Rachel Reeves will put up taxes by £35bn within five years as part of her plans to increase investment and spending on public services, according to a Wall Street bank. The increase in taxes by the 2029 to 2030 tax year will help fund £57bn of increases to public spending by the same point, Bank of America said.
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
There really is an enormous amount of far-right material on Twitter now. A thread I saw this morning on Trump's Hitler comments has about 60.Nazi-era propaganda posters and slogans loaded on it, with no moderation. Some of yesterday's threads about Chris Kaba, from the right, have antisemitic cartoons on them. Still there today.
It's somewhat parallel to the enshittification cycle, but with Nazis.
4chan being the obvious example. 2007 4chan was a bunch of nerds posting memes and wearing guy fawkes masks trolling scientology. Because of the forum's unmoderated nature, more and more Nazis started moving in as they were banned from other places. More Nazi content gets posted, causing non-Nazi people to leave. Eventually it's just an echo chamber of anti-semitic and other far right bullshit.
They have completely broken the algorithm on Twitter, or maybe it is by design.
The “For you” tab is supposed to show content I assume it thinks I would like. But it’s just far right material or Elon Tweets. I have said so many times I am not interested in this stuff but it keeps showing it to me.
I just use the “Following” tab which avoids this but it’s strange.
Or it's rage bait designed to keep you engaged by arguing with it.
On the positive side, look at how well that strategy worked for Facebook in 2016...
But it doesn’t work though. I don’t interact with it I just go to the page by accident and immediately go to another?
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
Anyone who votes for Trump knows who he is. They have agency and they are happy to overlook his racism, his criminality, his opposition to democracy and the rule of law, his support for Putin and so on. But the Democrats messed up by failing to understand just how many Americans really don't mind voting for such a candidate if they do not like the alternative. If it wasn't for the harm a Trump presidency will do the UK, I would be watching all this with detached interest. But the forthcoming betrayal of Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade war are going to be very bad for us. It's worrying.
People vote for fascists, again and again, despite the lessons from history.
We assume that Hitler was an aberration, but it appears a lot of Americans don't see it that way.
Trump isn't Hitler. He is more like Peron, or Boulanger.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
That's a comfort blanket that your friend is clinging to.
The good quality polls show that it is a coin toss, in terms of vote share (which likely means Trump is ahead in the Electoral College).
No the good quality polls show a small Harris lead in vote share. It's a coin toss in the EC. E.g. just today Ipsos,Yougov have Harris up by 2-3 pts.
And Fox has Trump 2% ahead, Atlas 3%. Emerson and Suffolk each have Harris ahead by 1%. Average those out, and you get a lead of 0.4% for Harris.
Fox. Real quality. Stopped broadcasting here.
Fox polls are rated in the top 20, by 538, but I’m sure you know better.
I accept that. I tried watching Fox in the past and found it to be foul and full of bigoted haters and was glad when they pulled out of the UK.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
“The Community” must have been traumatised by Kaba’s actions.
Yeah but which 'community'. It's been interesting reading comments from black people claiming that the likes of Kaba have made their lives hell. As soom as there are rumours of a potential riot or just protests after this sort of event everyone is desperate to calm things down. The BBC and Guardian appear to operate on a 'no smoke without fire' basis, blithely ignoring the fact there are plenty of grifters blowing smoke out of their asses.
The often quoted Chris Rock routine. The people who do the acts, and the people who carry water for them make life much more difficult for those, who like everyone else just want to go to work, raise their kids safely, live a peaceful and quiet life.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
Don't tell 'im, Pike!
B Roads the most dangerous for most type of car accidents. Motorcycles and bikes as well. Junctions next on the list.
John Kelly, Trumps former chief of staff calls Trump a fascist who berated him for not being willing to act like Hitlers generals.
Two observations:
He still wont endorse Harris. Pathetic given the above. When pb-ers point out Trump is a fascist, we get accused of being ultra woke partisan socialists. In reality we are just normal people who have not lost the ability to say what is in plain sight without whataboutery.
But that also shows how Trump can win. Even if voters think Trump is a fascist, or a lunatic, or incontinent, he is still *our* candidate for the roughly half the country that will not support the Democrats. When the votes are counted, no-one cares who was holding their nose.
Yes the reasons Trump is well placed to win go back to early 2021 and the failure of McConnell et al to hold him to account. They briefly and half heartedly attempted to do so but went back to being his cucks.
Look what happened to those Republicans that stood up to him, like Liz Cheney. If they'd stood up to Trump they feared being primaried into oblivion. Perhaps if they'd stood together they could have convinced their voters they were right to do so, but they chose fear, career and self-interest over country.
If Trump becomes President they are likely to do the same again and again in response to him smashing through the checks and balances of the Constitution.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
“The Community” must have been traumatised by Kaba’s actions.
Yeah but which 'community'. It's been interesting reading comments from black people claiming that the likes of Kaba have made their lives hell. As soom as there are rumours of a potential riot or just protests after this sort of event everyone is desperate to calm things down. The BBC and Guardian appear to operate on a 'no smoke without fire' basis, blithely ignoring the fact there are plenty of grifters blowing smoke out of their asses.
The often quoted Chris Rock routine. The people who do the acts, and the people who carry water for them make life much more difficult for those, who like everyone else just want to go to work, raise their kids safely, live a peaceful and quiet life.
To be fair, the gun totting, nightclub shooting, drug dealing community must be a bit upset.
What kind of a world is it, where you can't just get your gangland killings done in peace, without the Feds interfering?
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
Long queues at a polling station can be a designed feature of a US election - especially in areas which vote the opposite way of the State Leadership.
Gerrymandering doesn't just result in weirdly shaped districts it can also result in rules designed to make voting very difficult for some people..
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
They seem to have far fewer polling stations, for a start (and a massively skewed distribution of polling stations too).
One of the great things about British elections. The local school or scout hut decked out with a few plywood booths and a sort of cheerful hush over the whole thing, and rarely if ever any kind of queue. French elections are similar. You go and vote at the local Mairie or salle d'activites. From what I've heard they sometimes go a few hours without a single voter turning up.
"In order to qualify, the gifts must come from income and form part of a regular pattern. Also, the donor will not be eligible for the tax break if they have to lower their living standards in order to afford the gifts."
How is this calculated? Sounds very subjective.
Its a bit like the scheme people abused about giving / selling their home to a relative and paying rent back to them to live in, or the granny flat. It is supposed to be all market rate, very difficult to ensure that, the relative could pay what is on the very low end, you don't increase it for years on end, and that perhaps their shopping is bought for them every week. Its impossible to really know.
It would provide a magnificent opportunity for lawyers to argue the cases.
Its never gets to them unless you very extreme end. The authorities have 20,000 other things to do than worry if little old granny living in a flat above your garage at £500 a month is the going rate and I am sure if on the very rare occasion there are all sorts of get outs e.g. you don't closely follow the rental property market, £500 was a perfectly reasonable amount 5 year ago.
I mean we haven't even reassessed property values for council tax for what 30 years.
Because no-one can find a way of doing it that isn't a political nightmare.
The solution would be to move council tax into some central government tax based on house prices and gives councils a percentage of income tax or similar...
But then why bother with councils if you have a universal rate. The best course of action would be a slow rolling revaluation. Council Tax band is reassessed on house sale, with sale price being the determinant. Once a certain percent of the street has been reassessed everyone moves into that new level (or according band if a smaller property). No mass revaluation, no revolt.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But is that simply because there are far more cyclists in the Netherlands?
"In order to qualify, the gifts must come from income and form part of a regular pattern. Also, the donor will not be eligible for the tax break if they have to lower their living standards in order to afford the gifts."
How is this calculated? Sounds very subjective.
Its a bit like the scheme people abused about giving / selling their home to a relative and paying rent back to them to live in, or the granny flat. It is supposed to be all market rate, very difficult to ensure that, the relative could pay what is on the very low end, you don't increase it for years on end, and that perhaps their shopping is bought for them every week. Its impossible to really know.
It would provide a magnificent opportunity for lawyers to argue the cases.
Its never gets to them unless you very extreme end. The authorities have 20,000 other things to do than worry if little old granny living in a flat above your garage at £500 a month is the going rate and I am sure if on the very rare occasion there are all sorts of get outs e.g. you don't closely follow the rental property market, £500 was a perfectly reasonable amount 5 year ago.
I mean we haven't even reassessed property values for council tax for what 30 years.
Because no-one can find a way of doing it that isn't a political nightmare.
The solution would be to move council tax into some central government tax based on house prices and gives councils a percentage of income tax or similar...
But then why bother with councils if you have a universal rate. The best course of action would be a slow rolling revaluation. Council Tax band is reassessed on house sale, with sale price being the determinant. Once a certain percent of the street has been reassessed everyone moves into that new level (or according band if a smaller property). No mass revaluation, no revolt.
So what is you definition of a band B property in that circumstance because it may be £40,000 up north and £200,000 down south..
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
It's looking increasingly like Trump has this in the bag, I must say.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
“The Community” must have been traumatised by Kaba’s actions.
Yeah but which 'community'. It's been interesting reading comments from black people claiming that the likes of Kaba have made their lives hell. As soom as there are rumours of a potential riot or just protests after this sort of event everyone is desperate to calm things down. The BBC and Guardian appear to operate on a 'no smoke without fire' basis, blithely ignoring the fact there are plenty of grifters blowing smoke out of their asses.
The often quoted Chris Rock routine. The people who do the acts, and the people who carry water for them make life much more difficult for those, who like everyone else just want to go to work, raise their kids safely, live a peaceful and quiet life.
To be fair, the gun totting, nightclub shooting, drug dealing community must be a bit upset.
What kind of a world is it, where you can't just get your gangland killings done in peace, without the Feds interfering?
The big problem in all this, is that people outside "the community" see the the community as a homogenous cess pit of gun crime, drugs and lawless men. You want to see vicious prejudice chat to a west african about the Jamaicans in their neighbourhood ruining everything.
Rachel Reeves will put up taxes by £35bn within five years as part of her plans to increase investment and spending on public services, according to a Wall Street bank. The increase in taxes by the 2029 to 2030 tax year will help fund £57bn of increases to public spending by the same point, Bank of America said.
Manchester Arena attack survivors win harassment case against conspiracy theorist Richard Hall who claims it was hoax
Two survivors of the Manchester Arena attack have won their harassment case against a conspiracy theorist who claims the bombing was "staged".
Former television producer Richard Hall has said he believes the attack at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017 was a hoax, and that no one was "genuinely injured".
Martin Hibbert and his daughter Eve, who were both severely injured in the explosion, brought legal proceedings against Mr Hall for harassment and data protection, with a civil trial taking place in July.
High Court judge Mrs Justice Steyn ruling today that "the claimants have succeeded on their harassment claim", adding that she would not decide the data protection claim at this stage.
Its weird. I know we all have areas of belief - its a spectrum from lefties thinking Laura Kuensberg is a Tory, all the way up to idiots like this (see also faked moon landings, 9/11 etc)
And I can see how people can have questions about stuff - if you watch stuff online for instance you can come away believing that convincing cases have been made for all kinds of off the wall things. But quite why someone can end up believing that a bombing at a concert, with all the witnesses and video evidence and everything is a hoax is beyond me.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
To round out your last paragraph - they shot someone driving a car linked to three recent shootings and thus they had a strong belief that the driver, whoever he was, would be armed.
Like with some previous police shootings - Harry Stanley is the most obvious one, shot while carrying a chair leg - if the police have a belief that you may be armed then you have to do everything right to avoid being shot.
This is not much different to the situation in the US, except that the prevalence and use of guns is so much greater that the police there have a belief that everyone they interact with may be armed, and so people have to do everything right in every interaction with police to avoid being shot.
In the UK, the really tragic cases are those where an entirely innocent person has no reason to suspect that police may believe they are armed, react entirely naturally, and then get shot. But that doesn't feel like the situation with this recent case.
It feels quite offensive to those victims of police shootings - like Harry Stanley - to be lumped in by the media with this case. There have been awful cases of people dying in British police custody after being inappropriately restrained, there was the PC rightly jailed for killing Dalian Atkinson with a taser. I think there's been progress on making sure that the police are not above the law.
The reporting of this case has been abysmal, and I think the CPS have wasted court time. There's no way this case should have been treated as a cause célèbre.
The shooting of the unarmed Brazilian man (without googling, i think it was charles de menzies?) on the tube was awful, and then the off the record briefings about his immigration status by the Met as if that somehow gave them cover for a dreadful mistake.
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
The American system seems designed to prevent certain kinds of people from voting.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
One thing about that case that always strikes me is how long it went on for, and how it was uncovered by the police incidentally following another crime.
There might well be large numbers of other such cases, all over the place, continuing undetected. A terrifying thought.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
To round out your last paragraph - they shot someone driving a car linked to three recent shootings and thus they had a strong belief that the driver, whoever he was, would be armed.
Like with some previous police shootings - Harry Stanley is the most obvious one, shot while carrying a chair leg - if the police have a belief that you may be armed then you have to do everything right to avoid being shot.
This is not much different to the situation in the US, except that the prevalence and use of guns is so much greater that the police there have a belief that everyone they interact with may be armed, and so people have to do everything right in every interaction with police to avoid being shot.
In the UK, the really tragic cases are those where an entirely innocent person has no reason to suspect that police may believe they are armed, react entirely naturally, and then get shot. But that doesn't feel like the situation with this recent case.
It feels quite offensive to those victims of police shootings - like Harry Stanley - to be lumped in by the media with this case. There have been awful cases of people dying in British police custody after being inappropriately restrained, there was the PC rightly jailed for killing Dalian Atkinson with a taser. I think there's been progress on making sure that the police are not above the law.
The reporting of this case has been abysmal, and I think the CPS have wasted court time. There's no way this case should have been treated as a cause célèbre.
The shooting of the unarmed Brazilian man (without googling, i think it was charles de menzies?) on the tube was awful, and then the off the record briefings about his immigration status by the Met as if that somehow gave them cover for a dreadful mistake.
It would a good job the person responsible for overseeing such a disastrous operation wasn't promoted up the chain......ohhh...
"In order to qualify, the gifts must come from income and form part of a regular pattern. Also, the donor will not be eligible for the tax break if they have to lower their living standards in order to afford the gifts."
How is this calculated? Sounds very subjective.
Its a bit like the scheme people abused about giving / selling their home to a relative and paying rent back to them to live in, or the granny flat. It is supposed to be all market rate, very difficult to ensure that, the relative could pay what is on the very low end, you don't increase it for years on end, and that perhaps their shopping is bought for them every week. Its impossible to really know.
It would provide a magnificent opportunity for lawyers to argue the cases.
Its never gets to them unless you very extreme end. The authorities have 20,000 other things to do than worry if little old granny living in a flat above your garage at £500 a month is the going rate and I am sure if on the very rare occasion there are all sorts of get outs e.g. you don't closely follow the rental property market, £500 was a perfectly reasonable amount 5 year ago.
I mean we haven't even reassessed property values for council tax for what 30 years.
Because no-one can find a way of doing it that isn't a political nightmare.
The solution would be to move council tax into some central government tax based on house prices and gives councils a percentage of income tax or similar...
But then why bother with councils if you have a universal rate. The best course of action would be a slow rolling revaluation. Council Tax band is reassessed on house sale, with sale price being the determinant. Once a certain percent of the street has been reassessed everyone moves into that new level (or according band if a smaller property). No mass revaluation, no revolt.
So what is you definition of a band B property in that circumstance because it may be £40,000 up north and £200,000 down south..
You determine the bands locally. As they were initially. You just dont throw everyone into the new bands until a house sale.
Rachel Reeves will put up taxes by £35bn within five years as part of her plans to increase investment and spending on public services, according to a Wall Street bank. The increase in taxes by the 2029 to 2030 tax year will help fund £57bn of increases to public spending by the same point, Bank of America said.
£22bn (extra) black hole....
The borrowing figures for the first 6 months of the year are nearly £80 billion, the majority of it down to existing tax and spending. It was clearly grossly irresponsible for Hunt to leave the finances in such a parlour state with his NI cuts.
Note: this borrowing figure doesn't include my payrise, or that of other NHS workers as that is coming in October's pay packet. I don't know about other public sector workers, the armed forces etc.
John Kelly, Trumps former chief of staff calls Trump a fascist who berated him for not being willing to act like Hitlers generals.
Two observations:
He still wont endorse Harris. Pathetic given the above. When pb-ers point out Trump is a fascist, we get accused of being ultra woke partisan socialists. In reality we are just normal people who have not lost the ability to say what is in plain sight without whataboutery.
But that also shows how Trump can win. Even if voters think Trump is a fascist, or a lunatic, or incontinent, he is still *our* candidate for the roughly half the country that will not support the Democrats. When the votes are counted, no-one cares who was holding their nose.
Yes the reasons Trump is well placed to win go back to early 2021 and the failure of McConnell et al to hold him to account. They briefly and half heartedly attempted to do so but went back to being his cucks.
Look what happened to those Republicans that stood up to him, like Liz Cheney. If they'd stood up to Trump they feared being primaried into oblivion. Perhaps if they'd stood together they could have convinced their voters they were right to do so, but they chose fear, career and self-interest over country.
If Trump becomes President they are likely to do the same again and again in response to him smashing through the checks and balances of the Constitution.
Once President the SC have made it clear he doesn't need to abide by the Constitution.
Rachel Reeves will put up taxes by £35bn within five years as part of her plans to increase investment and spending on public services, according to a Wall Street bank. The increase in taxes by the 2029 to 2030 tax year will help fund £57bn of increases to public spending by the same point, Bank of America said.
£22bn (extra) black hole....
The borrowing figures for the first 6 months of the year are nearly £80 billion, the majority of it down to existing tax and spending. It was clearly grossly irresponsible for Hunt to leave the finances in such a parlour state with his NI cuts.
Note: this borrowing figure doesn't include my payrise, or that of other NHS workers as that is coming in October's pay packet. I don't know about other public sector workers, the armed forces etc.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
Lol - everything really is the fault of Labour!
I’m not saying everything. But there is a real naivety about this new government, no vision thing in seeing how things play out or are seen by others, or so easily attacked. As someone said in thread, 6th form level politics.
The truth is, what smart people around a PM should know, The US are not like us, we don’t want to adopt the culture and values of their country, we shouldn’t be interfering in foreign elections as that’s what malign states like Putins does. The 6th formers in charge of the Labour Party have proved themselves politically naive and next to useless in the last 100 days, and this is but the latest example.
It’s idiotic for UK Labour Party leaders to think they have much in common with a foreign political party, at the end of the day we are in competition with foreign countries, their businesses to compete with and destroy our businesses, their nations culture and values different to ours, foreign policies not the same - and maybe shouldn’t be the same is the main point here, if it’s up to voters in different countries to chose the foreign policy they want, without outside interference. Trump is right to call this out, this is democracy the Labour Party are actively undermining here.
It just feels wrong, being in involved in foreign elections. They may look like us, in the case of the US share bits of the same language, but they are not us. The “Special Relationship” is just a gimmick soundbite, whilst our leaders huddled behind that gimmick soundbite in reality the US spent the 20th century spying on us around the world and dismantling our Empire. In the 20th century US foreign policy is not on UK side as much as people choose to think. Something could be said too about manner of having to pay back the money they lent us after the Second World War, but certainly today corporate America is out to thrash us and own UK.
Student politics from Labour again, not good enough for Downing St.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
In a way it is.
"In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2023 there were an estimated:
1,645 fatalities, a decline of 4% compared to 2022 29,643 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, little change compared to 2022 132,063 casualties of all severities, a decline of 3% compared to 2022"
A car is a very lethal device.
In a way, it is a bit like the situation with guns in Switzerland. Swiss have more guns than the US. The reason that this isn't a major problem, is not that the ammo for the military weapons is kept sealed. You can buy the ammo at gun ranges. It is because of culture.
Yes, we have a bit of road rage. However, the number of deliberate attempts to use a vehicle to kill is fortunately quite low.
Society depends on humans being decent, nearly all the time.
I did chemistry - I look at the cleaning products in DIY stores and smile at the panic politicians would be in, if they knew.
The reason appalling events do not happen more often, is simply that nearly everyone does not want to commit horrific acts.
We have one of the lowest rates of car deaths in this country.
Which is largely driven (ha!) by people being careful and decent, 99.999% of the time. Yes, road layouts, laws, car design etc *help*.
But it all comes down to the driver.
I don't know about that. When you look at how large the decline in car deaths had been over many decades, is that really mainly due to improvements in driver behaviour?
Are you really saying the higher road death rate in the past was because earlier generations were so much less careful and decent?
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
It's strange how they never improve the situation.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
“The Community” must have been traumatised by Kaba’s actions.
Yeah but which 'community'. It's been interesting reading comments from black people claiming that the likes of Kaba have made their lives hell. As soom as there are rumours of a potential riot or just protests after this sort of event everyone is desperate to calm things down. The BBC and Guardian appear to operate on a 'no smoke without fire' basis, blithely ignoring the fact there are plenty of grifters blowing smoke out of their asses.
The often quoted Chris Rock routine. The people who do the acts, and the people who carry water for them make life much more difficult for those, who like everyone else just want to go to work, raise their kids safely, live a peaceful and quiet life.
To be fair, the gun totting, nightclub shooting, drug dealing community must be a bit upset.
What kind of a world is it, where you can't just get your gangland killings done in peace, without the Feds interfering?
The big problem in all this, is that people outside "the community" see the the community as a homogenous cess pit of gun crime, drugs and lawless men. You want to see vicious prejudice chat to a west african about the Jamaicans in their neighbourhood ruining everything.
I was engaged to a Ghanian. The stuff said, in that community, about African Americans and West Indians is not repeatable here. I would get an instant life ban for just quoting it.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
Lol - everything really is the fault of Labour!
I’m not saying everything. But there is a real naivety about this new government, no vision thing in seeing how things play out or are seen by others, or so easily attacked. As someone said in thread, 6th form level politics.
The truth is, what smart people around a PM should know, The US are not like us, we don’t want to adopt the culture and values of their country, we shouldn’t be interfering in foreign elections as that’s what malign states like Putins does. The 6th formers in charge of the Labour Party have proved themselves politically naive and next to useless in the last 100 days, and this is but the latest example.
It’s idiotic for UK Labour Party leaders to think they have much in common with a foreign political party, at the end of the day we are in competition with foreign countries, their businesses to compete with and destroy our businesses, their nations culture and values different to ours, foreign policies not the same - and maybe shouldn’t be the same is the main point here, if it’s up to voters in different countries to chose the foreign policy they want, without outside interference. Trump is right to call this out, this is democracy the Labour Party are actively undermining here.
It just feels wrong, being in involved in foreign elections. They may look like us, in the case of the US share bits of the same language, but they are not us. The “Special Relationship” is just a gimmick soundbite, whilst our leaders huddled behind that gimmick soundbite in reality the US spent the 20th century spying on us around the world and dismantling our Empire. In the 20th century US foreign policy is not on UK side as much as people choose to think. Something could be said too about manner of having to pay back the money they lent us after the Second World War, but certainly today corporate America is out to thrash us and own UK.
Student politics from Labour again, not good enough for Downing St.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
In a way it is.
"In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2023 there were an estimated:
1,645 fatalities, a decline of 4% compared to 2022 29,643 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, little change compared to 2022 132,063 casualties of all severities, a decline of 3% compared to 2022"
A car is a very lethal device.
In a way, it is a bit like the situation with guns in Switzerland. Swiss have more guns than the US. The reason that this isn't a major problem, is not that the ammo for the military weapons is kept sealed. You can buy the ammo at gun ranges. It is because of culture.
Yes, we have a bit of road rage. However, the number of deliberate attempts to use a vehicle to kill is fortunately quite low.
Society depends on humans being decent, nearly all the time.
I did chemistry - I look at the cleaning products in DIY stores and smile at the panic politicians would be in, if they knew.
The reason appalling events do not happen more often, is simply that nearly everyone does not want to commit horrific acts.
We have one of the lowest rates of car deaths in this country.
Which is largely driven (ha!) by people being careful and decent, 99.999% of the time. Yes, road layouts, laws, car design etc *help*.
But it all comes down to the driver.
I don't know about that. When you look at how large the decline in car deaths had been over many decades, is that really mainly due to improvements in driver behaviour?
Are you really saying the higher road death rate in the past was because earlier generations were so much less careful and decent?
I think people were a lot more careless, in the past. Look at American driving, when you go there.
Anyone who votes for Trump knows who he is. They have agency and they are happy to overlook his racism, his criminality, his opposition to democracy and the rule of law, his support for Putin and so on. But the Democrats messed up by failing to understand just how many Americans really don't mind voting for such a candidate if they do not like the alternative. If it wasn't for the harm a Trump presidency will do the UK, I would be watching all this with detached interest. But the forthcoming betrayal of Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade war are going to be very bad for us. It's worrying.
People vote for fascists, again and again, despite the lessons from history.
We assume that Hitler was an aberration, but it appears a lot of Americans don't see it that way.
Trump isn't Hitler. He is more like Peron, or Boulanger.
That is not much of a comfort. The Land of the Partially Free...
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
In a way it is.
"In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2023 there were an estimated:
1,645 fatalities, a decline of 4% compared to 2022 29,643 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, little change compared to 2022 132,063 casualties of all severities, a decline of 3% compared to 2022"
A car is a very lethal device.
In a way, it is a bit like the situation with guns in Switzerland. Swiss have more guns than the US. The reason that this isn't a major problem, is not that the ammo for the military weapons is kept sealed. You can buy the ammo at gun ranges. It is because of culture.
Yes, we have a bit of road rage. However, the number of deliberate attempts to use a vehicle to kill is fortunately quite low.
Society depends on humans being decent, nearly all the time.
I did chemistry - I look at the cleaning products in DIY stores and smile at the panic politicians would be in, if they knew.
The reason appalling events do not happen more often, is simply that nearly everyone does not want to commit horrific acts.
We have one of the lowest rates of car deaths in this country.
Which is largely driven (ha!) by people being careful and decent, 99.999% of the time. Yes, road layouts, laws, car design etc *help*.
But it all comes down to the driver.
I don't know about that. When you look at how large the decline in car deaths had been over many decades, is that really mainly due to improvements in driver behaviour?
Are you really saying the higher road death rate in the past was because earlier generations were so much less careful and decent?
I think congestion has a big role in the fall in casualties, with average vehicle speeds falling. That helps with both reaction times and kinetic energy in the collision.
Biden's greatest dereliction of duty was allowing Trump to get away with sedition and treason. In what world does launching a coup d' etat and storing classified documents in one's bathroom ( particularly when one has lavatorial habits like Trump) not justify a custodial ( or capital) sentence?
Yes, these cases should have been dealt with in 2021 so that there was no question of Trump standing again. It seemed to be the case that it took until 2023 for them to get going despite overwhelming evidence on both Jan 6th and the secret documents case allowing Trump to play for time.
Does or can the President control that?
(Subject to Chump and his coach-and-fours through the law and the constitution.)
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
That's a comfort blanket that your friend is clinging to.
The good quality polls show that it is a coin toss, in terms of vote share (which likely means Trump is ahead in the Electoral College).
No the good quality polls show a small Harris lead in vote share. It's a coin toss in the EC. E.g. just today Ipsos,Yougov have Harris up by 2-3 pts.
And Fox has Trump 2% ahead, Atlas 3%. Emerson and Suffolk each have Harris ahead by 1%. Average those out, and you get a lead of 0.4% for Harris.
True. Depends where you draw the line on good I guess, Atlas and Trump don't score so highly on transparency and so are lower down the 538 ranking. The 538 average has Harris +1.8%.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
To round out your last paragraph - they shot someone driving a car linked to three recent shootings and thus they had a strong belief that the driver, whoever he was, would be armed.
Like with some previous police shootings - Harry Stanley is the most obvious one, shot while carrying a chair leg - if the police have a belief that you may be armed then you have to do everything right to avoid being shot.
This is not much different to the situation in the US, except that the prevalence and use of guns is so much greater that the police there have a belief that everyone they interact with may be armed, and so people have to do everything right in every interaction with police to avoid being shot.
In the UK, the really tragic cases are those where an entirely innocent person has no reason to suspect that police may believe they are armed, react entirely naturally, and then get shot. But that doesn't feel like the situation with this recent case.
It feels quite offensive to those victims of police shootings - like Harry Stanley - to be lumped in by the media with this case. There have been awful cases of people dying in British police custody after being inappropriately restrained, there was the PC rightly jailed for killing Dalian Atkinson with a taser. I think there's been progress on making sure that the police are not above the law.
The reporting of this case has been abysmal, and I think the CPS have wasted court time. There's no way this case should have been treated as a cause célèbre.
The shooting of the unarmed Brazilian man (without googling, i think it was charles de menzies?) on the tube was awful, and then the off the record briefings about his immigration status by the Met as if that somehow gave them cover for a dreadful mistake.
He was dreadfully unlucky - lots of things went wrong that led to his death, and it shouldn't have happened.
However - the tendency for the Police (the Met, Sheffield in the case of Hillsborough etc) to lie after the event is for me is bigger issue. The cover-up mentality, the lying just pile on the agony.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
Lol - everything really is the fault of Labour!
I’m not saying everything. But there is a real naivety about this new government, no vision thing in seeing how things play out or are seen by others, or so easily attacked. As someone said in thread, 6th form level politics.
The truth is, what smart people around a PM should know, The US are not like us, we don’t want to adopt the culture and values of their country, we shouldn’t be interfering in foreign elections as that’s what malign states like Putins does. The 6th formers in charge of the Labour Party have proved themselves politically naive and next to useless in the last 100 days, and this is but the latest example.
It’s idiotic for UK Labour Party leaders to think they have much in common with a foreign political party, at the end of the day we are in competition with foreign countries, their businesses to compete with and destroy our businesses, their nations culture and values different to ours, foreign policies not the same - and maybe shouldn’t be the same is the main point here, if it’s up to voters in different countries to chose the foreign policy they want, without outside interference. Trump is right to call this out, this is democracy the Labour Party are actively undermining here.
It just feels wrong, being in involved in foreign elections. They may look like us, in the case of the US share bits of the same language, but they are not us. The “Special Relationship” is just a gimmick soundbite, whilst our leaders huddled behind that gimmick soundbite in reality the US spent the 20th century spying on us around the world and dismantling our Empire. In the 20th century US foreign policy is not on UK side as much as people choose to think. Something could be said too about manner of having to pay back the money they lent us after the Second World War, but certainly today corporate America is out to thrash us and own UK.
Student politics from Labour again, not good enough for Downing St.
PS Brilliant header btw.
(Narrator: Robert Jenrick regards the GOP as a sister party and Kemi Badenoch is endorsed by Gov Ron DeSantis)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
These are yesterday's absolute, rather than relative numbers.
Pennsylvania 🚂 Mail and absentee voting update Total: 1,051,655 (+129,935 since Oct 21)
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
It's strange how they never improve the situation.
Again - the situation may be by design - game things in a way that makes it hard to impossible for voters likely to vote for your opponent to actually vote...
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
Keeping your kids away from scum is good parenting. Using school choice to do so should be celebrated not condemned.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
Lol - everything really is the fault of Labour!
I’m not saying everything. But there is a real naivety about this new government, no vision thing in seeing how things play out or are seen by others, or so easily attacked. As someone said in thread, 6th form level politics.
The truth is, what smart people around a PM should know, The US are not like us, we don’t want to adopt the culture and values of their country, we shouldn’t be interfering in foreign elections as that’s what malign states like Putins does. The 6th formers in charge of the Labour Party have proved themselves politically naive and next to useless in the last 100 days, and this is but the latest example.
It’s idiotic for UK Labour Party leaders to think they have much in common with a foreign political party, at the end of the day we are in competition with foreign countries, their businesses to compete with and destroy our businesses, their nations culture and values different to ours, foreign policies not the same - and maybe shouldn’t be the same is the main point here, if it’s up to voters in different countries to chose the foreign policy they want, without outside interference. Trump is right to call this out, this is democracy the Labour Party are actively undermining here.
It just feels wrong, being in involved in foreign elections. They may look like us, in the case of the US share bits of the same language, but they are not us. The “Special Relationship” is just a gimmick soundbite, whilst our leaders huddled behind that gimmick soundbite in reality the US spent the 20th century spying on us around the world and dismantling our Empire. In the 20th century US foreign policy is not on UK side as much as people choose to think. Something could be said too about manner of having to pay back the money they lent us after the Second World War, but certainly today corporate America is out to thrash us and own UK.
Student politics from Labour again, not good enough for Downing St.
PS Brilliant header btw.
Less sarcastically, whilst you are of course correct, the points you make apply equally to the Conservative Party. We need to focus on ourselves, not on trying to impress others and definitely not expatriating profits and nationalising losses.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
The body cam footage alone meant that a murder conviction was impossible.
If I had been on the jury, my main comment on the prosecution would have been "WTAF?"
The Jury seem to have written a letter which seems to say exactly that - I suspect Guido will be publishing it soon enough..
So when they spent three hours coming to their verdict, it now sounds like they came to a verdict in 30 seconds, and spent the rest of the time writing a letter.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
Labour have not flooded a foreign election with activists. This is entirely normal behaviour that all parties across multiple western democracies have done for decades.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
School streets have helped (for those unfamiliar with the concept, these are streets closed to traffic at school drop off and pick up time).
Very few parents at our local school drive these days. Home time is a carnival of children and parents happily walking, cycling or scooting along the centre of the road then bearing off in various home directions. My 10 year old now walks home on her own a couple of days a week.
Lots on stories about 2 hour queues for the first day of early voting in Wisconsin.
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
It's strange how they never improve the situation.
Again - the situation may be by design - game things in a way that makes it hard to impossible for voters likely to vote for your opponent to actually vote...
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
It happens in Canadian and Australian elections too. Less so between here and Europe because of language.
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
These are yesterday's absolute, rather than relative numbers.
Pennsylvania 🚂 Mail and absentee voting update Total: 1,051,655 (+129,935 since Oct 21)
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
School streets have helped (for those unfamiliar with the concept, these are streets closed to traffic at school drop off and pick up time).
Very few parents at our local school drive these days. Home time is a carnival of children and parents happily walking, cycling or scooting along the centre of the road then bearing off in various home directions. My 10 year old now walks home on her own a couple of days a week.
My mum walked me to school on my first day. From my second day, like all the other five-year-olds, I walked there and home alone, with lollipop ladies or men to help us cross busy roads. That used to be normal.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
The body cam footage alone meant that a murder conviction was impossible.
If I had been on the jury, my main comment on the prosecution would have been "WTAF?"
The Jury seem to have written a letter which seems to say exactly that - I suspect Guido will be publishing it soon enough..
So when they spent three hours coming to their verdict, it now sounds like they came to a verdict in 30 seconds, and spent the rest of the time writing a letter.
According to this, I believe the letter can be read out:
Jury guidelines.
Once the trial is over and you are no longer serving on the jury, you CAN DISCUSS the case with anyone. But there is ONE EXCEPTION. Even after the trial is over, you MUST NOT DISCUSS what was said or done by you or any other member of the jury while the jury was in the DELIBERATING ROOM trying to reach a verdict, unless it is for the purpose of an official investigation into the conduct of any juror.
So long as the letter was started after everyone agreed Blake was Not Guilty. The letter of course must not of course reference their deliberations prior to agreement of the verdict.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
In a way it is.
"In reported road collisions in Great Britain in 2023 there were an estimated:
1,645 fatalities, a decline of 4% compared to 2022 29,643 killed or seriously injured (KSI) casualties, little change compared to 2022 132,063 casualties of all severities, a decline of 3% compared to 2022"
A car is a very lethal device.
In a way, it is a bit like the situation with guns in Switzerland. Swiss have more guns than the US. The reason that this isn't a major problem, is not that the ammo for the military weapons is kept sealed. You can buy the ammo at gun ranges. It is because of culture.
No the Swiss have FAR FEWER guns than the Americans 28 per hundred people, rather than 120 per hundred, partly because only 28% of households own guns in CH, compared to 42% in the US. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1359178924000776, but mostly because the number of guns per head is far lower.
And it IS a major problem - if you look at firearms deaths, as opposed to intentional homicide, there is no difference between Switzerland and the US if you allow for the number of guns - 2.68 per 100k in CH, 10 in the US. America has four times as many guns as Switzerland and about four times as many gun deaths.
Violent, careless and suicidal young men exist in every country, in about the same proportion. It's the number of guns that gives them the opportunity to act out on their ghastly impulses.
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
To me this is straw clutching and making straw men. A non-story.
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
It happens in Canadian and Australian elections too. Less so between here and Europe because of language.
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
These are yesterday's absolute, rather than relative numbers.
Pennsylvania 🚂 Mail and absentee voting update Total: 1,051,655 (+129,935 since Oct 21)
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
I can't find the stats, but that point 2 is the big one. I think something like 80% of primary school kids would walk or cycle to school unaccompanied in the 70s, while the number now is less than half that.
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
These are yesterday's absolute, rather than relative numbers.
Pennsylvania 🚂 Mail and absentee voting update Total: 1,051,655 (+129,935 since Oct 21)
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
I can't find the stats, but that point 2 is the big one. I think something like 80% of primary school kids would walk or cycle to school unaccompanied in the 70s, while the number now is less than half that.
My nearest primary school is 1.2 miles away with a busy 40 mph A-road and not much pavement..., which feels a bit risky for a 4 yr old to walk to tbh.
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far) 2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6 2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote. Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
These are yesterday's absolute, rather than relative numbers.
Pennsylvania 🚂 Mail and absentee voting update Total: 1,051,655 (+129,935 since Oct 21)
An American friend (a dem and Trump-hater) on the movement in betting markets towards Trump:
"If you look at the polls the market is flooded with GOP polls which skew it to Trumps favour, If you look at independent high quality polls it’s very steady for Harris. As for betting, that was also skewed heavily by a few very large bets. They need the illusion he has this in the bag so they can claim fraud after the election. And all the polls over estimate the quiet Trump voter to compensate for past mistakes and I think they underestimating the quiet female voter, republican women voting for Harris. The turnout has been outstanding which generally bodes well for Dems. I’m not saying it won’t be close but I don’t think it’s going to be as close as polls are predicting."
Thoughts?
That's a comfort blanket that your friend is clinging to.
The good quality polls show that it is a coin toss, in terms of vote share (which likely means Trump is ahead in the Electoral College).
No the good quality polls show a small Harris lead in vote share. It's a coin toss in the EC. E.g. just today Ipsos,Yougov have Harris up by 2-3 pts.
And Fox has Trump 2% ahead, Atlas 3%. Emerson and Suffolk each have Harris ahead by 1%. Average those out, and you get a lead of 0.4% for Harris.
Fox. Real quality. Stopped broadcasting here.
I really miss them. They were genuinely entertaining, often intentionally, often not. And they gave you a much better idea of how things look inside the US than we get from our own media, the BBC especially.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Anyone who votes for Trump knows who he is. They have agency and they are happy to overlook his racism, his criminality, his opposition to democracy and the rule of law, his support for Putin and so on. But the Democrats messed up by failing to understand just how many Americans really don't mind voting for such a candidate if they do not like the alternative. If it wasn't for the harm a Trump presidency will do the UK, I would be watching all this with detached interest. But the forthcoming betrayal of Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade war are going to be very bad for us. It's worrying.
People vote for fascists, again and again, despite the lessons from history.
We assume that Hitler was an aberration, but it appears a lot of Americans don't see it that way.
Trump isn't Hitler. He is more like Peron, or Boulanger.
Trump is Trump. But the pattern of dehumanising an “enemy within” and the proposed ‘strong man’ approach to fix a supposed security risk is too familiar and very concerning, whether the better model is Hitler, Perón or Boulanger.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
My nearest primary school is 1.2 miles away with a busy 40 mph A-road and not much pavement..., which feels a bit risky for a 4 yr old to walk to tbh.
Well that's fair enough, but I'd say that's not typical. At my daughters' primary school, until recently*, 90% of pupils were within fifteen minutes walk on easy to walk routes with lollipop people at crossings. Yet below Year 6 almost nobody walked unaccompanied, for the reasons I set out.
*recently the school has expanded, and has thus become the dumping ground for new arrivals for miles around who can't go to their local schools because they're full (see my third point above).
I must say it does irritate me when Britons write letters, take leave and go out to campaign in US elections, on any side.
It's none of our business. And would piss me off were I an American.
I agree with you 100% CR.
There’s something dozy about Starmer’s government, and all the pushy but useless advisers around him and running the party are very naive.
Why are Labour flooding a foreign election with activists in a time of sensitivity about foreign interference in elections?
I think Labour have messed up and given Trump a win. Not a technical win, but a broad brush win. But this isn’t a technical election, but a broad brush election.
Dopey, naive Labour handing Trump easy broad brush win. In a tight election. 🤬
Lol - everything really is the fault of Labour!
I’m not saying everything. But there is a real naivety about this new government, no vision thing in seeing how things play out or are seen by others, or so easily attacked. As someone said in thread, 6th form level politics.
The truth is, what smart people around a PM should know, The US are not like us, we don’t want to adopt the culture and values of their country, we shouldn’t be interfering in foreign elections as that’s what malign states like Putins does. The 6th formers in charge of the Labour Party have proved themselves politically naive and next to useless in the last 100 days, and this is but the latest example.
It’s idiotic for UK Labour Party leaders to think they have much in common with a foreign political party, at the end of the day we are in competition with foreign countries, their businesses to compete with and destroy our businesses, their nations culture and values different to ours, foreign policies not the same - and maybe shouldn’t be the same is the main point here, if it’s up to voters in different countries to chose the foreign policy they want, without outside interference. Trump is right to call this out, this is democracy the Labour Party are actively undermining here.
It just feels wrong, being in involved in foreign elections. They may look like us, in the case of the US share bits of the same language, but they are not us. The “Special Relationship” is just a gimmick soundbite, whilst our leaders huddled behind that gimmick soundbite in reality the US spent the 20th century spying on us around the world and dismantling our Empire. In the 20th century US foreign policy is not on UK side as much as people choose to think. Something could be said too about manner of having to pay back the money they lent us after the Second World War, but certainly today corporate America is out to thrash us and own UK.
Student politics from Labour again, not good enough for Downing St.
PS Brilliant header btw.
(Narrator: Robert Jenrick regards the GOP as a sister party and Kemi Badenoch is endorsed by Gov Ron DeSantis)
Didn't Bannon and other unmentionables turn up during the Johnsonian period?
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
ETA: pretty staggering that distance cycled per person was ~ 12x higher for Netherlands compared to here. And deaths per Gkm cycled in 2009 about 12 in NL compared to 21 here
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
The law doesn't need tightening - the issue is charging. Which in turn is set at a level where the government can get convictions from juries.
That is a very naive statement imo. There are multiple areas (of behaviour) where law does not even exist, never mind being enforced with reasonable attempts at enforcement. And mutliple questions which have simply been ignored.
It is more often cut the activity to fit the reduced budget, rather than supply adequate funding and plan more than 6 months or 2 years ahead. Or a political decision that X, Y or Z will simply not be addressed - for example addressing of motorbike / moped ASB or dealing with issues around the food delivery trade, or poor quality Lithium batteries which are a fire risk,
There's a reason why police numbers were slashed to the bone between 2010 and 2015, and there's a reason why our public realm has been reduced in quality.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
The law doesn't need tightening - the issue is charging. Which in turn is set at a level where the government can get convictions from juries.
That is a very naive statement imo. There are multiple areas (of behaviour) where law does not even exist, never mind being enforced with reasonable attempts at enforcement. And mutliple questions which have simply been ignored.
It is more often cut the activity to fit the reduced budget, rather than supply adequate funding and plan more than 6 months or 2 years ahead. Or a political decision that X, Y or Z will simply not be addressed - for example addressing of motorbike / moped ASB or dealing with issues around the food delivery trade, or poor quality Lithium batteries which are a fire risk,
There's a reason why police numbers were slashed to the bone between 2010 and 2015, and there's a reason why our public realm has been reduced in quality.
Nearly all driver kills pedestrian/cyclist cases use a lesser charge than could be justified, on the evidence. Gross negligent manslaughter seems to be nearly never used.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
Typically the average mileage cycled by a person in Holland is around 800% of that cycled in the UK.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
Anyone who votes for Trump knows who he is. They have agency and they are happy to overlook his racism, his criminality, his opposition to democracy and the rule of law, his support for Putin and so on. But the Democrats messed up by failing to understand just how many Americans really don't mind voting for such a candidate if they do not like the alternative. If it wasn't for the harm a Trump presidency will do the UK, I would be watching all this with detached interest. But the forthcoming betrayal of Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade war are going to be very bad for us. It's worrying.
People vote for fascists, again and again, despite the lessons from history.
We assume that Hitler was an aberration, but it appears a lot of Americans don't see it that way.
Trump isn't Hitler. He is more like Peron, or Boulanger.
Trump is Trump. But the pattern of dehumanising an “enemy within” and the proposed ‘strong man’ approach to fix a supposed security risk is too familiar and very concerning, whether the better model is Hitler, Perón or Boulanger.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
I can't find the stats, but that point 2 is the big one. I think something like 80% of primary school kids would walk or cycle to school unaccompanied in the 70s, while the number now is less than half that.
This isn't necessarily down to all parents becoming more overprotective. Humans are conformists, and most people simply do the societal norm, and the societal norm has changed. But also the expectations/requirements of schools has changed.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
24% cycle daily, 64% cycle weekly, 17% over 65s cycle daily. Dutch modal share for cycling is 27% vs <2% UK
I'm divided over this discussion, generally not in favour of armed response but interesting to see the comments supporting lethal force against motor vehicle drivers endangering life. Will be on the lookout for a cycling jacket with built-in holster.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
That claim about not knowing it was Kaba, is now irrelevant and not sure true. The car was linked to 3 shooting, and i wouldn't be surprised if the police didn't have a good idea it was him, he was a known "face" and they had DNA evidence of him from a previous shooting seen with that car.
Even if they didn't know it was definitely him, they have that car at the scene of 3 very recent shooting, the presumption has to be armed.
And the whole article is still community tramatised...why? A serial gangster was shot after repeatedly ignore police commands and trying the ram / run them down, that isn't the police shooting random people.
The people truly traumatised by all this are surely the black Londoners that Kaba variously shot, stabbed, killed and terrorised - including the pregnant mother of his child, who had a restraining order against him
This guy was an evil c*nt, an eager gangster and a cold blooded killer who was always headed for an unlamented early grave. I imagine that in reality his “community” is quite relieved he is no more
It's similar to the way that, during the Troubles, relatives of IRA members who got killed on "active service", would get genuinely indignant that their intended victims *shot back*.
The troubling thing however is it's not just the family that is talked of. Statements about the 'community' being traumatised. Mayor Khan statements appear to have reflected this. Our leaders need to consider whether their statements are helping or hindering efforts at cohesion in these situations.
The most fascinating thing I've learned today is Peter Bleksey claiming that the Jury wrote a letter for the Judge to read out with regards to the prosecution. The Judge declined.
The body cam footage alone meant that a murder conviction was impossible.
If I had been on the jury, my main comment on the prosecution would have been "WTAF?"
The Jury seem to have written a letter which seems to say exactly that - I suspect Guido will be publishing it soon enough..
So when they spent three hours coming to their verdict, it now sounds like they came to a verdict in 30 seconds, and spent the rest of the time writing a letter.
According to this, I believe the letter can be read out:
Jury guidelines.
Once the trial is over and you are no longer serving on the jury, you CAN DISCUSS the case with anyone. But there is ONE EXCEPTION. Even after the trial is over, you MUST NOT DISCUSS what was said or done by you or any other member of the jury while the jury was in the DELIBERATING ROOM trying to reach a verdict, unless it is for the purpose of an official investigation into the conduct of any juror.
So long as the letter was started after everyone agreed Blake was Not Guilty. The letter of course must not of course reference their deliberations prior to agreement of the verdict.
Juries don’t usually get to make comments. That is not their role. I see nothing wrong in the judge not reading out their letter.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
I can't find the stats, but that point 2 is the big one. I think something like 80% of primary school kids would walk or cycle to school unaccompanied in the 70s, while the number now is less than half that.
This isn't necessarily down to all parents becoming more overprotective. Humans are conformists, and most people simply do the societal norm, and the societal norm has changed. But also the expectations/requirements of schools has changed.
Vicious cycle as more people drive kids to school, it becomes more dangerous for those who continue to walk.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
I am not surprised. I remember cycling around the Netherlands in the Eighties, and it was supremely set out for cyclists with seperate cycle lanes and lights, keeping safe from both pedestrians and motorists.
All that cycling is why they are thinner than other North Europeans too.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
Typically the average mileage cycled by a person in Holland is around 800% of that cycled in the UK.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Wikipedia says: “36% of Dutch people listing the bicycle as their most frequent way of getting around on a typical day”
And: “The numbers of people commuting to work by bicycle increased by 17% to 760,000 in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011,[2] a total proportion of 2.9% of all commuters.”
These aren’t directly comparable figures, and the UK one a bit dated, but they do suggest that cycling is massively commoner in the Netherlands than the UK.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
If that 18x is right (and my 12x - 3 times the distance, ~1/4 pop also right for 2010) then it's disappointing that we seem to have slipped further behind in the past decade or so.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
I am not surprised. I remember cycling around the Netherlands in the Eighties, and it was supremely set out for cyclists with seperate cycle lanes and lights, keeping safe from both pedestrians and motorists.
All that cycling is why they are thinner than other North Europeans too.
And taller according to my Dutch friend. Apparently this is closely held belief and she won't hear any arguments against it.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
Though as was pointed out earlier, the most common location for British cycling deaths is rural lanes - presumably many of these people are sport cyclist MAMIL types, which I would guess we have a similar amount of as the Dutch. And our rural lanes are definitely more dangerous for cyclists than those in the Netherlands.
So we perhaps have a situation where: - sport cycling - which is quite dangerous - we are probably in a similar situation to the Dutch, with probably comparable amounts of deaths (maybe slightly worse for the British). - pootling - which is less dangerous, and with Dutch style infrastructure almost as safe as pedestrianing - the Dutch do far, far more of, and almost nobody dies.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
I can't find the stats, but that point 2 is the big one. I think something like 80% of primary school kids would walk or cycle to school unaccompanied in the 70s, while the number now is less than half that.
This isn't necessarily down to all parents becoming more overprotective. Humans are conformists, and most people simply do the societal norm, and the societal norm has changed. But also the expectations/requirements of schools has changed.
Vicious cycle as more people drive kids to school, it becomes more dangerous for those who continue to walk.
Of course, some on here would have you believe it's the vicious cycles that are the major hazard on UK roads
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Wikipedia says: “36% of Dutch people listing the bicycle as their most frequent way of getting around on a typical day”
And: “The numbers of people commuting to work by bicycle increased by 17% to 760,000 in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011,[2] a total proportion of 2.9% of all commuters.”
These aren’t directly comparable figures, and the UK one a bit dated, but they do suggest that cycling is massively commoner in the Netherlands than the UK.
One notable difference in Dutch cycling: their bikes are ancient and cheap and knackered. There's therefore a much lower bar to getting involved and a much lower risk of getting bikes nicked.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
Though as was pointed out earlier, the most common location for British cycling deaths is rural lanes - presumably many of these people are sport cyclist MAMIL types, which I would guess we have a similar amount of as the Dutch. And our rural lanes are definitely more dangerous for cyclists than those in the Netherlands.
So we perhaps have a situation where: - sport cycling - which is quite dangerous - we are probably in a similar situation to the Dutch, with probably comparable amounts of deaths (maybe slightly worse for the British). - pootling - which is less dangerous, and with Dutch style infrastructure almost as safe as pedestrianing - the Dutch do far, far more of, and almost nobody dies.
Yep. You'd need some really detailed stats to work out precisely what is going on, but that seems a reasonable take.
Incidentally, Dutch drivers are absolutely terrible for close passes when I've been cycling in the Highlands. They're probably not used to sharing the road (or they've come to Scotland to enjoy our fun roads, so it's self-selected racers)
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
That might be something to do with the fact many more people cycle in the Netherlands, particularly in urban settings.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
The reason children cannot walk to school is mainly because school is too far away. In olden times, children walked to their nearest school. Thanks to parental choice, children now have to travel miles each day, often criss-crossing other children travelling to the first child's nearest school. Abolish parental choice and remove many car (and bus) journeys and ease dangerous congestion without changing the number of pupils at each school.
This is largely nonsense.
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation: 1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute. 2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
I can't find the stats, but that point 2 is the big one. I think something like 80% of primary school kids would walk or cycle to school unaccompanied in the 70s, while the number now is less than half that.
This isn't necessarily down to all parents becoming more overprotective. Humans are conformists, and most people simply do the societal norm, and the societal norm has changed. But also the expectations/requirements of schools has changed.
Vicious cycle as more people drive kids to school, it becomes more dangerous for those who continue to walk.
Of course, some on here would have you believe it's the vicious cycles that are the major hazard on UK roads
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
I am not surprised. I remember cycling around the Netherlands in the Eighties, and it was supremely set out for cyclists with seperate cycle lanes and lights, keeping safe from both pedestrians and motorists.
All that cycling is why they are thinner than other North Europeans too.
And taller according to my Dutch friend. Apparently this is closely held belief and she won't hear any arguments against it.
"Pavement pounders" she calls us
The Dutch and Irish are both taller than the British likely because they have more dairy in their diet.
Labour single out the public sector for special treatment again:
"Public-sector workers will be shielded from Rachel Reeves’s plans to mount a tax raid on employers’ pension contributions, while those in the private sector face lower wages and less money in retirement.
It would cost the government an estimated £5 billion, which means that the rise will fall entirely on businesses and, ultimately, private-sector workers. Experts said that employees would have less generous pensions and companies could also absorb costs by reducing future pay rises."
Who gives a fuck? I thought you would support measures that would save the public sector money - what is the point of the Government levying taxes on itself?
I give a fuck. I'm entirely unimpressed by the government putting all tax rises on private sector workers and pensions, whilst shielding the impact for those who work for the State.
It's outrageous.
Why? It would otherwise be taxing itself. Which costs money in pointless admin.
Do you think public sector employees should pay tax?
However they dress this up it's the employees that will pay through years of low pay growth, except if you work in the public sector where the union bosses sneeze and Labour offers up a 7% pay deal.
You can't have 1 rule for public sector workers and another for private sector workers. Even if it's a niche area like pensions anything that discourages private sector workers from saving into pensions (they don't save enough at the moment) is a stupid thing.
But Reeve's has got a problem of her own making - see needs to find the money the 4% cut in employee NI take away because there is no other source of that amount of money.
We talk about reforming Council Tax, Business Rates and say VAT but all of those have more to do with the fundamental flaws they contain that have built up over the past 30 years - changing all 3 won't generate enough extra revenue..
Cut welfare spending, push people back into work and start to trim the public sector employment bill. There are too many people working for the state and the private sector can no longer hold up the weight of it all, these taxes will just make things worse as more people drain out of the private sector and decide that a DB pension and similar wages without the hassle of having to actually do a proper job in the public sector.
I was talking to a friends daughter over the weekend.
She is on a rotation as part of a civil-service funded professional qualification. 2 months in she has never met her boss who never comes into the office (prefers to WFH) - none of her team come into the office either so she is miserable and bored. Can do her job in 3 days so just stops around the other 2…
Anyone who votes for Trump knows who he is. They have agency and they are happy to overlook his racism, his criminality, his opposition to democracy and the rule of law, his support for Putin and so on. But the Democrats messed up by failing to understand just how many Americans really don't mind voting for such a candidate if they do not like the alternative. If it wasn't for the harm a Trump presidency will do the UK, I would be watching all this with detached interest. But the forthcoming betrayal of Ukraine and trans-Atlantic trade war are going to be very bad for us. It's worrying.
People vote for fascists, again and again, despite the lessons from history.
We assume that Hitler was an aberration, but it appears a lot of Americans don't see it that way.
Trump isn't Hitler. He is more like Peron, or Boulanger.
Trump is Trump. But the pattern of dehumanising an “enemy within” and the proposed ‘strong man’ approach to fix a supposed security risk is too familiar and very concerning, whether the better model is Hitler, Perón or Boulanger.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. We live in a country where the deputy Prime Minister calls political opponents 'scum'.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
I am not surprised. I remember cycling around the Netherlands in the Eighties, and it was supremely set out for cyclists with seperate cycle lanes and lights, keeping safe from both pedestrians and motorists.
All that cycling is why they are thinner than other North Europeans too.
And taller according to my Dutch friend. Apparently this is closely held belief and she won't hear any arguments against it.
"Pavement pounders" she calls us
The Dutch and Irish are both taller than the British likely because they have more dairy in their diet.
The idea that cycling adds to terminal height is certainly one of the more cretinous concepts I've heard here today.
Oh I see, we are still doing this...it seems clear some in the media really want(ed) this to be the UK George Floyd.
Chris Kaba verdict leaves community traumatised
Black communities in south London are "really traumatised" and feel they have been "denied justice" after a police officer was cleared of murdering Chris Kaba, community leaders have said.
How much worse would Kaba's record have to be to make you think it was the correct decision? I mean he was only the prime suspect (in that car) of 3 shootings in the months leading up to the stop alone.
Few will shed tears for Chris Kaba. Most will be sympathetic to a police officer who had to decide in an instant whether to shoot.
The point is that Kaba's record should be irrelevant. The police shot dead an unarmed Black man. That Kaba was armed the day and week before, and would have been armed the week afterwards, is not justification for killing him. And aiui the police did not know it was Kaba in the car anyway.
He was not unarmed. He was armed with a car. Furthermore, the reason armed police had been deployed is that the car had been involved in a firearms incident the day before.
They did not know who was driving. They did not know if they were armed or not.
Millions of armed folk roaming the streets every day! Scary stuff..
Some irony that a tightening up of the law in regard to vehicular violence might come about because a police officer shot someone.
We cyclists have been trying to tell you lot for ages! Indeed, a recent alleged murder in Paris involved a SUV driver running over a cyclist.
Funnily enough, British drivers kill fewer cyclists than in the Netherlands, often taken as the pinnacle of cycle-friendly design. And of the British cyclists who are killed, most die on country roads, not in the towns where people campaign for cycle lanes and LTNs.
But that’s presumably because there are more Dutch cyclists.
You would need to check that. They've only around a third of our population.
Total cycle mileage in the Netherlands in 2022 was 4.7x that in the UK. That means they cycle about 18x as much as we do, per capita.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
Though as was pointed out earlier, the most common location for British cycling deaths is rural lanes - presumably many of these people are sport cyclist MAMIL types, which I would guess we have a similar amount of as the Dutch. And our rural lanes are definitely more dangerous for cyclists than those in the Netherlands.
So we perhaps have a situation where: - sport cycling - which is quite dangerous - we are probably in a similar situation to the Dutch, with probably comparable amounts of deaths (maybe slightly worse for the British). - pootling - which is less dangerous, and with Dutch style infrastructure almost as safe as pedestrianing - the Dutch do far, far more of, and almost nobody dies.
Yep. You'd need some really detailed stats to work out precisely what is going on, but that seems a reasonable take.
Incidentally, Dutch drivers are absolutely terrible for close passes when I've been cycling in the Highlands. They're probably not used to sharing the road (or they've come to Scotland to enjoy our fun roads, so it's self-selected racers)
While we're getting into the detail of this: I loved Dutch roundabouts (as a driver). Actual proper lanes which you can select from the start ,and end at the right place, and don't result in you needing to cut across three lanes of traffic halfway around the roundabout.
Comments
£22bn (extra) black hole....
Its really bizarre how bad the Americans are at organising and administering elections. I think the longest wait I have ever had in a poll station was about 5 minutes and that was on one of the occasions where we were doubling up national and local elections. In fairness, the Americans are doing a lot more than doubling up but clearly not nearly enough resource is given to this. Every time. And we will have the usual court applications to ensure polling booths remain open on the day of the election for people in line. Every time. Its weird.
If Trump becomes President they are likely to do the same again and again in response to him smashing through the checks and balances of the Constitution.
What kind of a world is it, where you can't just get your gangland killings done in peace, without the Feds interfering?
EARLY VOTES Registered party
2018/2020/2022/2024 Dem 46.7/64.8/69.1/61.7 (So far)
2018/2020/2022/2024 GOP 44.0/23.6/21.2/28.6
2018/2020/2022/2024 NPA 7.2/9.7/8.1/9.7 (Includes Other, prior yrs do not)
2018/2020/2022/2024 Total 163,620/2,636,203/1,195,440/1,051,655 (So far)
Registered Dem are at 38.0% of 2020 and 78.6% of 2022 of their early vote.
Registered GOP is at 48.4% of 2020 and 118.9% of 2022 of their early vote.
Registered NPA and other is at 33.3% of 2020 and 87.3% of their 2022 early vote.
I guess the Harris camp had best be hoping that the GOP is cannibalising it's vote more than in 2020 and 2022.
And/or that there's more crossover than in 2020 and 2022. Or both.
Gerrymandering doesn't just result in weirdly shaped districts it can also result in rules designed to make voting very difficult for some people..
One of the great things about British elections. The local school or scout hut decked out with a few plywood booths and a sort of cheerful hush over the whole thing, and rarely if ever any kind of queue. French elections are similar. You go and vote at the local Mairie or salle d'activites. From what I've heard they sometimes go a few hours without a single voter turning up.
No mass revaluation, no revolt.
And I can see how people can have questions about stuff - if you watch stuff online for instance you can come away believing that convincing cases have been made for all kinds of off the wall things. But quite why someone can end up believing that a bombing at a concert, with all the witnesses and video evidence and everything is a hoax is beyond me.
Indeed, I'm concerned that efforts to increase cycling rates in the UK will be accompanied by a surge in fatalities as we saw during COVID, even though total vehicle mileage fell.
Yours is a common mistake - there are no cyclists, so why should we build cycle lanes? The reason there are so few cyclists (or indeed children walking to school) is precisely because of the lack of safe infrastructure.
There might well be large numbers of other such cases, all over the place, continuing undetected. A terrifying thought.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/22/treasury-warns-of-difficult-decisions-in-budget-after-september-borrowing-rise
Note: this borrowing figure doesn't include my payrise, or that of other NHS workers as that is coming in October's pay packet. I don't know about other public sector workers, the armed forces etc.
The truth is, what smart people around a PM should know, The US are not like us, we don’t want to adopt the culture and values of their country, we shouldn’t be interfering in foreign elections as that’s what malign states like Putins does. The 6th formers in charge of the Labour Party have proved themselves politically naive and next to useless in the last 100 days, and this is but the latest example.
It’s idiotic for UK Labour Party leaders to think they have much in common with a foreign political party, at the end of the day we are in competition with foreign countries, their businesses to compete with and destroy our businesses, their nations culture and values different to ours, foreign policies not the same - and maybe shouldn’t be the same is the main point here, if it’s up to voters in different countries to chose the foreign policy they want, without outside interference. Trump is right to call this out, this is democracy the Labour Party are actively undermining here.
It just feels wrong, being in involved in foreign elections. They may look like us, in the case of the US share bits of the same language, but they are not us. The “Special Relationship” is just a gimmick soundbite, whilst our leaders huddled behind that gimmick soundbite in reality the US spent the 20th century spying on us around the world and dismantling our Empire. In the 20th century US foreign policy is not on UK side as much as people choose to think. Something could be said too about manner of having to pay back the money they lent us after the Second World War, but certainly today corporate America is out to thrash us and own UK.
Student politics from Labour again, not good enough for Downing St.
PS Brilliant header btw.
Are you really saying the higher road death rate in the past was because earlier generations were so much less careful and decent?
@RalstonReports
The early voting blog is updated!
Out: Clark D firewall
In: Rural R firewall.
It's real: 16,500 votes because of massive landslides so far and higher than urban turnout percentage.
Dems need more mail, lots of indies, or big trouble in NV.
(Subject to Chump and his coach-and-fours through the law and the constitution.)
Trump 2.0 is coming.
However - the tendency for the Police (the Met, Sheffield in the case of Hillsborough etc) to lie after the event is for me is bigger issue. The cover-up mentality, the lying just pile on the agony.
Pennsylvania 🚂
Mail and absentee voting update
Total: 1,051,655 (+129,935 since Oct 21)
🔵 Democratic 61.7% | 649,060 votes (+68,987)
🔴 Republican 26.8% | 300,862 votes (+46,438)
⚪️ Other 9.7% | 101,733 votes (+14,510)
https://x.com/VoteHubUS/status/1848747132334793067
If you look at Georgia there were multiple attempts last week to make vote counting far easier to manipulate... https://apnews.com/article/georgia-election-rules-invalidated-appeal-dea9c9c35e4392b9a0b0d76960436cad
Activists crossing the pond in search of experience or technique, whilst helping a sister party, is just standard operating procedure. Tory <> Republican. Labour <> Democrat. With some overlap of categories. Either flying over at the time, or whilst on the other side for work or education.
Does anyone go back far enough to know the start of this habit? I'd date it perhaps to cheap air travel in the 1960s/1970s.
Very few parents at our local school drive these days. Home time is a carnival of children and parents happily walking, cycling or scooting along the centre of the road then bearing off in various home directions. My 10 year old now walks home on her own a couple of days a week.
- 2018 - 2020 - 2022
Democrat 73,217 (44.7%) 1,623,392 (61.6%) 868,543 (72.7%)
Republican 77,673 (47.5%) 802,861 (30.5%) 292,439 (24.5%)
Jury guidelines.
Once the trial is over and you are no longer serving on the jury, you
CAN DISCUSS the case with anyone. But there is ONE EXCEPTION.
Even after the trial is over, you MUST NOT DISCUSS what was said
or done by you or any other member of the jury while the jury was
in the DELIBERATING ROOM trying to reach a verdict, unless it is for
the purpose of an official investigation into the conduct of any juror.
So long as the letter was started after everyone agreed Blake was Not Guilty. The letter of course must not of course reference their deliberations prior to agreement of the verdict.
https://projects.votehub.com/pages/campaign-tracker
https://projects.votehub.com/pages/early-voting-tracker
Both are not very good: would it hurt to have a "download data" button???
There are two big reasons why there are so many more kids driven to school than there were in my generation:
1) When I was at primary school, most mothers didn't have to be starting work at 9am. So kids could be accompanied to school without a rush to get on to work. Nowadays, parents dropping their kids off at school then have the blink of an eye to get on to work. Kids are driven because the parents need the car for their commute.
2) Our society just doesn't allow kids to walk around unaccompanied like it once did. You are expected, as a parent, to drop your kids off - serious questions would be asked if kids habitually turned up unaccompanied. They wouldn't be allowed to leave alone. And those parents I mentioned in the point above - in most cases, they can't drop their kids off at 8.30 and leave them in the playground: they have to actually wait until the door is open.
I might also add that where I live in Greater Manchester, choice of schools is an illusion: you go to the only one with space. If you're close to a school, great, that will be the one you get allocated. If you're not, or you're new to the area, you'll go where you get put. This isn't parents being wilful, this is not enough places in schools.
And it IS a major problem - if you look at firearms deaths, as opposed to intentional homicide, there is no difference between Switzerland and the US if you allow for the number of guns - 2.68 per 100k in CH, 10 in the US. America has four times as many guns as Switzerland and about four times as many gun deaths.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-deaths-by-country
Violent, careless and suicidal young men exist in every country, in about the same proportion. It's the number of guns that gives them the opportunity to act out on their ghastly impulses.
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html
Party Returned Ballots Freq. Distribution Requested Ballots Return Rate
Democrats 1,702,484 64.7 1,941,131 87.7
Republicans 623,404 23.7 784,851 79.4
Minor 20,111 0.8 25,367 79.3
No Party Affiliation 283,673 10.8 336,175 84.4
TOTAL 2,629,672 100.0 3,087,524 85.2
I just looked at the first googled link:
https://targetearly.targetsmart.com/g2022?state=PA&view_type=state
*recently the school has expanded, and has thus become the dumping ground for new arrivals for miles around who can't go to their local schools because they're full (see my third point above).
"According to figures from the Dutch Central Office of Statistics (the CBS), the number of cyclists killed in the Netherlands has remained pretty stable over the last few years (2004: 180 / 2005: 181 / 2006: 216 / 2007: 189 / 2008: 181 / 2009: 185). Department for Transport figures show that in the UK it has fallen steadily (2004: 134 / 2005: 148 / 2006: 146 / 2007: 136 / 2008: 115 / 2009: 104), although the wider group of cyclists killed and seriously injured has risen slightly.
"Of course, these statistics don't tell the whole story, as cycling is much more prevalent in the Netherlands than in the UK. The Dutch cycled 14.9 billion kilometres in 2009 against the UK’s 5bn, from a population about a quarter the size, living in a country one sixth the size. With so many more cyclists on the road, more accidents are inevitable."
ETA: pretty staggering that distance cycled per person was ~ 12x higher for Netherlands compared to here. And deaths per Gkm cycled in 2009 about 12 in NL compared to 21 here
It is more often cut the activity to fit the reduced budget, rather than supply adequate funding and plan more than 6 months or 2 years ahead. Or a political decision that X, Y or Z will simply not be addressed - for example addressing of motorbike / moped ASB or dealing with issues around the food delivery trade, or poor quality Lithium batteries which are a fire risk,
There's a reason why police numbers were slashed to the bone between 2010 and 2015, and there's a reason why our public realm has been reduced in quality.
That's why per pop figures are misleading.
I have watched the Minister a decade ago using stats like this to dodge questions from a Commons committee during the coalition.
Wider than that the "but our total road deaths are relatively low" means little. It does not address sub-populations, nor does it work when put forward to defend behaviour where the consequences are suffered by others.
https://x.com/sahilkapur/status/1848913888546337011
*Metaphorically, a dick.
I would guess a much higher proportion of their cycling is short journeys in urban areas, which makes their total mileage and number of deaths (3x the UK) all the more impressive.
Dutch modal share for cycling is 27% vs <2% UK
I'm divided over this discussion, generally not in favour of armed response but interesting to see the comments supporting lethal force against motor vehicle drivers endangering life. Will be on the lookout for a cycling jacket with built-in holster.
All that cycling is why they are thinner than other North Europeans too.
But we still can't really compare until we have as much cycling as the Netherlands as the mix is very likely quite different.
And: “The numbers of people commuting to work by bicycle increased by 17% to 760,000 in England and Wales between 2001 and 2011,[2] a total proportion of 2.9% of all commuters.”
These aren’t directly comparable figures, and the UK one a bit dated, but they do suggest that cycling is massively commoner in the Netherlands than the UK.
"Pavement pounders" she calls us
And our rural lanes are definitely more dangerous for cyclists than those in the Netherlands.
So we perhaps have a situation where:
- sport cycling - which is quite dangerous - we are probably in a similar situation to the Dutch, with probably comparable amounts of deaths (maybe slightly worse for the British).
- pootling - which is less dangerous, and with Dutch style infrastructure almost as safe as pedestrianing - the Dutch do far, far more of, and almost nobody dies.
Incidentally, Dutch drivers are absolutely terrible for close passes when I've been cycling in the Highlands. They're probably not used to sharing the road (or they've come to Scotland to enjoy our fun roads, so it's self-selected racers)
She is on a rotation as part of a civil-service funded professional qualification. 2 months in she has never met her boss who never comes into the office (prefers to WFH) - none of her team come into the office either so she is miserable and bored. Can do her job in 3 days so just stops around the other 2…