Have fun at the FE in London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernivtsi
It was a waypoint for Jewish emigration to Israel after WWII.
Pre-war, around a third of the population was Jewish - not uncommon in urban centres in the region. More unusually, a third of them were saved from the Nazis by the then Romanian mayor:
https://archive.ph/20081116122634/http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_yad/press_room/press_releases/07.08.07.html
She refused to serve under Jeremy Corbyn and is now one of Keir Starmer’s most trusted allies. The shadow education secretary talks about the challenges she faced growing up
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bridget-phillipson-labour-mp-interview-keir-starmer-txwlwn78d
On which, see also:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/28/air-breathe-uk-depends-race-income
"The poorest people emit least air pollution, but the multiplicative effect of worst concentrations and greater vulnerability means the least well-off bear an unfair proportion of health burden from air pollution."
Which ties in very nicely with the discussion recently on PB showing the distribution of car ownership in London - almost half of all *households* having no car at all.
The Moldova-Ukraine border is on routes for both heroin and cannabis.
Big crims make a lot of money from war in any country.
https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/system/files/media/publications/documents/14948/TD0322107ENN.pdf
Kamianets-Podilskiy. It’s nearby
Full of insane history. The Old town is said to be spooky as hell. The castle looks phenomenal
The Final Solution arguably began there. It was the first place the Nazis killed tens of thousands of Jews in one “Aktion”. Babi Yar came soon after
Perhaps fittingly, the castle is lit up blood red at night
In a different sense so are the 20 year old diesels, mind.
What's that nature reserve thingy with historical monuments? Is it a sort of St Fagans or Weald and Downland Museum with buildings moved to some nice park? Or what?
BREAKING: UK and Ireland's bid to host Euro 2028 set to be unopposed
She's popular wherever she goes, I think.
https://archive.is/1GK1C
(if you go to www.archive.org or www.archive.is and search for the link it'll give you the archived content, which may be non-paywalled)
Her twitter is here: https://twitter.com/bphillipsonMP/status/1684845472735784961
We had it with the Tory Tatler stuff in The Times in 2009, if memory serves me correctly.
Still think 2-4 more stadiums could have been accommodated - I'd have wanted a Yorkshire ground (probably Hillsborough), St. Marys, Murrayfield and either somewhere East of England, or another Irish stadium (most likely Croke Park).
Still, lolz at no Old Trafford, Anfield or Emirates.
Yet 1966 might as well have been 1866 to me, because I wasn’t around at the time.
She's popular wherever she goes, I th At least you can see it.
Good luck to her, and you gotta build some kinda narrative, and it's gotta be based on your feelings, so I don't want to diss her, but if you're on the margins of society you're not going to be an outsider just because your mum's a single parent. No way, Jose. (Incidentally this info doesn't come from reading the Guardian or talking to social workers.)
There have been grumbles from Labour associations in no-hope areas like these that they didn't get to select candidates in 2017 and 2019 because both were snap elections and they were at the back of the queue. If that was the case again this time, you'd have associations that won't have selected their own candidate in over a decade, and you can see that further demoralises members in an area that isn't great anyway.
So, in May, Labour's National Executive Committee agreed a fast track process for a tranche of low priority seats (these ones). But the quid pro quo, to avoid potentially embarrassing candidates by pretty moribund associations vulnerable to BJO-types seizing control, would be that Regional Executive Committees would dominate the shortlisting process. So these seats would have a choice of a boringly loyal elderly councillor, reliable and earnest primary school teacher, or an ambitious youngster getting a first run out.
So these seats will potentially get a Labour candidate a bit earlier than might otherwise have been the case. That isn't as good for the Lib Dems (although I'm personally quite sceptical of the value of getting a minor candidate in place before the campaign - nobody really focuses on who these people are until the campaign proper, and many don't even then).
The photo above is of an actual castle. Kamianets Podilskiy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamianets-Podilskyi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podilski_Tovtry_National_Nature_Park
Anecdotally, I thought about going for Wantage, where I have some good local connections and the Labour vote is non-trivial (2nd place with 27% in 2017, but 3rd in 2019). But I don't do things by halves and would be a full-on candidate pounding the streets every weekend for a year, and I don't think that's really what the party wants in most of these seats (and I've decided at age 73 not to be quite that zealous).
Incidentally, I’m pretty sure that the picture with SKS features Reeves, not Phillipson.
I’m also impressed that she chose not to trade back stories with Gillian Keegan - she’d have won.
@GoodwinMJ
In case you've not noticed the entire point of Brexit --to build a different economy-- is being dumped. Both Left & Right are now fully committed to mass cheap migration to keep big business happy, wages low, downward pressure on lower paid British workers, weaken their bargaining power & distort the market
We need a different politics"
https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1684859053875269632
It doesn't matter that there are (also) hopeless prospects for the LDs on there.
What matters is that their good prospects ARE.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-london-66328175
Adding another million to the population, many of whom are on minimum wage, only exacerbates the housing shortage.
.Khan says taxpayers' money 'wasted' in court case
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has just been speaking to the BBC.
He told us: "I welcome the judgement today. I've been told more than £1m of council taxpayers' money has been wasted on this case".
He adds: "I'm quite clear though, I made this decision to expand Ulez because it is really important we address the public health crisis."
Asked about increased costs to Londoners, Khan says nine out of 10 cars in London are already compliant with Ulez and the scrappage scheme would offer support.'
Blair had, IIRC, a 4 step solution to climate change. There were two key concepts. One was 'Global Solutions'. The other was 'Many Trillions of Other Peoples Money'.
The idea that 'Global Solutions' describes the solution and not the impossible problem is risible.
The 'International Community', 'International Institutions', the 'United Nations' and so on can't even sort out a dispute between warlords in Sudan, protect the Rohingya or stop Russian invasions.
I would have topped myself if my local shopping centre growing up was the Galleries tbf.