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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict the UK political divide – politicalbetting.com
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict the UK political divide – politicalbetting.com
I find this much more polarised than I had thought. The other split that I would not have predicted is that Remainers aresignificantly more likely to back Palestinians.
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Oh - and first? Like neither side in this conflict.
If anyone wants to sympathise with either of those 'sides,' and not a few posters on here do, then they're fools.
By the 32nd and final day of his libel trial, David Irving was tired from the strain of representing himself in court.
His exhaustion helped to undermine his claim that he was a seeker of historical truth rather than a Hitler worshipper when, at a weary moment, he mistakenly addressed the judge as Mein Führer.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/apr/12/uk.irving1
Woman in pub: "Excusez-moi. Are you a farmer?"
Eric Cantona: "Of course! Oui!"
It's a bad question really. I wonder what the results would look like if the question was 'who do you want to win?', and indeed, what does 'win' look like.
This discovery has been termed dual IPA.
I know this is a political site, bit we do sometimes do go off piste...
I'm a Man City fan, and Pep's continued flecking of white bits of spittle is quite gross (he even does it when interviewed)...but tonight's close up was vomit inducing awfulness...
🚨 EXCLUSIVE
Tory voters believe that only Penny Mordaunt could beat Sir Keir Starmer at the next election, a new poll suggests
2019 Conservative supporters agree by 38% to 31% that Mordaunt has a better chance of victory than Rishi Sunak
I really don't want to get into a row about who invented bitter.
🚨🚨
Kemi Badenoch, business and trade secretary, was on Tuesday locked in a new political row, this time over her contested claim that she was engaged in trade talks with Canada, negotiations Ottawa insists do not exist….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_1993_Canadian_federal_election?wprov=sfla1
Sunak will not deliver this result. Mordaunt might.
Slightly less surprising detail in the thread header poll - in London 39% side with the Palestinians. This is part of Labour's "local difficulty" in some of its East London seats - the Newham Independents have confirmed they will be standing a candidate in East Ham against Stephen Timms at the GE.
In 2005, Respect finished second with 20% of the vote and it'll be interesting to see if Mirza (not Mehmood but Tahir and no relation) can make any meaningful impression on Timms who scraped home in 2019 with a 33,000 majority.
I suspect pro-Palestinian candidates will stand in a number of East London Labour seats including both Ilfords, East Ham, West Ham & Beckton, Stratford & Bow, Bethnal Green & Stepney and Poplar & Limehouse.
7 October gave just a small taste of what the reverse would mean for Jews under a Hamas-run one. I think sympathies would, and did in the aftermath, shift quite considerably once people saw the horrors that meant.
Which, is one reason even Israelis outside the right or non-Jews like the Druze, don't set much store by international sympathies or the 'debate' as conducted by outsiders. Being condemned is painful, but not as significant if you think those doing so fundamentally misunderstand the horrors of what some of the things they advocate would mean.
Generally despite that we can form a view, if we want about what would be the best outcome. I have no problem with Russians, and I don't suppose Ukraine is perfect, but I think it would be best all round if Russia lost. Just as I think it was best for ordinary Germans that they lost in 1945.
In the Israel/Palestine thing it is just impossible to turn the basic humane response - we support good people on all sides - into any sort of policy at all. If there was one I, and most of us, would hold it. There are not even options to choose from or victories to have.
This is what makes it unique. No-one can imagine what a decent outcome for good people on all sides could look like. Not really.
In better news, Kemi Badenoch has zoomed called Ed Davey to sack him.
Apologies for making a betting post but, you know, PB and all that.
If we applied that election campaign swing to the current opinion polls, but in the Tories favour, the Tories would have a slender 2% lead, perhaps around 310 seats, and you'd think that Labour, Lib Dems and assorted Celtic Nationalists, would have enough votes to win a vote of no confidence in a Tory minority government, but it would be close.
Could Labour have an election campaign as bad as Theresa May in 2017? Does Sunak have the potential to convince the electorate he's not half as bad as people have said he is?
When I was a child my Dad took me skiing and, frankly, it was something that often scared me. I could be a timid skier, and that's no way to ski. If you hang back the weight comes off the front of your skis, and they can easily be knocked one way or the other - sending you sprawling onto your face. And that's how, at the age of nine, I managed to break the femur in my left leg.
I wonder about Starmer. He's a timid politician. Sometimes playing safety first isn't safe. It betrays a lack of confidence in yourself and your convictions. If you don't have confidence in yourself, why should the electorate? I think there's a chance that Starmer's timidity will see him take a tumble during an election campaign and land flat on his face.
Maybe the 7/1 available from William Hill on Conservative Most Seats is value?
The mistake they made was not getting all the contenders to stand about holding a sword for a few hours, to see what they are truly made of.
Truth is, and we can all agree on this - No one knows. It’s a great unknown. Nothing really to draw on. However One fact that, just looking at Sunak’s ratings now worse than Corbyn’s, when PM hated as much as Sunak now is, leaves number 10, there’s a collective sigh of relief from his own voters not just floaters and opponents, that probably would give Penny a honeymoon boost right through the election, most probably to a far better result Sunak is capable of getting now.
Excuse me whilst I do another laughter emoji 🤣 what on earth do you people still see in Sunak that you rush to protect him? The sighting and hearing Sunak now is grating with 90% of the electorate he voted this governmrnt. He should never have been PM.
The timidity, such as it is, relates to not steering a radical course ahead of the election, but even that is a kind of calculated timidity.
What people are tired of is the Tories. It doesn’t matter what leader they have. The sigh of relief will come when the party - not any particular leader - is shown the door.
Saw this outside Wanstead Park* station yesterday:
(* technically Forest Gate North, nowhere near Wanstead Park!)
My personal hypothesis is that Starmer would have achieved a Hung Parliament in 2019.
https://x.com/dinahglrosekc/status/1760046400052556011
My husband was in court, watching the libel trial Irving disastrously pursued against Penguin and Deborah Lipstadt, when, in one of the greatest Freudian slips of all time, he accidentally addressed the judge as Mein Fuehrer.
Cameron glided gracefully down the red runs until he hit a mogul field and fell. Boris just threw himself down the blacks and hoped for the best. May attempted a narrow and icy piste but timidly and never fully in control. Truss went off piste and triggered an avalanche.
Tucker Carlson claims that Boris Johnson demanded a million dollars from him for an interview, which makes him “a lot sleazier than Vladimir Putin.”
https://twitter.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1760071449329463374?ref_src=twsrc^google|twcamp^serp|twgr^tweet
”Stanford in particular seemed to have marked disapproval of highly educated, very hard working Chinese kids whom they regarded as robots missing creativity, spontaneity, imagination etc and who got marked down despite their really exceptional results. Its a tough old system.”
Stanford has a very dark [sic] history when it comes to racial selection and eugenics.
The fact that they were secretly funded by the imperial family in Japan (in the 1930s) may have played a part in their long-standing antipathy to “highly educated very hard working Chinese kids”
Lewis Goodall
@lewis_goodall
Grim news from Birmingham today. City Council has announced cuts to deal with effective insolvency notice. Includes:
-sale of £750m of assets
-cuts of to public services by £300m over two years
-21% rise in Council Tax
-dimming street lights
-fortnightly bin collections
Unless you are referring to her laziness, arrogance, and growing sense she is being economical with the truth?
Will be interesting how she responds to the Canadians, as that’s very serious claim too - straightforward lying to the house isn’t it? And not a response where she can come out undiplomatically swinging and being rude.
I am trying to post a more fulsome reply but rubbish Vanilla keeps throwing these hugely painful "too many characters" tantrums, regardless of how short I cut the response. It is useless.
In the end we're all guessing, aren't we? My main reservations concerning the probability of a Labour landslide are:
1. Labour's determination to display fiscal rectitude (presumably in order to attempt to coax and reassure potential Tory switchers) has become so all-consuming that they've basically turned into a Cameron/Osborne tribute act, trumpeting austerity for all (except pensioners.) They won't raise taxation on capital gains, property or inheritances, which leaves them precious little extra cash to spend on the nation's myriad problems; I'm certain they're going to recommit to maintaining the bloody triple lock in perpetuity; and they've dismantled the central plank of their economic policy (the green energy plan) which leaves them with very little left to sell other than being Not Tories. Is that going to be sufficient to persuade younger voters to bother to turn out (or, for that matter, to get the Green vote to defect?) Not convinced.
2. Are grumbling aged Tory voters going to sit on their hands, go off to RefUK in a huff or switch outright to Labour en masse? Not convinced about that either. The predecessors of RefUK have always done really badly in actual GE voting (because FPTP - the voters know they can't win anywhere so they're a wasted vote,) the Tory core (wealthy homeowners over 50) have mostly done very well indeed out of the last 14 years, and I expect the Tories to make at least some headway against Labour by chipping away at culture wars arguments (Brexit, immigration, transgender arguments, just throwing social conservative mud at Starmer and seeing what sticks.)
3. I'm anticipating some kind of Conservative revival simply based on historical precedent. If they can't salvage something north of 30% of the popular vote then this would be unprecedented since the foundation of the party itself (i.e. since around about 1835 if memory serves.) John Major managed about 31% in 1997, and since then the median age of the electorate has increased. Moreover...
4. Related to point 1, lack of enthusiasm for Labour and its leader (relative, say, to the more effective and optimistic campaigning of Tony Blair,) coupled with a lack of faith in politicians generally and their ability to achieve anything positive, points to the likelihood of a depressed turnout. Depressed turnout will disproportionately affect younger age groups, and make elderly, more Tory-sympathizing voters even more dominant. I wouldn't be at all surprised if turnout rivalled the historic lows of 2001, and certainly the majority of all votes cast will come from electors over the age of 55.
But like I said, this is just guesswork. The Tories look on course for an almighty hiding, they deserve one, and perhaps they'll get it after all? I just have my doubts.
I'm not entirely sure it's doing it for me.
Like many a potential tory LOTO.
Why does a young Jewish man with a five month old baby feel unsafe here?
https://news.sky.com/story/father-whose-babys-birth-certificate-was-defaced-says-being-jewish-in-uk-is-getting-worse-13076282
The most important thing is the economy. All else (well apart from having Trident missiles that actually work) is secondary to that. Labour will need a bit of luck.
I found her version if events compelling and believable.
Of course if it subsequently transpires she's lying, she's toast. But I don't think that will happen. I think she's telling the truth and the other guy it just bitter at being given the sack!
Perhaps I'm naive?
I understand that he didn't do that because the Tories wanted him to step into the trap of promising to spend lots of money on HS2 - but I think that the Tory game-playing with HS2 was so desperate that it's the sort of trap that could have been made to blow up in their faces with a bit of confidence and optimism.
I'm pretty confident Labour will romp home at the general election, but this was an idea I wanted to try out, see what it looked like under examination. I think the weakest link in the scenario is Sunak and the Tories - but then as a leftie I would think that.
I doubt that, when push comes to shove, Rishi will be prepared to be that nasty, though he can be snide enough. But if you want a last-minute leader who has a decent chance of turning defeat into disaster by saying something dumb, look no further than the business secretary.
https://twitter.com/alanfeuer/status/1760056078992081166
Using racist stereotypes about Chinese parenting helps them justify their admissions policies.
If Carlson worked, for example, for the NYT he would be doing his job getting an interview. Boris would be getting something (presumably intangible) but the balance would be essentially even.
In this case, Carlson is making - I assume - a bunch of money from the interview. Boris is just asking for a share of the proceeds. That’s an entirely reasonable commercial request.
I’d be ecstatic about a trolley that only needed a coin…
https://stanforddaily.com/2016/12/07/stanfords-history-with-eugenics/
Stamford is not a good place - riddled with dodgy beliefs and significant funded by the US government through defence assignments.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/feb/20/condemnation-as-pro-palestinian-sticker-placed-over-star-of-david-on-amy-winehouse-statue
This country actually is in a pretty reasonable position overall, yes we have not much money to spend, but nor do we have masses and masses of millions of people unemployed.
The biggest problem in this country is that people working full time can't afford a decent standard of living because they can't afford the roof over their head. That there's a major divide between those who have to pay for their home, and those who don't. An even bigger divide between those who have to pay for their home, and those who make their income that way.
If Starmer wins a big majority and takes on the NIMBYs in the same way that Thatcher took on the miners, then that would be brave but also the right thing to do and could cement him as one of the greatest Prime Ministers this country has seen at actually fixing our problems as they are today.
And it wouldn't cost a penny of taxpayers money.
[Not holding my breath though].
Last year, Senator Grassley touted the now indicted informant. During the same speech he complained that Judiciary Committee Democrats described his investigation Russian disinformation. According to court filings, the source he’s referencing here has ties to Russian intelligence
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1760065469779005886
I live in the middle of rural central England, so London is as remote to me as Kuala Lumur really, but it seems very concerning what's happening in the capitol and I wonder where this is all going once the Tories are turfed out and Labour hold sway? 🤷♂️
What strikes me is we could be looking at utter gibberish.
The Elephant in the room here isn’t Labour taking about the same 14% of Con vote 2019 Blair got in 1997 - which will be poor for Starmer considering Blair started with so many more seats so Starmer should easily beat Blair’s voter flipping as he has more to go after - the elephant in the room is when analysis use the vote and % Tories got last time as the starting point to calculating what fall on which swing, that isn’t actually the starting point if we believe the polls and by elections. Analysis that treats it as just Con v Lab battle, and it’s the swing between those two that matters, overlooks polling telling us 14% is lost Con to Ref, analysis must first subtract almost a sixth from all Tory 2019 totals, and then calculate the Con > Lab swing on that lower figure.
Mourdant going on a 17% swing becomes lot less than 17% if simultaneously losing 1 in 6 voters to another party other than Labour, ditto Mogg apparently vulnerable on 15% swing, it won’t need to be as much as 15% if he ships votes to Ref. Labour could get less votes than last time and still take Con seats, they wouldn’t need any Con > Lab swing, just stand still, if Conservatives drop 1 in 6 voters to Ref.
So if you do the analysis properly, my way, take 1 sixth from Tory total last time, you give Labour seats on no swing to them!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/feb/20/general-election-uk-opinion-polls-seats-tories-lose
Starmer's weakness is he cannot think on his feet and so it is possible a clever question might trip him up during the election campaign. For that reason, I wonder if Starmer will follow Cameron and Boris and decline debates and interviews.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2024/02/20/utah-child-shooting-family-tooele-gun-laws/ (£££)
Only in America.
Ksenia Karelina was detained on a trip back to Russia to see her parents
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/02/20/russian-secret-service-arrest-american-woman-high-treason/ (£££)
Only in Russia.
Note that the KGB is pretty thorough in keeping records of its citizens abroad.
Only in the Telegraph.
...
A guide to fixing soaked phones newly published on Apple’s website warns users: “Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone.”
While the guidance flies in the face of folk wisdom, it appears to confirm tests that suggest rice is a poor way of absorbing moisture from a stricken phone.
Apple’s guidance also states that users should not try to dry out iPhones using a hairdryer, or by inserting absorbent items into ports.
Instead, it says people should tap their phones with the charging port facing down to allow water to trickle out and wait.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/20/drying-iphone-in-rice-could-cause-more-damage-apple/ (£££)
Here is the original Apple advice:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/102643
It's all kicking off between Leon's favourites.
- Tucker interviewed Putin (or at least was in the same room while Putin spoke for hours)
- Boris called Tucker a tool of the Kremlin
- Tucker asked Boris for an interview
- Boris asked Tucker for $1 million
- Tucker accused Boris of stopping a peace deal between Russia & Ukraine at the behest of the US Government, and therefore causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/1760038147755303374Details of the misfire are not being made public on the grounds of 'national security'
...
The second failed launch in a row – after a misfire in 2016 – happened while Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was on board HMS Vanguard to witness the test.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/26070479/trident-nuke-sub-missile-launch-fails/
Funny how this follows Russia threatening to nuke London but it looks like we need not have worried about Jeremy Corbyn writing "the letters".
THERE IS A FUCKING SPECIAL INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR UKRAINE HOLY SHIT
CAN ANY OF YOU ABSOLUTE MORONS EVEN USE FUCKING GOOGLE
THEY RELEASED AN ENTIRE 158-PAGE REPORT ON UKRAINE AID OVERSIGHT ABOUT 5 DAYS AGO
AM I LOSING MY FUCKING MIND
https://twitter.com/GravitysRa1nbow/status/1760079228333183045
Ingraham: Why didn’t you just hand over the classified documents when they requested them?
Trump: I didn’t have to hand them over.
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1760105965074973081