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Sunak’s spot of sunshine: Reform underperformed – politicalbetting.com
Sunak’s spot of sunshine: Reform underperformed – politicalbetting.com
The locals didn’t offer much comfort for the Tories. The high point was Ben Houchen surviving a 17% swing against him. The Lib Dems won more councillors than them for the first time since 1996. But there was one glimmer of hope: Reform UK fell a fair bit short of what their national polling would suggest.
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And I read the article before posting
Tend to agree, the only way Reform might do better would be if the Cons took a tack to the centre under a new leader and the nuttier wing went off en-masse. I don't think that's likely.
When I put those figures into Electoral calculus alongside the headline figure it doesn’t actually help the Tories that much
Personally given the current Conservatives, I hope they do collapse.
See the middle east right now. History repeating on an endless loop of intolerance and bloodshed.
The big risk for the Tories is that these voters simply might not vote at all. This is one reason why I expect some very dirty targeted online advertising for the election campaign.
Anyone male, of a certain age - i.e. peak PB demographic - can expect to get some very nasty anti-Labour and anti-Starmer adverts from fake campaign groups.
At the moment the best hope seems be a truce, with some really tough guarantors.
'They say history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as Farage.'
Ban this sick filth.
The recent evidence from actual elections just isn't there for 10% nationwide for RefUK. They will also be squeezed pretty hard as the election narrative becomes "Stramer or Sunak for PM?"
Lib Dems experience that too, of course, but it's balanced by the fact that there will be a reasonable number of seats where they will run a highly visible ground campaign. Lib Dems also have a decent case for a reasonable amount of broadcast coverage (they can point to actual elections, like last Thursday where they led in quite a lot of localities, as well as a string of by-elections, and it's not fanciful that they may return a reasonable number of MPs for the first time since 2010).
“The people call Stormy Daniels.”
Despite this, I don't think it matters as to the GE result. I cannot see Labour not getting a majority. It may not be the super-majority that the current polling implies, not least because the voting booth is an odd place. You may rant and rave for years online about how this time its different and you are voting Labour for the first time in your life, and yet, pencil in hand, you put the cross in the usual place...
The best way of summarising the Israel/arab thing is Larkin’s line: man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf
It’s like the Holocaust inflicted such terrible trauma on the jews of Israel they are subconsciously forced to reiterate it endlessly, cf victims of abuse who often become abusers - or extremely kinky (which is much healthier)
Meanwhile the Palestinians are locked in their own psychohistorical nightmare, somehow and sometimes revelling in their own martyrdom, masochistically - in between bursts of brutal violence against the Jews
The only sane response to this awful and sordid spectacle is to look away. I sometimes wonder what might happen if everyone did ignore them
Monkey torture videos. I am genuinely lost for words
"The investigation exposed a global monkey torture network involving a private online group paying people in Indonesia to kill and torture baby monkeys on video.
The BBC reported that LeGresley used the username “The Immolator” and ran a poll for members of the group on which method of torture should be inflicted upon an infant monkey."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/british-woman-admits-role-in-global-monkey-torture-network/ar-BB1lYi3y?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=U531&cvid=a70c3f3c4244464edbfad5d9a0ae3f6c&ei=8
At constituency level, they won 7.4%, to 27.2% for the Conservatives.
At list level, the respective figures were 5.9% to 26.5%. They took one seat, to the Conservatives' 8. Their only likely impact was to stop the Conservatives from gaining Ealing/Hillingdon constituency.
In what amounted to a forced choice, between Con and Lab for the Mayoralty, their vote dropped to 2.5%, and the Conservatives' rose to 32.8%.
Powerful words here.
Rafah is completely blocked, israel won’t allow anything to enter, no humanitarian aid, no doctors, no help. Yet the idf are bombing us right now. THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO 💔NOWHERE WE CAN GO 💔
@WizardBisan1
#EyesOnRafah
https://x.com/SemiticRia/status/1787640134008975631
It feels like I witness a near-miss every day I drive.
When we lived in London (on the borders of zones two and three and a good 15 minutes walk to the nearest tube), we needed a car. If we were to move back there today, we wouldn't need one. We might still get one... But I think we'd probably try without first.
Shame I do feel.
And I know there is something all wrong about me—
believe me. Sometimes I shock myself.
But there is a reason: you.
You never let up this one same pressure of hatred on my life:
I am the shape you made me.
Filth teaches filth."
😂😂😂
Labour MPs (who are in the Urgent Question in big numbers) make clear how appalled they are as Suella Braverman says it's right that Israel "finishes the job".
"Disgusting" heckles one MP.
FWIW, in this patch of the West Midlands the mayoral Reform campaign was almost non-existent, and they didn't even put up candidates in the council elections. The only thing of note that they did was to a bit of counterproductive fly posting that seemed to show that they were running as the litter lout party. That and a page in the mayoral election booklet circulated with details of all 6 candidates. If they can only gain 6% despite running against a centrist Tory candidate in an area that should have favorable demographics for them, and in an election offering an opportunity for a big anti-Tory protest vote, it doesn't bode well for their prospects.
I had no idea they had so much battery storage capacity installed.
We should turn away and lock the door and turn on some music to drown out the tantrum and maybe then it might just dwindle away. Worth a go anyway. Nothing else seems to work
Edit: as I’ve pointed out here, a few times, batteries can be small scale enough to evade the must-have-a-decade-of-planning-approval stuff. Not much they can do to stop you parking some containers on your land. So even though other technologies might be better, batteries win on the basis of “can do. Now”
Whereas, as I understand it, one can be accepted as an Israeli with 25% traceable Jewish ancestry.
However, it looks to me (and I'm open to being shown to be wrong) that the job isn't defeating Hamas with proportionate destruction and civilian casualities, it is destruction and civilian casualties, with proportionate defeat of Hamas. Perhaps I'm wrong, and Israel and Suella are correct.
The document refers to the end of the war, described as a permanent ceasefire, according to the official
They believe it would see female soldiers released too late in the process
They say the document references a contingency that if 33 living hostages cannot be found for the first
phase, then bodies can be substituted instead, which the Israeli official said is unacceptable
Israel believes it would obliged to release an agreed number of prisoners from a list that Hamas will provide, with no power of veto for any individual case
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-middle-east-68963839
Israel are completely and utterly out of control.
Lmao, you have to imagine Chris Webb would prefer it if his first day at work wasn't being described like School Prize Day with his Mum and Dad watching
It's just after 8am, and solar is already producing well over half of California's electricity: https://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/supply.html
Those local election results and the support the labour movement lost due to their previous position on the conflict have really focussed their minds.
California has loads of reliable sunshine, so they've selected solar.
Britain has masses of reliable tidal ranges, and intermittent and not particular blistering sunshine so we've selected... Solar. And wind.
I haven't invented a 'where there's muck there's brass' aphorism for it, but basically, when something in public policy could be called out by an 8 year old as not making sense, it means someone's making an awful lot of money.
phase, then bodies can be substituted instead, which the Israeli official said is unacceptable" is rather worrying. Do Hamas not know if they are dead or alive? Or are they intending to kill them as a last gasp of revenge, sanctioned by the option of providing bodies?
I'd expect even the pro-Palestinian contingent on here to raise an eyebrow at that one.
What I think we can do is to judge Israel's actions against what we think a reasonable campaign to destroy Hamas, without disproportionate civilian casualties, would look like. I think you can judge that Israel is falling short of its duty to minimise civilian casualties and to provide for civilians in areas where it has defeated Hamas.
Since Israel appears unwilling or unable to take remedial action for these failings, then I think the question of whether it is Israel's intent to cause this suffering is moot. I was willing to cut Israel a lot of slack on the assumption that, as a democracy, they would hold themselves to higher standards as they took reasonable steps to defend themselves.
I was clearly mistaken in the confidence I placed in Israel and its institutions.
Rishi Sunak says last week's elections show we are on course for a hung parliament. My blog for @prospect_uk gives five reasons why he's wrong. One of them includes fresh evidence of the power of anti-Conservative tactical voting.
At the GE they will have a full slate of candidates
At the GE they will have Nigel Farage
It is hopium is the Tories think they can simply project last week's result forward
Initially one could argue - and I did sincerely believe - that Israel's objective was to destroy Hamas but their actions have proven to me that is no longer (or never was) the case.
Reform amount to very little.
Here's the link
I don't see large-scale tidal working out - we're just not good enough at building infrastructure at that scale. Maybe it'll have more of a role when/if battery storage becomes cheap enough to solve the intermittency issue without needing giant lagoons.
They are a nothing burger