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A closer look at the local elections – politicalbetting.com
A closer look at the local elections – politicalbetting.com
The second of my threads on the forthcoming local elections looks at two southern coastal councils which should be the epitome of rock-solid Conservative territory but this year will be representative of that party’s current electoral strength or frailty.
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I note your final paragraph. Are Reform standing many candidates here?
With the opposition parties in Fareham has there been some sort of tacit divviying up of seats between them, or are they up against each other?
"Pleased to see you looking so well your majesty. We need to discuss your return to work."
https://twitter.com/DachshundColin/status/1781428013143302190?t=zBFs-GDjuquklFmMyYtZ6Q&s=19
Beyond the brash exterior is a vulnerable and anxious woman. She is an insomniac — she endures the long, sleepless hours by listening to audiobooks about serial killers — and trusts very few people beyond her tight inner circle; she has panic buttons installed in her house and was convinced during the Corbyn years that she was being spied upon.
and
Like Boris Johnson, whom in some ways she resembles, Rayner is a source of endless fascination and speculation. There is no one quite like her at Westminster. She is gossiped about, condescended, traduced but never ignored. Like Johnson, she has undoubted star quality. She is both self-glamorising and self-mythologising.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/angela-rayner-is-a-wounded-lioness-but-shes-still-an-asset-for-labour-v7wwf7cs5
There isn't really any way that the seats can be divvied up. There's only one seat, Fareham South, that Labour are in a significantly better position than the LibDems.
See the 2022 results here https://moderngov.fareham.gov.uk/mgElectionAreaResults.aspx?ID=103&RPID=16621989
Rayner is a bright spot in a sea of Labour grey suits, not just her dress sense, but also her outspokeness.
Young made an interesting point about Meritocracy in this 2001 article about the phenomenon that he had named. One aspect of Meritocracy is that it denudes the working class of its brightest and best leaders. While such social mobility is good for those individuals, it leaves large sections of the population without leadership. He thinks this part of the reason for the decline of the truly working class politician. Rayner is an exception to this.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2001/jun/29/comment
In a poll on the local Nextdoor social network, Reform came top beating the Conservatives but Nextdoor tends to attract the more opinionated types. It will be interesting to see if Reform achieve anything other than splitting the Conservative vote.
I see the Heil have come up with some more "evidence" in Raynergate. By "sign the document" they mean "witness Rayner's signature" on her TR1. Which anyone can do. Mine last one was witnessed by the receptionist at my firm, the one before that by my parents' next door neighbour. So this "new evidence" is that Rayner asked a neighbour of her husband (who has already given a statement to the police) to witness a transfer deed. What the f**k does that prove? Why didn't she get someone nearer her main house, they ask? Because she was at her husband's house when she needed the TR1 witnessed, maybe?
In fact, paraphrase Ebert, this information doesn't scrape the bottom of the barrel. It isn't the bottom of the barrel. It isn't below the bottom of the barrel. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence with barrels."
They're so pathetically desperate to make this a story, and sensitive that it isn't, that they put a box in to rebut the "Labour supporting" Guardian's suggestion that it isn't.
Weren't there regular announcements during Blair's holidays that no, John Prescott wasn't running the country?
I've looked at the candidates now and can only see two council seats where Reform is standing, Stubbington and Hill Head. These are usually Tory vs LibDems fights, so they may help the LibDems here.
https://www.fareham.gov.uk/pdf/about_the_council/elections/StatementofPersonsNominatedFBCMay24.pdf
Lib Dem’s turn to explain themselves : this appears to be a classic expenses scheme to funnel tax payer money back to political mates to provide MPs with “support services”
All within the rules but will it pass the “smell test”
https://twitter.com/nickdebois/status/1781931140615393754
Lib Dem MP paid £120,000 to firm run by party officials
Sarah Green, who represents Chesham & Amersham, claimed the money on expenses to cover services provided by Midas Training
It is not clear from the expenses claims exactly what services the company provides the MP, but records show the payments began three months after she was elected. Since then Midas has been paid every month bar one and often numerous times a month.....
...The Midas Training headquarters are registered in Aylesbury. They are behind the nondescript shopfront of a small tax advisory firm at the side of a roundabout on a busy street. The logo above the door reads Taxassist Accountants and are also the registered headquarters of at least 25 other businesses, including an HR company, an immigration advisory firm and a diamond drilling business.
Midas is a “brass plate” company — a firm lacking any meaningful connection with its place of incorporation and without any physical premises. While the opening hours on the door of Taxassist Accountants read 9am-5pm, nobody was at the premises and the lights were switched off at 10am last Friday.
The managing director of Midas Training is Candy Piercy, who runs the company with her husband Michael. She is the vice-chairwoman of the Chesham & Amersham Lib Dems executive committee, and on the Lib Dems’ national website she is described as a “founder member” of the party.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lib-dem-mp-sarah-green-expenses-consultancy-company-jnxw3vd27
On the contrary most of the larger vineyards here make substantial use of frost candles, fans and other equipment. But I’m a little mini vineyard of only a few thousand vines and don’t have the scale to afford that. Besides I live in London and the vines are in Kent. So I have to just let nature do its thing.
Its thing last night was -0.8C. Cold enough for some damage.
As she’s working class she seems to attract admiration, in parts, from middle class commentators, mostly male, and seemingly as a way of burnishing their pro working class credentials and all of this while labour increasingly selects fewer and fewer working class candidates and more and more white collar former SPAD/London Councillor/charity/Quangocrats/Lawyer types. The party is being purged of the working class.
It’s all a bit ‘how can I hate women, my mother was one’, ‘I’ve got black friends, I’m not racist’ from the commentariat who seem to think challenging her is picking in her.
It is fair to ask questions of her, her shiftiness and evasiveness over it the whole issue has dragged it out. Sure the Tories are bad but let’s not give the other parties a free pass.
https://x.com/rcolvile/status/1781594270287224952?s=61
To complete the set, Gosport might have had the potential to be a bit of good news for the blue team. They had new boundaries in 2022, and the Lib Dem majority depends on a couple of wards where they, slightly cutely, won the second seat. Two Conservatives faced 1 Lib and 1 Lab and lent Labour second votes saw the Lib Dem candidate home in second.
Based on that, you might think that the Conservatives were placed to nab the seats back- they won both wards and they are the sort of places that really ought to have Conservative councillors. From a distance, I suspect incumbency and the dire national situation will see the yellow peril home.
She's lost some weight, wears interesting clothes, has a difficult backstory and can dance well to Old Skool music but that doesn't give her a free pass for everything else, I'm afraid. Even if @Foxy does really fancy her.
Colville is saying honesty matters and he’s right. He’s not saying she’s a wrong un or a right un.
https://x.com/johnrentoul/status/1781712926581080082?s=61
Tories always whine when their families become part of the story. Now they're exploiting the rule.
You sound like those Home Office bureaucrats demanding to see a full run of bank accounts back to the 1980s before they will believe someone actually lived in the UK.
LD 16
C 10
L 2
I don't particularly like Rayner, but this whole saga strikes me as bullying. The most absurd moments have been James Daly being unable to explain what he was complaining to the police about.
But it all suggests that she was primarily living at her husband’s house (a shared primary residence would also be the normal state of affairs)
She’s not provided one piece of evidence to prove otherwise apart from her statement.
I’m increasingly suspecting that she lives with her husband and declared the other property as her primary residence to claim the benefit of the CGT relief.
I doubt there will be clear documentary evidence one way or the other, but it doesn’t look good for her.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dilbert_characters
Or is this an epoch defining thinker, journalist or academic of whom I should have heard?
The question is who he'll take with him. The push to ban anti-genocide demonstrations seems pretty damned serious.
Is there a market on
* next person to leave the cabinet?
* Cleverly to leave the cabinet by [date]?
* Sunak to leave office before the end of May?
I stopped reading the following piece from the Lebedev press when I reached the word "experts", but it seems effort is still being put into Susan Hall's campaign, even at this late stage:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/sadiq-khan-susan-hall-london-mayoral-election-poll-2024-closes-gap-b1152501.html
Easy peasy.
We don't even care what her husband said or pocketed upon sale of his house.
We just want to know what she said - or didn't say - to HMRC.
Is the issue.
If the advice was verbal why not say that. She has offered to publish comditionally.
Yet to hear anything remotely useful or helpful from her. Just another one out for herself.
Actually there’s a third reason, it fails to draw a line under the matter it just helps perpetuate it.
April 21
6C
Thanks for the kind words on the new thread.
Fareham and Havant aren't normally political battlegrounds or bellweather areas but the plight of the Conservative Party has brought them into play.
What may save the Conservatives, however, in Havant, is the paucity of opposition candidates. The Conservatives have a full slate, the Greens and the LDs get halfway there so the anti-Conservative vote will have to be very efficient to inflict serious damage on the Tories.
That may also impact on Borough-wide vote shares and perhaps inflate or exaggerate the Conservative numbers. Let's say you have a Ward with three Conservative Councillors - there are three Conservative candidates, an LD, a Labour and a Green.
The result could be as follows (though this never happens)
LD 500
Labour 500
Green 500
Con 1 475, Con 2 475, Con 3 475
Now that means 3 losses for the Conservatives in seat terms but in terms of votes the Conservatives have 1425, Labour 500, LDs 500 and Greens 500 thus in terms of votes cast, the Conservatives are well ahead.
We don't all use accountants and solicitors for our personal matters.
But I see he is the boss of the Met, which is disappointing.
I wanted him to be either the actor playing a libidinous Frenchman, or an actual libidinous Frenchman - which is at least all the recent Presidents, and probably all of them. Then I could apply some words for life, @TSE style, or following the actions of the Spectator elite in Paris, in their heads, with respect to girls with pearls.
A frog he would a-wooing go,
Heigh ho! says Rowley,
A frog he would a-wooing go,
Whether his mother would let him or no.
With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley.
So off he set with his opera hat,
Heigh ho! says Rowley,
So off he set with his opera hat,
And on the road he met with a rat,
With a rowley, powley, gammon, and spinach,
Heigh ho! says Anthony Rowley....
https://wordsforlife.org.uk/activities/frog-he-would-wooing-go/
We are having a nice conversation about the skulduggery surrounding Raynergate, Malcolm's Conservatism and a potential Tory collapse in Hampshire.
I think you may have posted in the wrong blog- again!
Daly came over as a complete clown in that exchange. In 12 months time he’ll be an ex MP.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
She would have made the PPR declaration to HMRC. A perfectly legal bit of tax avoidance. But if she says so, she's then guilty of the greatest crime in British politics... Hypocrisy.
Since what she did was legal, and not unusual in the circumstances, it's very hard to force her to go into the detail. So we're left to see whether a sustained campaign of innuendo will cause any damage.
The campaign of innuendo does look particularly ridiculous in the circumstances of regular stories about new transgressions by Tory MPs that are on a completely different scale. But since when was it news that the newspapers were partisan?
In their wildest dreams, [the Rayner] affair would culminate with the humiliating and shamefaced downfall of Labour’s deputy leader, but I don’t meet many Tories who really expect to get that result. They calculate that the relentless onslaught against Ms Rayner by the Conservative party…will not be a wasted effort even if they don’t get her bang to rights and with no choice but to quit.
Under their breath, some shadow ministers wearily mutter their exasperation that so much of their time is being spent batting away the accusations against the deputy leader. It is eating up energy that Labour wanted to be spending on the May local government elections and the national contest that is only a bit further down the track. [But] Rather than putting distance between himself and his deputy, Sir Keir has put his own authority and credibility on the line with the steadfastness and increasing pugnacity with which he has stood up for her. [And] It is working to the advantage of Ms Rayner that there’s a whiff of misogyny and snobbery to some of the attacks on her.
Another thing the Conservatives might ask themselves is whether their prospects are going to be enhanced by making the conduct of politicians the primary electoral battlefield. Voters are realistic enough not to expect a Labour government to be a congregation of saints, but they already look at the Tories as a cesspit of sinners. It seems rather unlikely to help Tory hopes of limiting their losses at the election if the outcome turns on the question of which of the parties is the sleaziest.
… should the Greater Manchester police conclude that they were right the first time when they said they could find no grounds for investigating Ms Rayner, that would amplify the charge that the Tories have wasted police resources in pursuit of a desperate and nasty attempt to deflect from their own failings and unpopularity by unjustly targeting a senior opposition politician. Then this affair would not be about her. It would be about the character, judgment and motives of the Conservative party and its leader.
* Joke only makes sense in a non-rhotic accent.
https://x.com/leembroad/status/1781739104264167728?s=61
He posted last night that his vineyard in Dorset was down to 0.9C or something like that, and that his entire annual harvest was likely to get wiped out, due to this insane Europe-wide cold
🙏 for @TimS and any other growers/farmers battling these conditions
Now she may be a wrong 'un, but the level of scrutiny generates infinitely more column inches than the Conservative Party covering up the Mark Menzies chaos or the public purse stumping up 40 grand for Michelle Donelan 's indiscretion.
One way or the other, it's bollocks, and this same bollocks has hijacked Stodge's excellent thread.
The next two days should see highs of ~18C in Ireland. I could tell you where the best chefs work in the area too.
There have been a lot of questions raised about Sunak’s wife’s tax: https://www.itv.com/news/2022-04-07/sunak-faces-very-serious-questions-over-wifes-non-dom-status-and-tax-affairs
But once it hits really cold temperatures, say -3C and below, the duration of cold is less important. It just kills everything and the vine has to start again from secondary buds.
Poor old Roly-Poly. You have to remember that someone in his job will have cooperated for years with the Community Security Trust.
With a stepping up of the genocide in the offing, there is a powerful push to ban pro-Palestinian demonstrations in London. Rowley is certainly toast. While Matt W is having his deranged singsong we can ask who else will fall. Sunak is going to have to say something, probably by tomorrow.
My vines are in Kent. Worst hit next week will be Wessex and Marches vineyards and orchards. And most of France which will be getting -4, -5C or worse.
I hope we get good news from @TimS
That must be so sad, to see a year of work wiped out by one night of frost ☹️
However not allowing him to walk directly through the march is a fairly standard part of policing. Happens every week at football matches, would happen today if protestors want to walk through the marathon course.
I can attest to the outrageous cold in France
In this case, I don't think the Jewish gentleman was proposing to disrupt the demo, just walk past it.
Air frost wll be limited, ground frost will be more widespread.
Rights are not absolute - they come with obligations and responsibilities. Sometimes those seeking to assert those rights forget the second bit. We need I think to re-orient the debate away from the rights of the individual to the societal obligations and responsibilities of the individual.
After filling in my date of birth and signature in blue ink I then noticed that on one of the multitude sets of instructions it says to use black ink. Hopefully not grounds to reject my votes.
I noticed that for the council election I had the option of a Local Conservative. Ironically, he does not live in our ward.
Can you update me on what Fareham is like?
I think (and I may be getting it muddled with Wareham) it was the back-of-beyond place where I went to a friend's baptism-by-immersion one summer whilst on placement from University. Remarkable experience in a traditional *very* hands-down gospel hall (roughly old-style Keswick Tradition for those who know such distinctions). It was like a 1950s church hall where your grandma would attend beetle drives, and when the chairs were moved there were a couple of trapdoors with a baptism pool underneath. I stayed with a lovely couple who had 3 year old triplets, who they transported around in a beat-up 15 year old Volvo Estate.
I recall it was a hell of a long way from Nottingham (never mind Bradford) in a Mk1 VW Polo, and felt isolated like a filming location for The Wicker Man, had it been set in England. Were chip shops and pubs frowned upon?
If you do get some sun on your face it’s actually hot and you regret your massive winter coat (here in Paris anyway). Because we are way past the equinox and the sun now has the strength of the sun in August. But if it clouds over or you step into shadow the wind sends it back to mid February
Purgatorial is, I think, the mot juste
From the clip I've seen it looked like he wanted to go through the barricades into the march rather than walk alongside it. Could be wrong, wasn't completely clear.
The question in Havant is whether the missing candidates are a plan to channel tactical votes or a sign of party weakness. Anyone got the local gen?
I'm not sure a politician who for example was married to a state school teacher could become Education Secretary?
Reading advice to visiting overseas tourists recently, it seemed very much in a lot of places to be 'do not wear an away shirt in a home enclosure, or you may have to visit the hospital' - with hints that such behaviour is accepted especially in places with older football grounds.
Fact.
The man will kill us all.
One has to remember that like in most public services they want an easy life.
Meanwhile, young men in their droves continue to be stopped and searched by the Met for being 'openly black'.
In the Central England Temperature record you can find days in every month November to March with a mean temperature below freezing, and in every month May to September a day with mean temperatures above 20C, but April and October are the transition months when neither of those things occur.