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Punters think recent events help Labour and the Tories – politicalbetting.com
Punters think recent events help Labour and the Tories – politicalbetting.com
at the time of the next election, which is potentially over four years away, will the name Rupert Lowe really move votes in a way the traditional vote deciders such as the economy or the NHS? I have my doubts.
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What information do we think will be added by the Local Elections in a few weeks?
(Apart from that the Conservatives will be mining hopium and copium on a Brobdingnagian scale, given that they hold around 1000 from 1600 seats up for election if my numbers are correct.)
barking mad Crufts 2025’s Best in Show winner backlash as favourite is ‘robbed’, claim fans
The fan favourite of the Best in Show missed out on a podium place
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tv/33765262/crufts-2025-winner-revealed-best-in-show-history/
PB's dog for scale correspondent never warned us about this.
TL;DR yet another space-filler based on cutting and pasting from TwiX which is what passes for journalism nowadays.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly62lmpll3o
Thin dog preferred to fat dog in practice; public don't like to admit it and tabloids exist for controversy not news.
The mistake was that Last of the Summer Wine never had a St Bernard in it as a regular character. Men prefer whippets and Kylie.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/33761941/donald-trump-monster-nukes-end-of-world/
President Trump has floated a new arms control agreement.
One hour, fifty-eight minutes. Seven or eight minutes off my previous best. I'll take that.
(A boring course though; four times around the rowing lake at Holme Pierrepoint in Nottingham.)
Fail to clear that hurdle, and Kemi will likely be out by evensong on Friday.
Apparently one German tourist who wanted to visit for 3 weeks has been detained for over a month!? Seems mad they won't let her in but also won't let her go home! All part of the Trump/Musk incompetence show.
Tbh I'm not sure I want to travel to the US right now. I've managed to persuade my work team that UK is a better location for us to meet next time, but due to go again in October. Maybe things will have calmed down by then.
Spoiler alert: There are students in years other than year 7.
(I guess that reflects growing inequality more than anything. The funding gap between private/state has doubled since 2010).
Good morning, everyone.
Oh, and Russia.
I've repeatedly poked a stick at autonomous vehicles - I fully expect they to get banned after the first nasty automation crash. I think the robot thing is absurd. I've attacked Neuralink.
What I don't do is adjust the facts to match what you insist should be "values and morals". Horse laid down a list of things that Starlink cannot do and was factually wrong. Stating that is neither hyping nor not hyping - it is what it is.
My morality is my morality. When I was younger and more strident I drank the cool-aid where my morality should be everyone's morality. I grew out of that long ago - and had to change party to best reflect that. What I think isn't necessarily what you think. Why do you think that what you think should be inviolate and adopted by others? If I want a lecture on morality I could go to church. Oh year, I stopped doing that as well...
The bigger risk is that the British right goes a bit French. National Rally squeezed the Republicans from the right, but then got squeezed from even further right by Reconquest.
And unlike France, the British system doesn't allow the concertina to squeeze back in a second round of voting.
The fundamental problems in people's lives don't change whether or not the ex-chair of Southampton FC is ousted, nor whether Trump goes mad. People are looking for a solution which the Tories and Labour have failed to deliver.
If Reform collapse completely into infighting then they're done. And something else will capture the zeitgeist and take these votes.
Farage and his motly crew could easily go the same way.
While the rest of the world starts looking at how to make smaller ones because they are no longer protected by the USA,,
FPT : Musk has already lost 100 billion in three months, and may lose another 100 billion to be back, behind Bezos, by mid-year.
SpaceX also looks to be having some troubles.
Is the Lowe spat an aberration, or is it characteristic ?
George Allison has published an explainer:
"Here’s how Britain’s nukes are ‘operationally independent’"
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/heres-how-britains-nukes-are-operationally-independent/
No?
And my post commented on the technical merits of Starlink being pointless given the political shenanigans that Musk is performing with it.
And as for morality and values: wait until Musk and MAGA come after gay people. Or bisexuals. See my point now?
If you're a parent with three kids in private schools you're going to have find on average nearly an extra grand a month to cover the VAT.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of VAT on private schools (and some bits of the state sector are in the VAT system), a mass switch out of private schools making the state system fall over was always unlikely.
Partly because the baby bust after 2010 or so is now in the secondary age range- state schools are generally shrinking or closing. But also because schools are Veblen goods- expensive=reassuring (thanks whoever here taught me that term.) Both those points were known in advance.
Jessica Brösche was walking from Tijuana to San Diego with her friend, Nikita Lofving, an American citizen living in Los Angeles, when she was stopped by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and accused of working in the country last time she was in the United States on a visa, KGTV reported.
https://www.latintimes.com/german-tourist-detained-ice-spent-more-week-solitary-confinement-while-traveling-california-577370
I have no knowledge of this specific case - this was the first Google article
Along with the forces there.
Russian forces are collapsing the northern part of the Ukrainian salient in Kursk Oblast following several days of intensified Russian activity in the area.
The temporal correlation between the suspension of US intelligence sharing with Ukraine and the start of Russia's collapse of the Ukrainian Kursk salient is noteworthy...
https://x.com/TheStudyofWar/status/1898887404754448682
The only county that gave numbers for children was +56 on last year’s 608.
9% seems like a large year on year variance but I don’t know what is normal. @ydoethur ?
It seems that the Germans might help fund an anglo-french nuclear project.
The document provides for a threefold increase in the supply of missiles and air defense systems
https://x.com/NijhuisClaretta/status/1898866806049341828
Starlink is a service. Should Starlink abruptly get switched off then I would have to revert back to shonky slow options. Are you saying that because of a theoretical event maybe in the future that shonky and slow is my best option now?
And MAGA are *already* going after anyone who isn't white Christian and straight. So what? Jenrick was foaming on about straight white Christians the other day. If I want to pay attention to homophobia I don't need to bother with MAGA.
What's your point? Which technologies / companies / political platforms are morally acceptable to you? I converted to Apple a couple of years ago - does that make me liable for the Uighurs too?
Some knowledgeable commenters, but also some wildcards, and everyone likes playing Fantasy Forces.
He annoys Nats sometimes because he repeatedly and politely explains how to count frigates.
Reportedly (AP), the photo of the Enola Gay - the plane that dropped the atom bomb - is on the Trump "scrub the Department of Defence website" list under "DEI".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ90aLXmbVY
The playbook is from the Loon Lobby. I did not know about the one from a decade ago where a Christian website replaced "gay" with "homosexual" and turned the sprinter Tyson Gay into Tyson Homosexual (from the Standard):
https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/sport-olympics/london-2012-olympics-sprinter-referred-to-as-tyson-homosexual-because-of-websites-ban-on-word-gay-8015664.html
They are completely nuts. And they are serious about being nuts - which is a big part of the problem.
What do our home-grown billionaires think?
And your comparison of Jenrick with what is going on in America is ludicrous and wrong.
My point was not about whether it is acceptable to *me*. My point - as I stated above - is that if you are a country or organisation that might annoy Musk for some reason, then any of his services are unreliable. That will be a major drag against the use of those services anywhere outside MAGAland.
"Russian forces in Kursk SUDDENLY have extremely precise coordinates for our troop locations, logistics and ammo depots, and this CANNOT be a coincidence.
I think that Trump's administration is trying to 'give Kursk to russia' before negotiations begin as part of a secret deal with russia.
As he HIMSELF said, he wants Ukraine to have 'no cards to play at all'."
https://x.com/AleksandrX13/status/1898893581462479359
https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3ljymnsc6i22b
(*) Rapidly becoming not so, thankfully, now they are seen as Swasticars.
(**) Hopefully even this is now only believed by idiots.
But the rest of it is monumentally crushing of the spirit. Will America escape its Cycle of Stupid? Will we follow down that rabbit hole? You'd like to think not, but....
The Anglo-French nuclear project would create interesting issues with first-use policies, as France has a rather unique first-strike strategy that we do not share.
My Tory cousins in Gloucestershire, they of the green wellies and anti-Frenchism, have turned against America. Momentous, and always a bellwether in our family.
and bollocks to people promoting Teslas on Youtube.
It's not really complicated. At all. You can twist yourself up in all kinds of mental bretzels and whataboutery so you don't feel so bad about yourself, but don't expect people on here not to call you out on it - and if you don't want anyone to lecture you on morality you're probably posting on the wrong forum!
Telling people to buy Teslas is fucking stupid unless you actively want the destruction of democracy and European liberal civilisation. Or maybe you just don't care enough about those things.
As for Jenrick, he said that criminal justice was biased against "Christians" and "Straight White Men". We call out dog whistle racism when its MAGA doing it, but don't want to call it out when its the Tories? And you talk about morality?
This just makes my point. "Morality" talks of absolutes. Right and wrong. I've used that kind of language in the past which was wrong. With very very few exceptions there are no absolutes - only shades of grey. What we have here is one shade of grey addressing another shade of grey and saying "ha, you are grey"
"Advocate" is also in there. First they came for the lawyers, and, understandably...
You also make videos (for which you earn money and seem to derive benefits from) that promote those products.
Now it’s up to you as to whether you continue to do so but given your previous posts I suspect an accurate description for you would be hypocrite
- Minimum wage will lead to mass unemployment.
- Reducing the agricultural IHT exemption will lead to food shortages.
- VAT on school fees will cause an education meltdown.
All should be filed in the same bin.
On topic - as so many have said so often since July 2024, the next GE is a lifetime away and trying to predict then from now looks the epitome of the fool's errand. Remember how everyone was so convinced Boris Johnson would be re-elected with an increased majority even as late as early 2021 given how "popular" the Government's handling of Covid appeared to be?
I do agree the obvious beneficiaries of any Reform implosion will be all the other parties in general and the Conservatives and Labour in particular and if I were to have any bet at all with reference to the next GE at this time it would be on an increased vote share for both parties.
From the low point of 30.6% in 1997, the Conservative vote share rose at every election until reaching a peak of 43.6% in 2019 before crashing so spectacularly last time. You can see in the constituency results across a swathe of seats in the north of England and the Midlands how the Conservative vote recovered and built from the 1997 nadir.
I don't know if that will happen again - it might, it might not.
The key question is whether people will "feel" better off at the end of the first Starmer administration - if they do, Labour will likely be re-elected (whether that will be 2001 redux or more like 2005 I don't know). The other question is whether all those who didn't vote last year will vote next time - 3 million or so and that's a big block of potential voters to be persuaded.
There's also of course external issues though they probably matter less to most voters than we on here imagine. Nonetheless, the general "background noise" isn't without significance.
At this stage, lots of questions, lots of hypotheses, very few answers.
No, imo we won't follow the USA down the rabbit hole, for the same reasons we did not swallow Christian Dominionism or the Prosperity Gospel back in the 1980s. Even now it is at best fringe, even though some on the Right are going down the Dominionism-at-one-remove route (that is culturally not theologically) to a degree (eg NatCon has a whiff of it, and people like Matt Goodwin). Witness, for example, the obsession with demonising particularly Muslims - that has been a theme on the UK radical (choose your word) right for 20 years or more.
We have too many checks and balances in place still.
Chunks of Trump's movement *really believe it* and have gone down the rabbit hole themselves, such that even their thought through justifications are from planet Zarg.
"there are plenty of other cars available". Yep. As I say on the channel. Repeatedly. I'm not trying to tell people what to drive. Explicitly - I think they remain the best EV platform out there but I don't tell people who still drive a petrol car (like me) they are wrong or that people who get a car from another brand (like me) are wrong)
"bollocks to people promoting Teslas on YouTube" - ok. Up to you. Would it upset you to know that your view isn't the same as other people's views? But at least you aren't coming onto the channel by clicking to watch a video then by interacting with it by posting abuse, then engaging with me as I comment back. "How can you promote this" they say as by doing what they are doing they themselves are promoting it.
"whataboutery so you don't feel so bad about yourself". Don't worry, I'm not and I don't. The key learning from my 4 years as a town councillor with a political bully as Mayor is that you can't be bullied. I simply don't care what the other side think about me, so I'm not going to be annoyed or upset or cowed by them ranting.
Musk is an absolute dick. But some of the companies he used to be involved in before politics are doing some fantastic stuff. And that hasn't changed just because he's gone full dick crazy.
The puzzle is not that it is an absolute - we all know it is, even David Hume despite his denials would have known it was true, but why, and how.
Secondly, morality does not in general deal with absolutes. Mostly absolutes, like the one I instance, look after themselves. It is exactly because of shades of grey that moral philosophy, morality, or ethics is a subject which isn't going to be settled and isn't going away.
https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/tesla-sales-falling-off-a-cliff-globally-including-germany-australia-and-china/
And you think that this hasn't made Musk even slightly poorer? If you have a link for your claims please give it.
So let me ask you this: is there anything that could make you stop promoting Musk's products and brands? If he actually became fully fascist, or fully Nazi, or called for eradication of all trans people, would you still pretend that there's a disconnect between him and the products that give him his power?
https://x.com/SpencerFernando/status/1898775415444975848
Poland is massively pro-America. They spend nearly 5% of GDP on national defence. They buy vast amounts of U.S. weapons. They even thought about naming a military base after Donald Trump.
Yet, the U.S. is now picking a fight with Poland and treating Polish officials with contempt.
This is a lesson for those who still foolishly say that Canada should just ‘give Trump what he wants.’
Our disgraceful treatment by the U.S. isn’t Canada’s fault, or Poland’s fault, or Ukraine’s fault, or the EU’s fault.
This is happening because the U.S. is led by someone who admires dictators and has contempt for democratic nations.
We must stop trying to appease the insanity currently overtaking our southern neighbour.
Someone, somewhere is almost certainly getting exploited, no matter where we spend our money.
Is he a fascist? Really? What's the evidence of it - and don't say the salute.
If you actually examine Musk's positions they are often at the opposite end of the spectrum from fascism. Musk is a free speech absolutist. That's an absurd position btw, but fascists don't want free speech, they want to stop free speech. Musk wants industry to be unencumbered by state regulation. Fascism shackles industry to deliver what the state wants. Musk thinks there's lots of penpusher bureaucrats and whole departments that can be done away with. Fascism regulates every aspect of life to the nth degree. Musk wants more migration. MAGA and especially some of the far right parties he has hyped want zero or negative migration.
"Musk is a fascist" doesn't hold up to basic scrutiny once you drop the emotional response and actually look at it.
That is simply harsh and unfair on Tesla owners who purchased their cars long before the Trump- Musk nightmare
Of course @RochdalePioneers doesn't want the destruction of democracy and European civilisation and I doubt owning or otherwise a Tesla has any relevance, other than the obnoxious and nasty Musk has a little bit less of his obscene wealth
And I would say, I have no interest in buying an ev either now or in the future and certainly have never owned one, though I have driven one
He wants a smaller state not a larger one.
Less regulation not more.
He’s a free speec absolutist and disruptor but he’s not going to annexe the Sudetenland.
I also wouldn't buy or promote a car from a company where Putin is the biggest shareholder, even if I thought the car itself was technologically OK, and even if I stood to make money from doing so.
And if I did promote such a car, I would fully expect to be condemned for it, even if philosophically "there are no moral absolutes"
But nice swerve to avoid answering the question...
He was named by his father after a character in a Nazi rocket scientists novel about a benign dictator who took over Mars. I would say the signs are pretty clear.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/05/teslas-uk-sales-rise-despite-threat-of-backlash-over-elon-musk-political-role
Donald Trump has 'gone cool' on Britain since King Charles welcomed Zelensky to Sandringham, diplomatic sources in Washington have claimed, - Daily Mail
Allies of the US President have made clear to UK officials in America that pictures of the King with the Ukranian leader made him feel 'less special' about the monarch's invitation for a state visit to Britain.
https://x.com/Maks_NAFO_FELLA/status/1898686677201150174
There’s a reason the vast majority of companies stay neutral politically, alienating a group of consumers isn’t really the way to go .
And Musk seems to be alienating those most likely to be interested in EC .
you are just writing total bollocks now.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/real-chilling-effects
But if ICE believed she committed a felony (I’m assuming that working on a tourist visa counts under US law) they may arrest her anyway.
After all they need someone to trade with the Germans.
He deletes things on Twix he doesn't like
He's a white supremacist
Musk wrote on X late on Saturday that it “would be an honour to speak with President Matterella”, in a bid to salvage a deal that has faced opposition as geopolitical turbulence between the US and Europe intensifies.
Meloni, who has forged a strong personal bond with Musk, said in early January that talks were still at the “preliminary stage”, but defended the necessity of a potential deal saying there was “no public alternative” to meet Italy’s secure communication needs.
Yet the deal now looks increasingly likely to be a casualty of a transatlantic rift over defence, following US President Donald Trump’s decision to suspend military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Musk has also repeatedly said on X that the US should leave the Nato security alliance.
https://www.ft.com/content/ea7e53b8-f831-489d-919c-606149f3af17