I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
Brexit and Boris Johnson big black marks on the record.
Actually more to this than meets the eye. Helicopter had been in Azerbaijan (the country, though confusingly it crashed in the East Azerbaijan region of Iran). Per Wikipedia on Iran Azerbaijan relations
"The Republic of Azerbaijan has become increasingly pro-Western aligned, and is an ally of Israel, Turkey and the United States (the latter two being NATO members) while the Islamic Republic of Iran is largely pro-Russian and pro-Chinese aligned due to its hostility towards the U.S. and has been targeted with sanctions.[citation needed] Iranian politicians, like Mohammad Hosseini, have called Azerbaijan an Israeli proxy.[12]"
Grauniad today
"Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early on Sunday to inaugurate a dam with the country’s president, Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third that the two nations have built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran’s Shia theocracy views as its main enemy in the region."
All of which has me adjusting my priors about mossad involvement.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
Yes true, the Asians specifically Japanese have been wearing masks for ages - the numbers I stated were for non-Asians. But this mother and child I just thought was rather sad. Although culturally they were I suppose just doing their thing.
And the old bloke in his pumpkin coloured moleskins chuntering in the background doing his.
Was zipping by on my Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8 Di2 Boris Bike so the moleskins were getting a shellacking.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
Yep. Things get hoisted up the flagpole and are then poo-poo'd upon. Only if they survive this do they get to fly. Some do more hoisting than poo-poo'ing, whereas with others it's the opposite, but this doesn't matter, the collective is what counts, the balance of hoisting and poo-poo'ing. Leon makes this point too (although spoils it slightly with his attempt to insult, which I'm too mature to react to).
"As details slowly begin to emerge, Iranian state media is reporting that the helicopter that carried the president and foreign minister was a Bell 212.
It’s unclear how old the helicopter was, but this model was developed for the Canadian military in the 1960s.
(As a reminder, decades of US and international sanctions began after the Iranian revolution in 1979).
The helicopters were made by the US company Bell Helicopter and used widely by government operators, including American law enforcement agencies and Thailand’s national police."
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
Large stocks of popcorn will be needed for the night of Jan 23rd 2025. Or, just possibly, Dec 12th 2024. I’m still expecting the former but Sunak’s constant references to ‘late this year’ are making me hedge a bit.
It could be a momentous game changing night.
There is a small chance (2%?) that the Lib Dems will be the official opposition.
Looking at the trend lines and with some effective tactical voting, it could be Lib Dems 65 seats, Conservatives 57 seats.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Helo + fog + mountains + VIP passengers, who decide if the flight goes ahead, is not a great combination.
The likelihood of an engineered assassination seems pretty low, as it would have required a degree of clandestine infiltration which surely would have enabled all sorts of other actions which haven't happened ? And I'm not sure how Israel would benefit anyway: it would be a massive roll of the dice with potentially very bad outcomes for them.
Israel doing stuff in Syria (which they don't then deny) is one thing; getting that close to the leadership within Iran quite another.
If this was an assassination the most likely culprit is from within the regime. Raisi was apparently lined up to takeover from the Supreme Leader. Anyone else who fancied the top job has an unusually open window of opportunity now.
But @Nigelb is simply wrong. There is a massive benefit for Israel - in deterring future Iranian leaders from launching any more missile attacks. If you think that it’s 78% certain you will be personally murdered by Mossad within a month of ordering any attack on Jerusalem then you’re quite likely to decide against it, aren’t you?
This does not mean it IS Israel - there are several parties who arguably benefit from this and of course it really could be an accident
But saying there is no motivation and no obvious gain for Israel is flat out wrong
Lots of things are possible, but are they likely?
I don't think you particularly need to appeal to logic either. There's an argument within the war coalition in Israel because Netanyahu rejects the need for a post-war plan for Gaza as being weak. The request isn't even for a plan that involves being nice to Palestinians, or making peace with them - just for a frigging plan.
In that context you don't really need to construct a chain of logic to justify an action. Logic didn't come into it. So I don't think motive is an issue.
The stumbling block is opportunity.
Fog is pretty hard to forecast. Although it looks now as though fog provides the perfect cover for an assassination, no-one planning an assassination would have been sure that the fog would have been there. It's overwhelmingly likely that the fog caused the crash.
Rarely for me, a bit of praise for the BBC last night. They were very good at not rushing to conclusions on the Iranian crash: a lot of other news sources I saw were reporting statements from Iranian state-influenced media (such as that contact had/had not been made with the helicopter) without many caveats about the reliability of that info. I thought the BBC were much more measured and added much more significant disclaimers.
still absolute crap at news and everything else for that matter
First day properly out and about since that trip to A&E - if this "100 Day Cough" isn't another strain of Covid I'll eat my hat... But, am alive - unlike the Iranian PM.
I'm glad you are back out and about.
Re covid - remember that there have always been bugs out there and pretty nasty ones too. Not every cough and cold that people get from now to the end of time will be covid.
And if you recall the testing during the pandemic - how many were actually positive among those who had symptoms? Not that many.
I had a bad one there , one month and 2 courses of antibiotics to get rid of it, lost sense of taste as well.
Just been sent a job advert for a civil service role in London.
Offering £62,000 for a job requiring you to be on site in London where the job description lists skills that earn people £120,000 working from home isn’t going to get you many candidates.
Real requirements or HR tuning it up.
Always liked the one where HR tweaked our requirements - to demand a Java developer with a longer skill history than Java had been existence.
"Did mobile phones cause the crime collapse? That little thing in your pocket is the greatest law enforcement tool in history
ED WEST MAY 20, 2024"
"but the stupidest criminals know that there is almost zero chance of escaping punishment. Someone will call the police, or film them, or at the very least their mobile phone record will trap the perpetrators."
Hmmm, he does realise that even fairly dumb criminals now just walk around with their faces covered. They don't seem very bothered by being filmed when they are nicking phones, cars and bikes, as they threaten to pull a knife and the public will understandably back off and let them finish stealing.
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
Mr. Leon, interesting. As you say, the claim may be doubtful (my go to would be Damascus and other cities there and further east), but Italy has been inhabited for quite some time, so it's possible.
The discovery of the Balikli Gol statue - the first ever life size human statue - under the city centre of Sanliurfa - and the fact the statue was created by the same civilisation that created Gobekli Tepe - implies that Sanliurfa may have been continuously inhabited since 10,000BC - or even earlier. Which would make it THE oldest
That said, yes there are some incredibly ancient places in south Italy
Rarely for me, a bit of praise for the BBC last night. They were very good at not rushing to conclusions on the Iranian crash: a lot of other news sources I saw were reporting statements from Iranian state-influenced media (such as that contact had/had not been made with the helicopter) without many caveats about the reliability of that info. I thought the BBC were much more measured and added much more significant disclaimers.
still absolute crap at news and everything else for that matter
First day properly out and about since that trip to A&E - if this "100 Day Cough" isn't another strain of Covid I'll eat my hat... But, am alive - unlike the Iranian PM.
I'm glad you are back out and about.
Re covid - remember that there have always been bugs out there and pretty nasty ones too. Not every cough and cold that people get from now to the end of time will be covid.
And if you recall the testing during the pandemic - how many were actually positive among those who had symptoms? Not that many.
I had a bad one there , one month and 2 courses of antibiotics to get rid of it, lost sense of taste as well.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
Yes true, the Asians specifically Japanese have been wearing masks for ages - the numbers I stated were for non-Asians. But this mother and child I just thought was rather sad. Although culturally they were I suppose just doing their thing.
For what it is worth (and I have no idea whether it is worth anything) there was a huge amount of mask wearing in Las Vegas. Didn't see any in the 7 states I visited in New England last Autumn nor in Death Valley nor the Grand Canyon.
Another useless observation is that there were a huge number of EVs in Las Vegas. More than I have seen anywhere else.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
One of the best things about this site is the army of fact-checkers. Having terrible opinions is one thing, but post something materially incorrect and you soon get told!
Radiohead is a fantastic band.
Let me just check that......
I reckon Robert could make serious money out of creating a paid panel of contributors, from here, who would tear apart a given proposed policy.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
Yes true, the Asians specifically Japanese have been wearing masks for ages - the numbers I stated were for non-Asians. But this mother and child I just thought was rather sad. Although culturally they were I suppose just doing their thing.
For what it is worth (and I have no idea whether it is worth anything) there was a huge amount of mask wearing in Las Vegas. Didn't see any in the 7 states I visited in New England last Autumn nor in Death Valley nor the Grand Canyon.
Another useless observation is that there were a huge number of EVs in Las Vegas. More than I have seen anywhere else.
If you cover the roof of a big American house, somewhere it shines, with solar… you can end up running the car without grid leccy. Add in a storage battery and you can be pretty much off grid.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Helo + fog + mountains + VIP passengers, who decide if the flight goes ahead, is not a great combination.
The likelihood of an engineered assassination seems pretty low, as it would have required a degree of clandestine infiltration which surely would have enabled all sorts of other actions which haven't happened ? And I'm not sure how Israel would benefit anyway: it would be a massive roll of the dice with potentially very bad outcomes for them.
Israel doing stuff in Syria (which they don't then deny) is one thing; getting that close to the leadership within Iran quite another.
If this was an assassination the most likely culprit is from within the regime. Raisi was apparently lined up to takeover from the Supreme Leader. Anyone else who fancied the top job has an unusually open window of opportunity now.
But @Nigelb is simply wrong. There is a massive benefit for Israel - in deterring future Iranian leaders from launching any more missile attacks. If you think that it’s 78% certain you will be personally murdered by Mossad within a month of ordering any attack on Jerusalem then you’re quite likely to decide against it, aren’t you?
This does not mean it IS Israel - there are several parties who arguably benefit from this and of course it really could be an accident
But saying there is no motivation and no obvious gain for Israel is flat out wrong
Lots of things are possible, but are they likely?
I don't think you particularly need to appeal to logic either. There's an argument within the war coalition in Israel because Netanyahu rejects the need for a post-war plan for Gaza as being weak. The request isn't even for a plan that involves being nice to Palestinians, or making peace with them - just for a frigging plan.
In that context you don't really need to construct a chain of logic to justify an action. Logic didn't come into it. So I don't think motive is an issue.
The stumbling block is opportunity.
Fog is pretty hard to forecast. Although it looks now as though fog provides the perfect cover for an assassination, no-one planning an assassination would have been sure that the fog would have been there. It's overwhelmingly likely that the fog caused the crash.
Not really. Helicopters have plans for flying in fog called Instrument Flight Rules and presumably Iranian presidents have pretty good pilots. I am guessing that 99.9,,% of fog affected helicopter flights get away with it or they would not happen at all. So I don't think overwhelming is right though I agree it is most likely
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
Yes true, the Asians specifically Japanese have been wearing masks for ages - the numbers I stated were for non-Asians. But this mother and child I just thought was rather sad. Although culturally they were I suppose just doing their thing.
For what it is worth (and I have no idea whether it is worth anything) there was a huge amount of mask wearing in Las Vegas. Didn't see any in the 7 states I visited in New England last Autumn nor in Death Valley nor the Grand Canyon.
Another useless observation is that there were a huge number of EVs in Las Vegas. More than I have seen anywhere else.
I wonder if all the spaces with air conditioning and recycled air has something to do with it? Might give me pause for thought.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
It has some quite significant blind spots though and misses important stories it seems to find uncomfortable.
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
I remember that, mainly because of the crane driver who avoided near certain death because he was late for work that day...for the first time in fifteen years.
Mr. Leon, interesting. As you say, the claim may be doubtful (my go to would be Damascus and other cities there and further east), but Italy has been inhabited for quite some time, so it's possible.
The discovery of the Balikli Gol statue - the first ever life size human statue - under the city centre of Sanliurfa - and the fact the statue was created by the same civilisation that created Gobekli Tepe - implies that Sanliurfa may have been continuously inhabited since 10,000BC - or even earlier. Which would make it THE oldest
That said, yes there are some incredibly ancient places in south Italy
There are probably even older sites on the submerged Sunda Shelf, the best place to live during the Ice Age.
An acquaintance's office is closed for the week as loads of people have come down with Covid.
How did they know? Seriously - is anyone testing now (aside of at hospitals?)
AIUI their company provides free tests.
I think it's a fairly simple equation; working from home is doable for their industry, and if someone gets covid they're probably out for a week. If their family gets it as well, possibly longer (looking after kids etc). Even if WfH is slightly less efficient for them, you don't need to get many people getting the lurgy before the disruption gets greater than the WfH inefficiency.
Oh, and there a couple of people with cancer atm as well. Including one of the bosses...
Do they do this for flu? Or colds etc?
Arguably we should all do the work from home if possible if we have coughs and colds. I'm just not quite sure why we still fetish covid in this way.
Exactly right. If you have cold/flu-like symptoms stay away from others. It really is that simple. My son’s best mate had a horrible cold recently that floored three of his mates (including my son) for three days. It wasn’t covid, it was a nasty cold, but what is the effing difference? The lad shouldn’t have been at school.
I would have hoped that people were over the very weird covid obsession by now. The evidence on here suggests not.
I hope that in time, where we have mostly moved on from this fixation on dragging yourself into the office unwell, we eventually also move on from the fixation on working at all when feeling poorly. I can understand not taking the whole day off for a mild sniffle, but if you genuinely are feeling under the weather the best thing you can do for your body is rest, even for a day.
Bit more from Ipsos All naming a party (their other measure as opposed to all certain to vote) was 42 22 with Green and Reform down a touch on their certainty scores. Others splits out 4 SNP/PC (so 3 to 1 or thereabouts) and 4 other others - so 4% certainty for Indies, Galloway, SDP, UKIP, but haven't seen full tables for which of them got the majority of the 4
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
Yes true, the Asians specifically Japanese have been wearing masks for ages - the numbers I stated were for non-Asians. But this mother and child I just thought was rather sad. Although culturally they were I suppose just doing their thing.
For what it is worth (and I have no idea whether it is worth anything) there was a huge amount of mask wearing in Las Vegas. Didn't see any in the 7 states I visited in New England last Autumn nor in Death Valley nor the Grand Canyon.
Another useless observation is that there were a huge number of EVs in Las Vegas. More than I have seen anywhere else.
I wonder if all the spaces with air conditioning and recycled air has something to do with it? Might give me pause for thought.
Agree. I would have been gobsmacked to see it in Death Valley and the Grand Canyon to be honest.
I have always been a big believer that PM / leader of the opposition should be made to do this on a regular basis. They never do QT. I don't think the Chancellor and their shadows do either. The issue shouldn't be that you had an event with the PM, it should be did you offer Starmer a similar opportunity.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
Yes true, the Asians specifically Japanese have been wearing masks for ages - the numbers I stated were for non-Asians. But this mother and child I just thought was rather sad. Although culturally they were I suppose just doing their thing.
For what it is worth (and I have no idea whether it is worth anything) there was a huge amount of mask wearing in Las Vegas. Didn't see any in the 7 states I visited in New England last Autumn nor in Death Valley nor the Grand Canyon.
Another useless observation is that there were a huge number of EVs in Las Vegas. More than I have seen anywhere else.
If you cover the roof of a big American house, somewhere it shines, with solar… you can end up running the car without grid leccy. Add in a storage battery and you can be pretty much off grid.
Yep. It did strike me as the ideal location for an EV. Still struck by how many there were though. Lots of Tesla Cybertrucks which I had never seen before and look really weird.
Good good. Looks like the ATACMS have arrived! A brand new ship as well, what a shame.
It looks like they sunk, or damaged, two ships at the weekend. The bingo card is slowly being filled...
In the comments someone points out that the name of the minesweeper that was talked about as sunk is the same name as the class of ship of this corvette. So probably one ship, some confusion.
This ship is capable of launching the fancy new fast zircon missile that caused such excitement when used for the first time a few months ago. Or, at least, it was. Before it was sunk.
There has to be a chance that Russia will end the war with zero surface ships in the Black Sea Fleet.
They’ve pretty much moved everything away from Sevastopol, and redeployed out of Novorossiyk a couple of hundred miles East. If the Ukranians now have missiles that can hit there, the Russian navy is screwed - as is the Kerch Bridge.
As reported this ship was hit in Sevastopol.
I recall that the Ukrainians have mounted one naval drone attack on Novorossiyk, and Storm Shadow was used to hit a ship in Kerch. Every ship in the Black Sea Fleet is at risk, no matter where it hides.
The thing that I find most amazing about recent war news is that the Ukrainians are still using light aircraft as improvised long-range drones to hit refineries deep inside Russia, more than 1000km from the border, and the Russians are mostly missing them.
The Ukranian naval intelligence appears very good, with knowledge of where the enemy is locating the ships and able to plan attacks with several different options available via air or sea. Not bad for a country with almost no navy.
The various types of airbourne drones that have managed to get well into Russia are quite amazing, it does appear that there’s very little by way of air defences away from the war zone, and even obvious specific targets such as O&G facilities and rail headers don’t appear to be defended at all. This suggests that the Russians are terribly stretched for defensive weapons.
Space Russia is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
(After a while the style settles down a bit and it begins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that the fabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulative erosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance between the amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgically removed from your body weight when you leave...) *
* Waiting to hear from Leon that this is how Italy now works.
You're a few days early.
Towel Day (or if you are also a Pratchett fan then Lilac Towel Day) is not until 25th May.
I'm late for the other one !
Ed Balls.
And then on June 19th we pivot from Lilac Towels to Free Owls.
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
Sure, but overall mechanical failure appears much the most common accident
The place looks mountainous af on Google maps so fog will be fairly common. If fog is both commonplace and of low lethality the "too much of a coincidence" argument doesn't really work
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
Yep. Things get hoisted up the flagpole and are then poo-poo'd upon. Only if they survive this do they get to fly. Some do more hoisting than poo-poo'ing, whereas with others it's the opposite, but this doesn't matter, the collective is what counts, the balance of hoisting and poo-poo'ing. Leon makes this point too (although spoils it slightly with his attempt to insult, which I'm too mature to react to).
I knew a Major, who got pooh-poohed, made the mistake of ignoring the pooh-pooh. He pooh-poohed it! Fatal error! 'Cos it turned out all along that the soldier who pooh-poohed him had been pooh-poohing a lot of other officers who pooh-poohed their pooh-poohs. In the end, we had to disband the regiment. Morale totally destroyed... by pooh-pooh!
Just been sent a job advert for a civil service role in London.
Offering £62,000 for a job requiring you to be on site in London where the job description lists skills that earn people £120,000 working from home isn’t going to get you many candidates.
Not even with one of those gold-plated pensions we hear so much about?
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
Sure, but overall mechanical failure appears much the most common accident
The place looks mountainous af on Google maps so fog will be fairly common. If fog is both commonplace and of low lethality the "too much of a coincidence" argument doesn't really work
I think the question is less "whodunnit" and more "what if the conspiracy theory catches on?"
Even if they are totally innocent, if enough people believe Israel did it, it may affect Iran's posture in one way or the other. Hard to guess really. But the Smolensk air disaster cast a long shadow over Polish politics.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
Brexit and Boris Johnson big black marks on the record.
No, Boris was real. A friend of mine saw him once.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
Sure, but overall mechanical failure appears much the most common accident
The place looks mountainous af on Google maps so fog will be fairly common. If fog is both commonplace and of low lethality the "too much of a coincidence" argument doesn't really work
I think the question is less "whodunnit" and more "what if the conspiracy theory catches on?"
Even if they are totally innocent, if enough people believe Israel did it, it may affect Iran's posture in one way or the other. Hard to guess really. But the Smolensk air disaster cast a long shadow over Polish politics.
Israel has undoubtedly thwacked at least 5 Iranian physicists this century. Conspiracy theory certainly understates the probability of their involvement.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
No, not at all, young HY. Every seat is different, The amount of effort the Lib Dems are putting varies enormously from one seat to another. Where they are trying seriously to win, the Labour etc vote will be squeezed. The Lib Dems are not there to pull your Tory chestnuts out of the fire for you.
Congratulations to Man City for becoming the first English side to win four top flight titles in a row.
In sporting achievements it is up there with Lance Armstrong winning seven Tour de France titles in a row.
The grapes are sour this year.....
For what it's worth I have a friend who works for the great satan (the ones who can't help winning) who tells me the 115 charges are going nowhere.
AFAICS, the charges against City appear to be 'they have too much money'.
I don't understand why this wasn't held to be an issue when United and Liverpool were winning everything.
The correlation between 'where team x finishes in the league' and 'how rich that club is relative to other clubs' - seems (albeit given a few years lag for the impact of money to seep through) to be roughly 1.0.
So I find it odd that most of the complaints about City come from fans of other big rich clubs.
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
Sure, but overall mechanical failure appears much the most common accident
The place looks mountainous af on Google maps so fog will be fairly common. If fog is both commonplace and of low lethality the "too much of a coincidence" argument doesn't really work
I think the question is less "whodunnit" and more "what if the conspiracy theory catches on?"
Even if they are totally innocent, if enough people believe Israel did it, it may affect Iran's posture in one way or the other. Hard to guess really. But the Smolensk air disaster cast a long shadow over Polish politics.
Israel has undoubtedly thwacked at least 5 Iranian physicists this century. Conspiracy theory certainly understates the probability of their involvement.
If I remember correctly, it has been well reported Israel that planned to neutralise Qasem Soleimani and make it look like an accident (years before the Americans finally did so under Trump), but that Obama told the Iranians.
Congratulations to Man City for becoming the first English side to win four top flight titles in a row.
In sporting achievements it is up there with Lance Armstrong winning seven Tour de France titles in a row.
The grapes are sour this year.....
For what it's worth I have a friend who works for the great satan (the ones who can't help winning) who tells me the 115 charges are going nowhere.
Lots of unknowns about this but this bit from the BBC interests me (mainly as a Swindon Fan):
"Now, if we go back to Der Spiegel, the allegations were around driving more money into the club from owner Sheikh Mansour through fictitious sponsorship deals, paying then manager Roberto Mancini to act as a consultant to a club in Abu Dhabi and giving players more money than was going through the accounts."
So paying players off the books? That's why Swindon were relegated two divisions in 1990. Time for a reckoning, but it won't happen. See also Spurs getting away with it (fairly soon after Swindon's case).
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
One of the best things about this site is the army of fact-checkers. Having terrible opinions is one thing, but post something materially incorrect and you soon get told!
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
No, not at all, young HY. Every seat is different, The amount of effort the Lib Dems are putting varies enormously from one seat to another. Where they are trying seriously to win, the Labour etc vote will be squeezed. The Lib Dems are not there to pull your Tory chestnuts out of the fire for you.
The Conservatives are doomed, I tell you. Doomed.
And quite deservedly so.
Yes, I'm afraid Epping's finest has got it wrong for once.
Absolutely the last thing the Tories need now is an LD surge. The Blues would be heavily engaged in a war on two fronts in that case. Labour would for the most part be shedding votes where it needs them least.
Congratulations to Man City for becoming the first English side to win four top flight titles in a row.
In sporting achievements it is up there with Lance Armstrong winning seven Tour de France titles in a row.
The grapes are sour this year.....
For what it's worth I have a friend who works for the great satan (the ones who can't help winning) who tells me the 115 charges are going nowhere.
Lots of unknowns about this but this bit from the BBC interests me (mainly as a Swindon Fan):
"Now, if we go back to Der Spiegel, the allegations were around driving more money into the club from owner Sheikh Mansour through fictitious sponsorship deals, paying then manager Roberto Mancini to act as a consultant to a club in Abu Dhabi and giving players more money than was going through the accounts."
So paying players off the books? That's why Swindon were relegated two divisions in 1990. Time for a reckoning, but it won't happen. See also Spurs getting away with it (fairly soon after Swindon's case).
The Saracen's approach to getting around the salary cap. Does you (insert family member) need a non-job. Why don't you set up a business, I am sure we can find an investor to give you an interest free loan......
I think there have been numerous stories of the father's of particularly young hot prospects suddenly becoming scouts or consultants for clubs by total coincidence.
Ipsos also reveals what will probably be last chance saloon for any level of Tory recovery. Economic optimism went from -31 in April to -4 in May. A lagging indicator to a certain extent but any 'effect' if there is one will need to kick in imminently or its empty box of tricks, nobody is coming to save you time
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
Never get in an autogyro flown by a helicopter pilot.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
One of the best things about this site is the army of fact-checkers. Having terrible opinions is one thing, but post something materially incorrect and you soon get told!
Radiohead is a fantastic band.
Creep
Tell me they're not. Go on. I dare you. I double dare you (motherfu...).
Ipsos also reveals what will probably be last chance saloon for any level of Tory recovery. Economic optimism went from -31 in April to -4 in May. A lagging indicator to a certain extent but any 'effect' if there is one will need to kick in imminently or its empty box of tricks, nobody is coming to save you time
You have to be careful with that one. No more than eight months and a few days until the election. People might start to feel optimistic as they look forward to a change of government.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
The key word there is "on average". OK the two key words... If the Lab-to-Lib shift is uniform, that has the potential to hurt Labour. But if it is concentrated in the seats that the sandalistas can win and the Starmerites can't, that will be truly horrible for the Conservatives. And the fine-grained detail of the locals in both 2023 and 2024 is that voters in Conservative-held wards were doing a pretty good job of identifying who could best hurt the Conservatives and voting for them.
Once again, it don't mean a thing if it's uniform swing. (Do wops omitted since it turns out they were only affordable if there were foreigners willing to pay over the odds for them.)
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
One of the best things about this site is the army of fact-checkers. Having terrible opinions is one thing, but post something materially incorrect and you soon get told!
Radiohead is a fantastic band.
Creep
Tell me they're not. Go on. I dare you. I double dare you (motherfu...).
Ipsos also reveals what will probably be last chance saloon for any level of Tory recovery. Economic optimism went from -31 in April to -4 in May. A lagging indicator to a certain extent but any 'effect' if there is one will need to kick in imminently or its empty box of tricks, nobody is coming to save you time
You have to be careful with that one. No more than eight months and a few days until the election. People might start to feel optimistic as they look forward to a change of government.
You do indeed need to be careful with it. It's a big IF, but clearly it's the sort of last gasp straws team Rishi are grasping for in the hope they provide some assistance
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
One of the best things about this site is the army of fact-checkers. Having terrible opinions is one thing, but post something materially incorrect and you soon get told!
Radiohead is a fantastic band.
Creep
Tell me they're not. Go on. I dare you. I double dare you (motherfu...).
Who are Radiohead?
An obscure single from the 7th Talking Heads album. Apparently some band used this as inspiration for their name, but they never caught on
My favourite Radiohead story is that they used to be called "On a Friday" and they had to change because people kept showing up to their gigs on Fridays.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
Green/Reform crossover. No, I don't know what it means either...
My caveat on this poll is that it took 6 days (May 8 - 14) of fieldwork, which suggests that people are so pissed off with politics that the pollsters are struggling to get voters to respond.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
Green/Reform crossover. No, I don't know what it means either...
My caveat on this poll is that it took 6 days (May 8 - 14) of fieldwork, which suggests that people are so pissed off with politics that the pollsters are struggling to get voters to respond.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
Green/Reform crossover. No, I don't know what it means either...
The Greens had 181 councillors elected at the local elections at the start of the month, an increase of 74. Reform UK had two councillors elected, an increase of two.
For comparison, the Workers Party had four councillors elected, the SDP one and the Women's Equality Party one.
Voters have presumably noticed that the Greens are a proper party, while Reform UK are not.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
Not if the LD vote goes up at the expense of Labour in LD targets only. That will show as a decrease in the Labour numbers and increase in the LD numbers in the polls but will have no reduction in the Labour vote in their targets and an increase in the LD numbers in their targets.
Currently Labour are on for a big majority and the LDs on for modest gains. But if the LD vote increases significantly at the expense of Labour but only in their targets that will be the perfect storm.
You cannot deduce that switches from Labour to LDs will be good for the Tories. It might be, but it might actually be much worse for the Tories. It all depends where those switches occur.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
The key word there is "on average". OK the two key words... If the Lab-to-Lib shift is uniform, that has the potential to hurt Labour. But if it is concentrated in the seats that the sandalistas can win and the Starmerites can't, that will be truly horrible for the Conservatives. And the fine-grained detail of the locals in both 2023 and 2024 is that voters in Conservative-held wards were doing a pretty good job of identifying who could best hurt the Conservatives and voting for them.
Once again, it don't mean a thing if it's uniform swing. (Do wops omitted since it turns out they were only affordable if there were foreigners willing to pay over the odds for them.)
In the local elections the biggest swing against the Conservatives was actually in their safest seats, while the battleground and lean Tory seats were closer to the national swing.
If that was repeated at the GE it would mean tactical voting was not as strong as in 1997, where it was the marginal seats the Tories held which saw the biggest swing
Just been sent a job advert for a civil service role in London.
Offering £62,000 for a job requiring you to be on site in London where the job description lists skills that earn people £120,000 working from home isn’t going to get you many candidates.
Not even with one of those gold-plated pensions we hear so much about?
The thing with "gold-plated" is that it hides the metal underneath - the basic salary. For the civil service (trust me), it's lead rather than silver.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
The key word there is "on average". OK the two key words... If the Lab-to-Lib shift is uniform, that has the potential to hurt Labour. But if it is concentrated in the seats that the sandalistas can win and the Starmerites can't, that will be truly horrible for the Conservatives. And the fine-grained detail of the locals in both 2023 and 2024 is that voters in Conservative-held wards were doing a pretty good job of identifying who could best hurt the Conservatives and voting for them.
Once again, it don't mean a thing if it's uniform swing. (Do wops omitted since it turns out they were only affordable if there were foreigners willing to pay over the odds for them.)
In the local elections the biggest swing against the Conservatives was actually in their safest seats, while the battleground and lean Tory seats were closer to the national swing.
If that was repeated at the GE it would mean tactical voting was not as strong as in 1997, where it was the marginal seats the Tories held which saw the biggest swing
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
Not if the LD vote goes up at the expense of Labour in LD targets only. That will show as a decrease in the Labour numbers and increase in the LD numbers in the polls but will have no reduction in the Labour vote in their targets and an increase in the LD numbers in their targets.
Currently Labour are on for a big majority and the LDs on for modest gains. But if the LD vote increases significantly at the expense of Labour but only in their targets that will be the perfect storm.
You cannot deduce that switches from Labour to LDs will be good for the Tories. It might be, but it might actually be much worse for the Tories. It all depends where those switches occur.
NOTHING will be good for the Tories. The public want them gone.
Mossad have nailed "living rent free". Anything remotely unfortunate happens in the Middle East and the world just assumes it was them.
Weirdly MI6 also have this reputation in Russia.
Occam's razor says old helicopter, poor maintenance due to difficulty accessing parts and bad weather...plus if a helicopter malfunctions you are pretty much done for, no multiple engines / potential to glide like a plane.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
No, not at all, young HY. Every seat is different, The amount of effort the Lib Dems are putting varies enormously from one seat to another. Where they are trying seriously to win, the Labour etc vote will be squeezed. The Lib Dems are not there to pull your Tory chestnuts out of the fire for you.
The Conservatives are doomed, I tell you. Doomed.
And quite deservedly so.
IPSOS suffers from the fact that it takes them a lot longer than other pollsters to publish their results. So its polling is always a tad out of date, in this case their fieldwork dates were from 8th to 14th May.
Taking the IPSOS poll together with the 6 polls that have already been published with more recent fieldwork, the LDs are on average polling 9.4%. That compares with 11.8% at GE 2019. So they're currently down about one fifth of their support in 2019. If that amounts to a surge it's a downward one.
Nor is there any evidence from general election polling that the LD vote is being refocused onto their target seats alone. In the R&W "Blue Wall" polling, which includes most of the LD target seats in the South, Labour remains in the lead on 34%. The LDs are in 3rd place (on 20% compared to 27.4% in 2019.)
The LDs will still pick up a few seats at the general election because the collapse in the Conservative vote outweighsthe slide in their own support. But apart from a very small number of seats, the best tactical option is now not to vote LD and the LD vote will be squeezed accordingly.
Just been sent a job advert for a civil service role in London.
Offering £62,000 for a job requiring you to be on site in London where the job description lists skills that earn people £120,000 working from home isn’t going to get you many candidates.
Not even with one of those gold-plated pensions we hear so much about?
The thing with "gold-plated" is that it hides the metal underneath - the basic salary. For the civil service (trust me), it's lead rather than silver.
Yes, a friend's boy turned down a Treasury job when a hedge fund waved its chequebook.
I’m not saying it IS Israel. I’m merely asking the question, in a mildly provocative way
Given that Iran recently rained down a thousand missiles on Israel, it’s not stretching credulity to claim that the Israelis might have taken stealthy revenge
Doing it against a chopper in the fog and the rain gives them plausible deniability as well. So it’s doubly clever. If it’s them. Which it might not be. But it might be. Etc etc etc
Clowns In Amerigo Kate Mossad Inside Job Whatever NKVD go by now A big mountain getting in the way Pilot being a massive spanner
Take your pick or spin the wheel
Cui bono? Its not obvious
So this feels more like emotional revenge - if it’s not a simple accident - which then points to Israel or the Iranian “resistance”
For them the act itself is the benefit. A satisfying act of vengeance served cold in the fog
Well, an interesting aspect of this is that 3 WellyCopters took off and 2 made it home, the one that didnt just happened to be the one carrying the Iranian President whom they couldn't locate the site of for 12 and more hours in the same week someone tried to assassinate the Slovak president and on the same day that the first American military C17 landed in Azerbeijan in a year shortly after the Iranians left. Random Chance is a funny old thing
Yes, as you know I’m not prone to excitability or conspiracy theories but this makes me go HMMM
Edit to add: if I was high up in Mossad (spoiler: I’m not) I would absolutely do this. And if I was Bibi I’d absolutely approve
Israel was not allowed to carpet bomb Iran after the Iranian missile attack. The Americans said Nyet
But this is the next best thing. Take out two top leaders. That’s arguably an even better deterrent (especially when done in rain and fog so an accident is plausible). This says to any future Iranian leaders - “go ahead, bomb Jerusalem, but you’ll personally be dead in a month”
Very clever. And probably highly effective
Accident.
You were 90% wet market zoonosis until about a week ago. You’re not known for your imaginative and extrapolative capacities. And fair enough. Who wants a vivid imagination and rapid fire almost-psychotic extrapolating in an accountant? You want the opposite. No imagination at all and the narrowest of minds
Happily, the world has room for us both; indeed the world needs us both
Yes, you bring the flights of fancy, I'll bring the judgement and logic. It works.
This is, in essence, one of the unique strengths of this site. Not only do the interesting stories get flagged here first, they then get rigorously checked by a sceptical audience. Any story has to be pretty robust to withstand that.
One of the best things about this site is the army of fact-checkers. Having terrible opinions is one thing, but post something materially incorrect and you soon get told!
Radiohead is a fantastic band.
Creep
Tell me they're not. Go on. I dare you. I double dare you (motherfu...).
Sorry, for a minute there, I lost myself. I’ll take a quiet life.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
And that’s part of why places like Japan and South Korea had lower rates of COVID.
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
I don't understand why helicopters fly anywhere near fog.
Helicopters don't seem the safety of travel methods. Anything goes wrong, you are brown bread. Colin McRae, Kobe Bryant, the Leicester owners, Matthew Harding....
My former Aer Lingus mechanic father-in-law always says that planes are a lot safer than people think and helicopters a lot more dangerous.
Some time ago I managed to conquer a nasty fear of flying that I had since my youth. But there is no way, at all, ever, that I will be persuaded to get on a helicopter.
Helicopters are un-natural things. If they were invented today, they’d almost certainly have trouble being approved on the basis of too many single points of critical failure, and that’s before we get on to unplanned terrain/vehicle interfaces in poor weather - although to be fair most of those are human-factors related, in what’s a very difficult skill to master.
I have noticed, aht and abaht, that the incidence of mask wearing has moved from 1/1,000 to 1/750.
Including, very sadly, imo a young I'm guessing Japanese mother and her, I'm guessing, seven year old daughter walking along in the bright spring sunshine in London last week.
Mask wearing among Asians (Japanese, Chinese) etc was a think before covid, certainly at the Uni you say them masking pre 2020.
And that’s part of why places like Japan and South Korea had lower rates of COVID.
Very likely. Arguably should have been used sooner in the UK too, pre vaccination.
Those countries also have a longer history with diseases like Covid and were I think better set up at the start. Plus they don't have a population of utter wankers (as exemplified by idiot journos, and those who ignored rules 'because').
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
I’ve followed Chris Harris since he was a junior writer at Autocar magazine three decades ago, but very little is going to persuade me to watch anything with McGuinness involved.
They need to find Harris two other auto journalist partners, there’s plenty to choose from, but they do make good money on YouTube.
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
That looks like a significant move to LLG.
+2 LLG -3 RefCon +2 Nats and ??
Although with Con not benefitting appreciably from the Reform drop off in any polling we can perhaps drop the rather daft association of Reform and Con as a 'unit'
The Conservatives and LDs and Others are up, Labour are down
It looks like a significant move towards the Lib Dems and the Greens. If the Reform trend continues and the Tories are still stuck, then the last hope for the Tories begins to look very thin indeed. If the Lib Dems get into the mid teens the Tories start to lose a lot more seats.
If the LDs and Greens eat into Labour votes the Tories also save more seats they would otherwise have lost to Labour
Depends where though. If the LDs eat into the Labour vote in the LD targets (ie tactical voting) then the Tories will lose more seats. From some of the polls it looks like Labour are building up quite a lot of votes in non target seats that the LDs are after. If that switches from Lab to LDs in those seats then the Tories will be in big trouble. Admittedly that is not clear yet, but if the LDs do go up in the polls that is a nightmare scenario for the Tories.
There are far more seats the Tories are at risk of losing to Labour than the LDs.
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
No, not at all, young HY. Every seat is different, The amount of effort the Lib Dems are putting varies enormously from one seat to another. Where they are trying seriously to win, the Labour etc vote will be squeezed. The Lib Dems are not there to pull your Tory chestnuts out of the fire for you.
The Conservatives are doomed, I tell you. Doomed.
And quite deservedly so.
IPSOS suffers from the fact that it takes them a lot longer than other pollsters to publish their results. So its polling is always a tad out of date, in this case their fieldwork dates were from 8th to 14th May.
Taking the IPSOS poll together with the 6 polls that have already been published with more recent fieldwork, the LDs are on average polling 9.4%. That compares with 11.8% at GE 2019. So they're currently down about one fifth of their support in 2019. If that amounts to a surge it's a downward one.
Nor is there any evidence from general election polling that the LD vote is being refocused onto their target seats alone. In the R&W "Blue Wall" polling, which includes most of the LD target seats in the South, Labour remains in the lead on 34%. The LDs are in 3rd place (on 20% compared to 27.4% in 2019.)
The LDs will still pick up a few seats at the general election because the collapse in the Conservative vote outweighsthe slide in their own support. But apart from a very small number of seats, the best tactical option is now not to vote LD and the LD vote will be squeezed accordingly.
Ipsos still canvas using phones. All other polling companies use internet panels. The response time is quite different.
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
I’ve followed Chris Harris since he was a junior writer at Autocar magazine three decades ago, but very little is going to persuade me to watch anything with McGuinness involved.
They need to find Harris two other auto journalist partners, there’s plenty to choose from, but they do make good money on YouTube.
And again this is the problem for the likes of BBC. There are several big UK YouTube channels that have stepped into doing the Top Gear thing from witty reviews to road trips / car makeovers / etc and those people make very good money at it without anybody telling them what to do.
The man who attempted to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, and beat her husband over the head with a hammer, has been sentenced to 30 and 20 years in prison, to run concurrently.
That's the Federal Offences. State Charges still to be tried.
Mossad have nailed "living rent free". Anything remotely unfortunate happens in the Middle East and the world just assumes it was them.
Weirdly MI6 also have this reputation in Russia.
Occam's razor says old helicopter, poor maintenance due to difficulty accessing parts and bad weather...plus if a helicopter malfunctions you are pretty much done for, no multiple engines / potential to glide like a plane.
Not what Occam's razor is about. It would apply if we said We have no other evidence that Israel is actively interested in and very good at assassinating Iranians but if we supposed it did, and hypothesized the existence of an arm of the state dedicated to this activity, that would be a pretty good explanation of this incident. Actually lots of aircraft are much older than you would think and there may be evidence that the Iranians are shit at helicopter maintenance but where is it?
Israeli government and Hamas as bad as each other - now official. And this is the reality of it for all the people insisting the other side is bad and their side righteous. They’re BOTH bad.
Morning all. This month's Ipsos is out, headline figures are Lab 41 (-3) Con 20 (+1) LD 11 (+3) Green 11 (!) (+2) Ref 9 (-4) Others 8 (+2)
Green/Reform crossover. No, I don't know what it means either...
The Greens had 181 councillors elected at the local elections at the start of the month, an increase of 74. Reform UK had two councillors elected, an increase of two.
For comparison, the Workers Party had four councillors elected, the SDP one and the Women's Equality Party one.
Voters have presumably noticed that the Greens are a proper party, while Reform UK are not.
Greens are in some unexpected (to me) places.
Seven seats in Darlington, for example.
Does anyone know Darlington demographics etc. It is:
Harrowgate Hill Harrowgate Hill Harrowgate Hill Hummersknott Hummersknott College College
🚨Exc: Migrants sent to Rwanda face being flown out to another country if the medical care they need isn't available there
British taxpayer will cover the costs of treatment abroad in Belgium, India, Turkey, or one of seven east African countries, under contract signed last week
They're not going to be staying in Rwanda once they get there ffs.
"Politicians, campaigners, doctors, and victims are among those who gave evidence to the inquiry. Here are a few important moments:
Sir John Major, prime minister from 1990 to 1997 drew gasps when he described the scandal as "incredibly bad luck”. Major later apologised, saying he expressed himself “injudiciously”. Lord Norman Fowler told the inquiry it was "regrettable" the government said in 1983 there was “no conclusive proof” aids could be transmitted by blood products. Lord Kenneth Clarke was quoted in a government press release as saying: “It has been suggested that aids may be transmitted in blood or blood products, there is no conclusive proof that this is so”. He told the inquiry this was “entirely accurate” at the time. Richard Warwick, a former pupil at Treloar College who was infected with HIV in 1978, said: “I often just think, why me? Why am I still here?”. At least 72 Treloar students died after being treated with contaminated blood from 1974 to 1987."
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
I’ve followed Chris Harris since he was a junior writer at Autocar magazine three decades ago, but very little is going to persuade me to watch anything with McGuinness involved.
They need to find Harris two other auto journalist partners, there’s plenty to choose from, but they do make good money on YouTube.
And again this is the problem for the likes of BBC. There are several big UK YouTube channels that have stepped into doing the Top Gear thing from witty reviews to road trips / car makeovers / etc and those people make very good money at it without anybody telling them what to do.
Yep, automotive pays pretty well on YouTube, because you can guess who’s advertising against the videos, although online revenue in general has been falling for the past year or so with the wider industry troubles in both automotive and advertising.
Mossad have nailed "living rent free". Anything remotely unfortunate happens in the Middle East and the world just assumes it was them.
Weirdly MI6 also have this reputation in Russia.
Occam's razor says old helicopter, poor maintenance due to difficulty accessing parts and bad weather...plus if a helicopter malfunctions you are pretty much done for, no multiple engines / potential to glide like a plane.
Not what Occam's razor is about. It would apply if we said We have no other evidence that Israel is actively interested in and very good at assassinating Iranians but if we supposed it did, and hypothesized the existence of an arm of the state dedicated to this activity, that would be a pretty good explanation of this incident. Actually lots of aircraft are much older than you would think and there may be evidence that the Iranians are shit at helicopter maintenance but where is it?
Iran’s aviation industry has been blighted by years of neglect, underinvestment, and grueling sanctions that have made it nearly impossible to purchase new aircraft. Accidents are recurrent and air transportation safety standards have steadily fallen, leading to concern among the many Iranians who choose to fly with the country’s domestic carriers or have no other choice because internal routes are not served by international airlines.
Without access to spare parts and technical support from manufacturers, the safety of Iranian carriers is also a significant concern. In 2022, Asia Times reported that The Aviation Safety Network had recorded 1,959 casualties from air disasters in Iran since 1929. Notably, only about 10% occurred before 1979, when the country was first sanctioned by the US.
Comments
"The Republic of Azerbaijan has become increasingly pro-Western aligned, and is an ally of Israel, Turkey and the United States (the latter two being NATO members) while the Islamic Republic of Iran is largely pro-Russian and pro-Chinese aligned due to its hostility towards the U.S. and has been targeted with sanctions.[citation needed] Iranian politicians, like Mohammad Hosseini, have called Azerbaijan an Israeli proxy.[12]"
Grauniad today
"Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early on Sunday to inaugurate a dam with the country’s president, Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third that the two nations have built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran’s Shia theocracy views as its main enemy in the region."
All of which has me adjusting my priors about mossad involvement.
Specialized S-Works Tarmac SL8 Di2Boris Bike so the moleskins were getting a shellacking.There is a small chance (2%?) that the Lib Dems will be the official opposition.
Looking at the trend lines and with some effective tactical voting, it could be Lib Dems 65 seats, Conservatives 57 seats.
https://www.edwest.co.uk/p/did-mobile-phones-cause-the-crime
"Did mobile phones cause the crime collapse?
That little thing in your pocket is the greatest law enforcement tool in history
ED WEST
MAY 20, 2024"
What they actually did, was move the mountain at the exact strategic moment...
I don't think you particularly need to appeal to logic either. There's an argument within the war coalition in Israel because Netanyahu rejects the need for a post-war plan for Gaza as being weak. The request isn't even for a plan that involves being nice to Palestinians, or making peace with them - just for a frigging plan.
In that context you don't really need to construct a chain of logic to justify an action. Logic didn't come into it. So I don't think motive is an issue.
The stumbling block is opportunity.
Fog is pretty hard to forecast. Although it looks now as though fog provides the perfect cover for an assassination, no-one planning an assassination would have been sure that the fog would have been there. It's overwhelmingly likely that the fog caused the crash.
Always liked the one where HR tweaked our requirements - to demand a Java developer with a longer skill history than Java had been existence.
Hmmm, he does realise that even fairly dumb criminals now just walk around with their faces covered. They don't seem very bothered by being filmed when they are nicking phones, cars and bikes, as they threaten to pull a knife and the public will understandably back off and let them finish stealing.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3332412/Pilot-helicopter-crashed-London-street-wasn-t-happy-flying-freezing-fog-wasn-t-pressured-company-inquest-told.html
"Pilot of helicopter that crashed into London street 'wasn't happy about flying because of freezing fog' but wasn't pressured by company, inquest told
The helicopter Pete Barnes, 50, was flying hit a crane in Vauxhall
He died from injuries and pedestrian Matthew Wood, 39, was also killed
Mr Barnes' partner Rebecca Dixon said he was worried about fog that day
He did 'not take adverse risks' coroner's inquest was told "
That said, yes there are some incredibly ancient places in south Italy
Erk, beaten to it!
Another useless observation is that there were a huge number of EVs in Las Vegas. More than I have seen anywhere else.
There simply wouldn't be enough popcorn on the planet...
Probably
All naming a party (their other measure as opposed to all certain to vote) was 42 22 with Green and Reform down a touch on their certainty scores.
Others splits out 4 SNP/PC (so 3 to 1 or thereabouts) and 4 other others - so 4% certainty for Indies, Galloway, SDP, UKIP, but haven't seen full tables for which of them got the majority of the 4
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyxxlge97deo
I have always been a big believer that PM / leader of the opposition should be made to do this on a regular basis. They never do QT. I don't think the Chancellor and their shadows do either. The issue shouldn't be that you had an event with the PM, it should be did you offer Starmer a similar opportunity.
Ed Balls.
And then on June 19th we pivot from Lilac Towels to Free Owls.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_helicopters
The place looks mountainous af on Google maps so fog will be fairly common. If fog is both commonplace and of low lethality the "too much of a coincidence" argument doesn't really work
I knew a Major, who got pooh-poohed, made the mistake of ignoring the pooh-pooh. He pooh-poohed it! Fatal error! 'Cos it turned out all along that the soldier who pooh-poohed him had been pooh-poohing a lot of other officers who pooh-poohed their pooh-poohs. In the end, we had to disband the regiment. Morale totally destroyed... by pooh-pooh!
For what it's worth I have a friend who works for the great satan (the ones who can't help winning) who tells me the 115 charges are going nowhere.
Even if they are totally innocent, if enough people believe Israel did it, it may affect Iran's posture in one way or the other. Hard to guess really. But the Smolensk air disaster cast a long shadow over Polish politics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Oquiv-kgpo
https://x.com/thesundaysport/status/1792465442277044282?s=61
So if the LDs do go up on average mainly at Labour expense that overall saves more Conservative seats
https://adage.com/videos/tabasco-mosquito/989
The Conservatives are doomed, I tell you. Doomed.
And quite deservedly so.
I don't understand why this wasn't held to be an issue when United and Liverpool were winning everything.
The correlation between 'where team x finishes in the league' and 'how rich that club is relative to other clubs' - seems (albeit given a few years lag for the impact of money to seep through) to be roughly 1.0.
So I find it odd that most of the complaints about City come from fans of other big rich clubs.
"Now, if we go back to Der Spiegel, the allegations were around driving more money into the club from owner Sheikh Mansour through fictitious sponsorship deals, paying then manager Roberto Mancini to act as a consultant to a club in Abu Dhabi and giving players more money than was going through the accounts."
So paying players off the books? That's why Swindon were relegated two divisions in 1990. Time for a reckoning, but it won't happen. See also Spurs getting away with it (fairly soon after Swindon's case).
Absolutely the last thing the Tories need now is an LD surge. The Blues would be heavily engaged in a war on two fronts in that case. Labour would for the most part be shedding votes where it needs them least.
I think there have been numerous stories of the father's of particularly young hot prospects suddenly becoming scouts or consultants for clubs by total coincidence.
Economic optimism went from -31 in April to -4 in May. A lagging indicator to a certain extent but any 'effect' if there is one will need to kick in imminently or its empty box of tricks, nobody is coming to save you time
Once again, it don't mean a thing if it's uniform swing. (Do wops omitted since it turns out they were only affordable if there were foreigners willing to pay over the odds for them.)
My favourite Radiohead story is that they used to be called "On a Friday" and they had to change because people kept showing up to their gigs on Fridays.
For comparison, the Workers Party had four councillors elected, the SDP one and the Women's Equality Party one.
Voters have presumably noticed that the Greens are a proper party, while Reform UK are not.
Currently Labour are on for a big majority and the LDs on for modest gains. But if the LD vote increases significantly at the expense of Labour but only in their targets that will be the perfect storm.
You cannot deduce that switches from Labour to LDs will be good for the Tories. It might be, but it might actually be much worse for the Tories. It all depends where those switches occur.
If that was repeated at the GE it would mean tactical voting was not as strong as in 1997, where it was the marginal seats the Tories held which saw the biggest swing
Weirdly MI6 also have this reputation in Russia.
For the civil service (trust me), it's lead rather than silver.
Taking the IPSOS poll together with the 6 polls that have already been published with more recent fieldwork, the LDs are on average polling 9.4%. That compares with 11.8% at GE 2019. So they're currently down about one fifth of their support in 2019. If that amounts to a surge it's a downward one.
Nor is there any evidence from general election polling that the LD vote is being refocused onto their target seats alone. In the R&W "Blue Wall" polling, which includes most of the LD target seats in the South, Labour remains in the lead on 34%. The LDs are in 3rd place (on 20% compared to 27.4% in 2019.)
The LDs will still pick up a few seats at the general election because the collapse in the Conservative vote outweighsthe slide in their own support. But apart from a very small number of seats, the best tactical option is now not to vote LD and the LD vote will be squeezed accordingly.
ICC seeking arrest of Netanyahu and Hamas leaders
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/may/20/iran-helicopter-crash-live-updates-ebrahim-raisi-iranian-president-search-and-rescue-middle-east-crisis-latest-news?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cxrr47k2l6ro
Anybody would think Paddy McGuiness must have serious dirt on commissioning editors at the BBC or he is the only Northern bloke they know. He certainly doesn't get all these gigs due to success of his previous shows, as he is one man wrecking ball for ratings.
Those countries also have a longer history with diseases like Covid and were I think better set up at the start. Plus they don't have a population of utter wankers (as exemplified by idiot journos, and those who ignored rules 'because').
They need to find Harris two other auto journalist partners, there’s plenty to choose from, but they do make good money on YouTube.
That's one of the many reasons why Mr Trump is wetting his pants over the current one.
Seven seats in Darlington, for example.
Does anyone know Darlington demographics etc. It is:
Harrowgate Hill
Harrowgate Hill
Harrowgate Hill
Hummersknott
Hummersknott
College
College
Sir John Major, prime minister from 1990 to 1997 drew gasps when he described the scandal as "incredibly bad luck”. Major later apologised, saying he expressed himself “injudiciously”.
Lord Norman Fowler told the inquiry it was "regrettable" the government said in 1983 there was “no conclusive proof” aids could be transmitted by blood products.
Lord Kenneth Clarke was quoted in a government press release as saying: “It has been suggested that aids may be transmitted in blood or blood products, there is no conclusive proof that this is so”. He told the inquiry this was “entirely accurate” at the time.
Richard Warwick, a former pupil at Treloar College who was infected with HIV in 1978, said: “I often just think, why me? Why am I still here?”. At least 72 Treloar students died after being treated with contaminated blood from 1974 to 1987."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-69025640
https://gulfif.org/irans-aviation-industry-is-in-dire-straits/
Without access to spare parts and technical support from manufacturers, the safety of Iranian carriers is also a significant concern. In 2022, Asia Times reported that The Aviation Safety Network had recorded 1,959 casualties from air disasters in Iran since 1929. Notably, only about 10% occurred before 1979, when the country was first sanctioned by the US.
https://simpleflying.com/iranian-aviation-sanctions-analysis/