Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
There are some pretty good Radio 4 'Morse' dramatisations. They work quite well as audio-only I find.
I didn’t know about these. I’ll have to look them up. Do you know who plays the lead roles ?
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
Rather different events though. The Bengal famine happened when the British were fighting a world war on many fronts. The policies of Stalin were deliberate starvation of populations to further the revolution.
Interesting but hardly surprising to see Trump and Meloni apparently getting on well.
Both are strong on "immigration" which is apparently at the root of all Europe's problems.
Yet I hear no practical or coherent solutions - from "stop the boats" to "re-migration", there's a lot of people talking about immigration and saying something needs to be done but I've not heard a syllable of a practical and workable solution.
More "complaints" from Britain's greatest bunch of whingers, GB News, about Sudanese refugees at a 4* hotel - okay, fine. How do you get them out of that hotel? Where do you put them while their asylum cases are being processed? I'm led to believe (it's GB News so I take it with a bucketful of salt) there are thousands more waiting in Northern France to cross the Channel. Right - how do you prevent them crossing if that's the objective?
The whole debate is couched in sensationalist, fear mongering terms - practicality and common sense are noticeable by their absence.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
There are some pretty good Radio 4 'Morse' dramatisations. They work quite well as audio-only I find.
I didn’t know about these. I’ll have to look them up. Do you know who plays the lead roles ?
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
I think CCHQ are just genuinely crap.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
Haven't they sacked a huge chunk of the staff because they have no money, not that the ones they had were up to much, see the situations Rishi Sunak got in.
One of the early stages in the oppostion grief cycle is members of the former government not coping because all the support systems you have as a minister are swiftly removed from you. That the Conservatives have no money and hardly anyone under the age of 60 who can go and think Tory thoughts makes that cold shower even more brutal than normal.
But the ways that Badenoch fails at PMQs were pretty forseeable. Too plugged into the rightwing social media sphere, and too sure of her rightness to want to course-correct.
Meh.
Last PMQs I watched, Kemi was average, Sir was barely intelligible. Gasping and gulping for air like a landed trout.
She's also had a very good week or so of it. Making the BBC look utterly unhinged, followed by Robert Jenrick (who has been amazing in the media and not particularly bothering himself to be respectful of Badenoch) making a bit of a tit of himself. Which must also have been slightly gratifying - not that they're enemies, but you know. Topped off by vindication from the Supreme Court. Best week for a while.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
Rather different events though. The Bengal famine happened when the British were fighting a world war on many fronts. The policies of Stalin were deliberate starvation of populations to further the revolution.
Perhaps and the war was a strong contributory factor but it wasn't one of Britain's finest hours and it's an episode which is unfortunately widely overlooked.
Interesting but hardly surprising to see Trump and Meloni apparently getting on well.
Both are strong on "immigration" which is apparently at the root of all Europe's problems.
Yet I hear no practical or coherent solutions - from "stop the boats" to "re-migration", there's a lot of people talking about immigration and saying something needs to be done but I've not heard a syllable of a practical and workable solution.
More "complaints" from Britain's greatest bunch of whingers, GB News, about Sudanese refugees at a 4* hotel - okay, fine. How do you get them out of that hotel? Where do you put them while their asylum cases are being processed? I'm led to believe (it's GB News so I take it with a bucketful of salt) there are thousands more waiting in Northern France to cross the Channel. Right - how do you prevent them crossing if that's the objective?
The whole debate is couched in sensationalist, fear mongering terms - practicality and common sense are noticeable by their absence.
Here's the channel 4 news report on the war in Sudan.
12 million internally displaced, and most refugees either internal or in neighbouring countries like Chad. Murder, rape and famine all over. Credit to Lammy to try to get peace talks going, but neither side interested.
A Sudanese colleague of mine says there is no ideology to it, just rival warlords fighting over the spoils.
Oh oh, latest news : “Your presence in the UK is not considered to be conducive to the public good... ” — interdiction d’accès.
Queue people who demand the border is controlled and that others get turned away getting outraged that the border is controlled and someone is being turned away.
(LuckyGuy1983) Cue. (/LuckyGuy1983)
My dyslexic daughter considers the word 'queue' the most ridiculous word in the language. 80% of it is superfluous.
A group of letting standing around one in an orderly fashion one after the other, when only one would do fine just the same.
What's the etymological equivalent of nominative determinism, as that seems entirely apt for a queue to me.
It was mentioned down thread the Action Man Davey had a 1st from Oxford as a plus point...I would suggest that was a bigger black mark against him than the Post Office scandal.
Davey’s one of the few involved with the Post Office who has admitted to errors.
The LibDems are experts at the whole apologizing thing:
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
Rather different events though. The Bengal famine happened when the British were fighting a world war on many fronts. The policies of Stalin were deliberate starvation of populations to further the revolution.
Perhaps and the war was a strong contributory factor but it wasn't one of Britain's finest hours and it's an episode which is unfortunately widely overlooked.
I’m not sure how easy it would have been to have intervened. Global shipping could not suddenly be changed overnight. And we were fighting for our very survival. Of course you can say we could have done this, we could have done that, but put yourself in cabinet at the time. What would you do?
Interesting but hardly surprising to see Trump and Meloni apparently getting on well.
Both are strong on "immigration" which is apparently at the root of all Europe's problems.
Yet I hear no practical or coherent solutions - from "stop the boats" to "re-migration", there's a lot of people talking about immigration and saying something needs to be done but I've not heard a syllable of a practical and workable solution.
More "complaints" from Britain's greatest bunch of whingers, GB News, about Sudanese refugees at a 4* hotel - okay, fine. How do you get them out of that hotel? Where do you put them while their asylum cases are being processed? I'm led to believe (it's GB News so I take it with a bucketful of salt) there are thousands more waiting in Northern France to cross the Channel. Right - how do you prevent them crossing if that's the objective?
The whole debate is couched in sensationalist, fear mongering terms - practicality and common sense are noticeable by their absence.
Is this a serious question?
Or is it another 'what are these Brexit freedoms I hear so much about?', and then you list them, and silence, and then a week or so later - 'So who can list me a single Brexit freedom?'
If it is a serious question, you can do a number of things.
If our grant rate is three times that of France, where are you going to apply? We could do that by capping asylum figures. That could be done now.
Secondly, you could stop paying France eye watering millions upfront for what seems like zero assistance, and pay them on results - per boats destroyed, migrants detained, smugglers arrested.
Thirdly, you can detain migrants in basic purpose-built or hired accommodation. Airbases, barges. The hotels have to stop. A warm bed, safety, cleanliness and food is what someone claiming asylum should be entitled to, nothing else.
Fourthly, you can have overseas processing or overseas housing for asylum seekers, a la Rwanda. To make the latter work, you probably need to leave the ECHR. To make the former work, you don't necessarily, because there's no danger of refoulement if the successful claimants are shipped back to the UK.
Fifthly, you can actually go after the people smugglers. It took a massive BBC investigation to get the police to get their finger out of their arse and arrest the last one.
Sixthly, you can do tow backs. This is a cruel to be kind solution, as it does place boat people in a very stressful situation. It does have the upside of being a massive disincentive to ever get on a channel crossing, so in the long run probably save lives.
Interesting but hardly surprising to see Trump and Meloni apparently getting on well.
Both are strong on "immigration" which is apparently at the root of all Europe's problems.
Yet I hear no practical or coherent solutions - from "stop the boats" to "re-migration", there's a lot of people talking about immigration and saying something needs to be done but I've not heard a syllable of a practical and workable solution.
More "complaints" from Britain's greatest bunch of whingers, GB News, about Sudanese refugees at a 4* hotel - okay, fine. How do you get them out of that hotel? Where do you put them while their asylum cases are being processed? I'm led to believe (it's GB News so I take it with a bucketful of salt) there are thousands more waiting in Northern France to cross the Channel. Right - how do you prevent them crossing if that's the objective?
The whole debate is couched in sensationalist, fear mongering terms - practicality and common sense are noticeable by their absence.
Is this a serious question?
Or is it another 'what are these Brexit freedoms I hear so much about?', and then you list them, and silence, and then a week or so later - 'So who can list me a single Brexit freedom?'
If it is a serious question, you can do a number of things.
If our grant rate is three times that of France, where are you going to apply? We could do that by capping asylum figures. That could be done now.
Secondly, you could stop paying France eye watering millions upfront for what seems like zero assistance, and pay them on results - per boats destroyed, migrants detained, smugglers arrested.
Thirdly, you can detain migrants in basic purpose-built or hired accommodation. Airbases, barges. The hotels have to stop. A warm bed, safety, cleanliness and food is what someone claiming asylum should be entitled to, nothing else.
Fourthly, you can have overseas processing or overseas housing for asylum seekers, a la Rwanda. To make the latter work, you probably need to leave the ECHR. To make the former work, you don't necessarily, because there's no danger of refoulement if the successful claimants are shipped back to the UK.
Fifthly, you can actually go after the people smugglers. It took a massive BBC investigation to get the police to get their finger out of their arse and arrest the last one.
Sixthly, you can do tow backs. This is a cruel to be kind solution, as it does place boat people in a very stressful situation. It does have the upside of being a massive disincentive to ever get on a channel crossing, so in the long run probably save lives.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
The recent smash hit film RRR is the most expensive Indian film ever, and a massive worldwide hit It is a pretty impressive bit of film making, but pretty harsh in its depiction of British atrocities. It's well worth a watch on Netflix
Modi is busy erecting golden statues of Indian freedom fighters* in all sorts of prominent places, including Bose and similar. So while individual Brits are welcomed, Britain as a country is fairly unpopular.
* only Hindu ones, Muslim, Sikh, Dalit freedom fighters need not apply.
Those are woeful ratings for Badenoch . They should have picked Cleverly who has much more cross over appeal .
Cummings' prediction was that they would go for Cleverly next.
A man so daft that he plotted himself out of a leadership race.
That was his backers tbf. They tried to engineer his preferred opponent for the run off and succeeded in engineering the man himself out of the run off. You couldn't make it up. Literally couldn't make it up. If you submitted that in a script for a political drama you'd get it returned with a cover note saying "rejected on grounds of credulity".
While I share your general amusement, the pedant in me bridles at the phrase 'couldn't make it up', especially when paired with the word 'literally' - I'm fairly sure you could make it up. People make stuff up all the time, much of it less believable than that. Look at Star Wars, for example.
No but that's literally what I'm saying. You *could* make it up, yes, but not if you wanted it accepted as a serious proposition by the commissioning editor. So to all intents and purposes you couldn't.
Oh come on! This is exactly the sort of thing which happened in The Thick of It.
I'm not disputing how ridiculous the situation was. I'm pedantically disputing the use of the phrase 'you couldn't make it up'. People make up implausible stuff all the time, and much of it gets commissioned for telly. (Look at Death in Paradise. 50% of the time that finishes and you look at the wife and both shake your heads and say 'no...'. Still watch the next one though. I like light-hearted crime drama where the main puzzle is 'how'. And I have some sympathy for the writers still trying to come up with plots 100-odd episodes in).
'You couldn't make it up' is just a phrase I can rarely let go without a quibble. (See also describing Great Britain - the 8th largest and, what, 3rd most populous island in the world - as a 'small island', the use of the word 'stunning' to mean 'nice', and the misuse of the word 'literally'.)
I don't trying to fall out about it. This is just pb pedantry.
But TTOI was a comedy. Of course you could make it up as a joke. The Cleverly thing works fine as deliberate farce or even as a piece of whimsy. What I'm saying is you couldn't make it up and be taken seriously. That's what the phrase means in my book.
All right, House of Cards? To Play the King? Both of those contained plots more far fetched.
Your problem with the Clevershambles is that it is a) improbable and b) funny. Drama has a problem with things that are funny, preferring tense looks all the time. And that is why drama is almost never fulfilling - because the real world isn't like that. Funny things happen all the time. Just because something's funny doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken seriously.
We're at cross purposes. When I say "serious drama" I mean the likes of Kavanaugh QC or Smiley's People. Straightforward story telling with no attempt to be kooky or satirical. That genre. There's no place there for the sort of nonsense that happened with James Cleverly (or tbf his backers). If you tried to put something like that in you'd be told to go and have a rethink. Meaning you'd have failed to make it up.
It’s Kavanagh QC.
Not to be confused with Kavana, the rock icon from the late nineties.
That's the one. Thaw.
An absolute legend, and a decent bloke too.
The Sweeney is just brilliant. Ace TV and great characters and a London long gone.
Me and my mate, Baker, called each other Jack and George for many years.
My father loved The Sweeney, he also said it was a tribute to John Thaw that after a few episodes of Morse he didn't see him as Jack Regan.
Rewatching Morse, having not seen it since childhood, Thaw is stunning. Never not completely convincing.
There’s only a couple of duff episodes. I remember being absolutely shocked at the reveals in ‘Driven to Distraction’ and ‘Way through the woods’.
I also think Kevin Whateley, James Grout and Peter Woodthorpe as supports were really good too.
There are some pretty good Radio 4 'Morse' dramatisations. They work quite well as audio-only I find.
I didn’t know about these. I’ll have to look them up. Do you know who plays the lead roles ?
Interesting but hardly surprising to see Trump and Meloni apparently getting on well.
Both are strong on "immigration" which is apparently at the root of all Europe's problems.
Yet I hear no practical or coherent solutions - from "stop the boats" to "re-migration", there's a lot of people talking about immigration and saying something needs to be done but I've not heard a syllable of a practical and workable solution.
More "complaints" from Britain's greatest bunch of whingers, GB News, about Sudanese refugees at a 4* hotel - okay, fine. How do you get them out of that hotel? Where do you put them while their asylum cases are being processed? I'm led to believe (it's GB News so I take it with a bucketful of salt) there are thousands more waiting in Northern France to cross the Channel. Right - how do you prevent them crossing if that's the objective?
The whole debate is couched in sensationalist, fear mongering terms - practicality and common sense are noticeable by their absence.
Is this a serious question?
Or is it another 'what are these Brexit freedoms I hear so much about?', and then you list them, and silence, and then a week or so later - 'So who can list me a single Brexit freedom?'
If it is a serious question, you can do a number of things.
If our grant rate is three times that of France, where are you going to apply? We could do that by capping asylum figures. That could be done now.
Secondly, you could stop paying France eye watering millions upfront for what seems like zero assistance, and pay them on results - per boats destroyed, migrants detained, smugglers arrested.
Thirdly, you can detain migrants in basic purpose-built or hired accommodation. Airbases, barges. The hotels have to stop. A warm bed, safety, cleanliness and food is what someone claiming asylum should be entitled to, nothing else.
Fourthly, you can have overseas processing or overseas housing for asylum seekers, a la Rwanda. To make the latter work, you probably need to leave the ECHR. To make the former work, you don't necessarily, because there's no danger of refoulement if the successful claimants are shipped back to the UK.
Fifthly, you can actually go after the people smugglers. It took a massive BBC investigation to get the police to get their finger out of their arse and arrest the last one.
Sixthly, you can do tow backs. This is a cruel to be kind solution, as it does place boat people in a very stressful situation. It does have the upside of being a massive disincentive to ever get on a channel crossing, so in the long run probably save lives.
Want me to continue?
I would like you to actually list the benefits of brexit.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
The recent smash hit film RRR is the most expensive Indian film ever, and a massive worldwide hit It is a pretty impressive bit of film making, but pretty harsh in its depiction of British atrocities. It's well worth a watch on Netflix
Modi is busy erecting golden statues of Indian freedom fighters* in all sorts of prominent places, including Bose and similar. So while individual Brits are welcomed, Britain as a country is fairly unpopular.
* only Hindu ones, Muslim, Sikh, Dalit freedom fighters need not apply.
So no need for extra visas for Indians and any India trade deal then
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
Yes, but it's not entirely wrong. Stalin made a much neater job in Eastern Europe - but that coincided conveniently with some mass forced population movements,
4th Circuit unanimously rejects Trump request to halt proceedings in Mr. Abrego Garcia's case.
Reagan appointee Wilkinson writes that the Trump admin's position is "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans ... still hold dear." https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1912946983150510346
Well, some of them.
Commendable optimism. https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1912948423936073987 Judge Wilkinson: "We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos."
Chat GPT is thinking about a blister pack Lee Anderson.
Hmmm. I gave it Roderick Spode & Eulalie, plus 'symbols associated with Lee Anderson'.
It missed the shorts.
Love the Barnsley chop.
On which note, lamb is even more expensive in France than it is in Britain.
The economics of a sheep are not great. Expensive for the consumer and unprofitable for the farmer. The wool is largely worthless. You sell one ewe for meat and you get 2 shoulders (farm shop price maybe 30-40 each), 2 legs cut off before the shank (60-70 each), 2 rear shanks (7-8 each?), neck for about 20, best end / rack another 30-40, rump 20, breast 15, then a few bits to sell for merguez and offal. There’s not the charcuterie options with lamb that there are with pork.
That’s around £350 for a whole animal, yet all those cuts sound relatively expensive don’t they?
Contrast with a cow or pig, both of which have much greater weight of flesh, are less suicidal when in the fields, and are more nose to tail in usage.
4th Circuit unanimously rejects Trump request to halt proceedings in Mr. Abrego Garcia's case.
Reagan appointee Wilkinson writes that the Trump admin's position is "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans ... still hold dear." https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1912946983150510346
Well, some of them.
Commendable optimism. https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1912948423936073987 Judge Wilkinson: "We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos."
Are they suggesting that Trump isn't American?
Is that how they're going to dig themselves out of the unholy mess America has got itself into?
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Why did they go downhill? Something to do with Alex Fergusson not being in charge I guess.
More likely that he was in charge for far too long and had so hammered the place around him it couldn't function without him. Plus, of course, he continued (continues?) to hang around at Old Trafford making life difficult for his successors.
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Chat GPT is thinking about a blister pack Lee Anderson.
Hmmm. I gave it Roderick Spode & Eulalie, plus 'symbols associated with Lee Anderson'.
It missed the shorts.
Love the Barnsley chop.
On which note, lamb is even more expensive in France than it is in Britain.
The economics of a sheep are not great. Expensive for the consumer and unprofitable for the farmer. The wool is largely worthless. You sell one ewe for meat and you get 2 shoulders (farm shop price maybe 30-40 each), 2 legs cut off before the shank (60-70 each), 2 rear shanks (7-8 each?), neck for about 20, best end / rack another 30-40, rump 20, breast 15, then a few bits to sell for merguez and offal. There’s not the charcuterie options with lamb that there are with pork.
That’s around £350 for a whole animal, yet all those cuts sound relatively expensive don’t they?
Contrast with a cow or pig, both of which have much greater weight of flesh, are less suicidal when in the fields, and are more nose to tail in usage.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
Yes, but it's not entirely wrong. Stalin made a much neater job in Eastern Europe - but that coincided conveniently with some mass forced population movements,
Oh, I'm sure it's right.
I was taking issue with @Leon having asked an Albanian taxi driver a friend who is a Soviet expert.
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
I'm torn, between this is the right thing to do for our country and our economy and for our long term relationship with our US cousins...
And vomiting.
I get all the arguments for it, I even agree with them, but I nevertheless go with vomiting. It feels wrong. And most things that feel wrong are wrong.
Paradise is at about 5400 feet. According to a quick Google search, there is more than 10 feet of snow on the ground there, now. (I was once up there in the middle of July, when there was still 5 feet of snow on the ground. As I skied along I saw a few flowers on the occasional bare patch.)
Tomorrow morning should be a good time to start to look, beginning about 4 AM Pacific Daylight Time. (Physicists will like the way the mountain changes color early in the morning.)
Late spring and early summer are often good times to play in the snow on the mountain. Just don't neglect the sun screen! And put it on thick.
Later in the year there can be quite good views from the higher cameras. For example, from Camp Muir, you can often see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and even Mt. Hood in Oregon.
Trudeau always sounded like he was alternating between a cosmopolitan accent in English and a hick accent in French.
The first time I went to French speaking part of Canada I spoke pretty good French and I remember going into a shop and talking to sales girl, and given what I thought was terrible pronunciation I said its ok French isn't my first language either, we can speak in English if you like....to which I was promptly informed that I was in fact mistaken.
Re Kemi at PMQs, it is becoming harder to believe CCHQ is not deliberately undermining her. Every week we see the same mistakes. The long, rambling, multi-subject questions that allow Starmer to choose which part to answer. The central attacks on things that started under her own government. Repeating the same questions rather than having six different ones. Failing to alter course after Starmer's answers. This is not just due to her; there will be a team preparing her for PMQs and doing so implausibly badly.
I think CCHQ are just genuinely crap.
That's Kemi's fault too - she should have gone through that place like a dose of salts when she arrived.
Haven't they sacked a huge chunk of the staff because they have no money, not that the ones they had were up to much, see the situations Rishi Sunak got in.
One of the early stages in the oppostion grief cycle is members of the former government not coping because all the support systems you have as a minister are swiftly removed from you. That the Conservatives have no money and hardly anyone under the age of 60 who can go and think Tory thoughts makes that cold shower even more brutal than normal.
But the ways that Badenoch fails at PMQs were pretty forseeable. Too plugged into the rightwing social media sphere, and too sure of her rightness to want to course-correct.
Meh.
Last PMQs I watched, Kemi was average, Sir was barely intelligible. Gasping and gulping for air like a landed trout.
She's also had a very good week or so of it. Making the BBC look utterly unhinged, followed by Robert Jenrick (who has been amazing in the media and not particularly bothering himself to be respectful of Badenoch) making a bit of a tit of himself. Which must also have been slightly gratifying - not that they're enemies, but you know. Topped off by vindication from the Supreme Court. Best week for a while.
lol all everyone knows about her is she keeps repeating twitter bs
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
I'm torn, between this is the right thing to do for our country and our economy and for our long term relationship with our US cousins...
And vomiting.
The problem (well, one of many) is that Starmer was not torn. He has a real problem with saying "No" to people who are more powerful or confrontational to him. He can't stab people in the front.
Who the fuck mapped out the frontiers of central Central Asia?
LOOK AT IT
It must have been Stalin, on acid. And meth
Not sure. May have been Slartibartfast. He did Norway.
I asked a friend who’s a Soviet expert
“The tangled borders you’re seeing are not medieval relics or lines of actual mountains, but the product of Soviet‑era “national delimitation” in the 1920s–30s, frozen into international frontiers in 1991. Here’s what happened:
1. The Fergana Valley’s Ethnic Patchwork • The Fergana Valley (center of your map) is one of the most densely populated - and ethnically mixed—areas in Central Asia. Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Tajiks (and even minorities of Russians, Karakalpaks, etc.) live intermingled down to the village level.
• When the USSR drew internal republic borders, they tried to give each “titular nationality” a share of good land and water. In practice that meant slicing through villages, fields and irrigation channels to achieve a rough ethnic balance.
2. Divide‑and‑Rule Delimitation • Moscow’s planners deliberately created convoluted boundaries (and even a handful of enclaves and exclaves) so that no single republic was too compact or self‑sufficient - thus keeping them dependent on central Soviet authorities for trade, transport and supplies. • They also used water‑rights (canals criss‑crossing the valley) as a justification for zig‑zagging lines: “This canal taps off into Uzbek SSR, so let’s give that bend of land to Uzbekistan, then loop back into Kyrgyz.”
3. The Enclave Patchwork • Uzbek exclaves inside Kyrgyzstan (e.g. Sokh, Shohimardon) • Tajik exclave inside Kyrgyzstan (Vorukh) • Kyrgyz exclave inside Uzbekistan (Barak) These tiny pockets (sometimes just a few square kilometers) were never a big deal when they were “merely” internal Soviet boundaries. After 1991 they became international - and a source of chronic headaches for border control, road access, customs, and local residents.
4. The “Panhandle” Corridors • Look up at Tashkent: the Uzbek SSR was given a long, narrow finger of territory reaching northeast, separating southern Kazakhstan from the rest of Kyrgyzstan. That’s why today the Tashkent–Shymkent railway (green dashed line) crosses Kazakh or Kyrgyz land in odd little spurts.
5. Why It Looks “Insane” Today • Once internal lines, these borders weren’t designed to be barriers. They cut through irrigation ditches, farmland, even villages - and relied on Soviet authorities to manage the flows of people and goods across them. • After 1991, those lines hardened into international borders. No longer easy to cross on a whim (or in a tractor), they now require passports, visas, checkpoints - turning a 2 km walk across a field into an odyssey involving customs forms and border guards.
⸻
In short: what looks like an absurd, arbitrary tangle of frontiers is really the legacy of Stalin‑era border‑drawing in one of the Soviet Union’s most complex, multi‑ethnic regions—lines that never anticipated becoming impenetrable international boundaries.
Ah, you mean you asked ChatGPT
The Soviet Union really fucked with Central Asia. Until visiting Kazakhstan’s national museum yesterday I had no idea they experienced a famine in the 30s which killed MORE THAN A THIRD of all Kazakh people
1.5-2m victims, IIRC
It is amazing Russia is not MORE hated than it is
We also have the Bengal Famine of 1943 which killed anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million people. Should we be more hated?
The recent smash hit film RRR is the most expensive Indian film ever, and a massive worldwide hit It is a pretty impressive bit of film making, but pretty harsh in its depiction of British atrocities. It's well worth a watch on Netflix
Modi is busy erecting golden statues of Indian freedom fighters* in all sorts of prominent places, including Bose and similar. So while individual Brits are welcomed, Britain as a country is fairly unpopular.
* only Hindu ones, Muslim, Sikh, Dalit freedom fighters need not apply.
If India wants to make a big thing of tragic mistakes (or evil decisions, depending on viewpoint...) the British made in 1943, then perhaps they should not be helping Russia perform atrocities in Ukraine today.
India's decision to help Russia and profit from Ukraine's ruination is their decision, with no other factors involved.
Trudeau always sounded like he was alternating between a cosmopolitan accent in English and a hick accent in French.
The first time I went to French speaking part of Canada I spoke pretty good French and I remember going into a shop and talking to sales girl, and given what I thought was terrible pronunciation I said its ok French isn't my first language either, we can speak in English if you like....to which I was promptly informed that I was in fact mistaken.
If General Wolfe had lived maybe he could have stamped it out.
"BREAKING: The United States joined Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, Niger and Sudan in voting against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The resolution, initiated by Luxembourg and Lithuania, was backed by 105 countries."
F1: Only a couple of days until the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. After which, Doohan was meant to be replaced by Colapinto, but there are rumours that's in doubt.
"BREAKING: The United States joined Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, Niger and Sudan in voting against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The resolution, initiated by Luxembourg and Lithuania, was backed by 105 countries."
I'd speak it like Alan Partridge and resort to Franglais after about 8 seconds.
My wife is French Canadian and when we visit her old town of Montreal I get a bit a lot better reception in the shops than she does. The assistants generally warm to and encourage my schoolboy French, whereas her fluent bilingual speech has a clear 'Anglo/Quebec' accent which rubs their fur up the wrong way.
Donald Trump is expected to travel to Britain in September, visiting Windsor Castle to spend time with the Royal family.
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
I'm torn, between this is the right thing to do for our country and our economy and for our long term relationship with our US cousins...
And vomiting.
The problem (well, one of many) is that Starmer was not torn. He has a real problem with saying "No" to people who are more powerful or confrontational to him. He can't stab people in the front.
He simply needs to be dishonest with Trump. Why not? Trump is dishonest with everyone.
My holiday has started with the automatic door on this ScotRail service knocking a coffee out of my hand and all over my clothes.
About to spend 4 days cycling in torrential rain - typical west coast behaviour. Plan is to get the 80k done by lunch and spend the afternoons/evenings getting drunk.
My holiday has started with the automatic door on this ScotRail service knocking a coffee out of my hand and all over my clothes.
About to spend 4 days cycling in torrential rain - typical west coast behaviour. Plan is to get the 80k done by lunch and spend the afternoons/evenings getting drunk.
Jealous mode on!
I'm doing my first triathlon of the year on Sunday. Though the route instructions make it appear more like an orienteering endeavour than a triathlon. I am really looking forward to it.
A comment I've just seen in another place, about Musk:
"imagine being such a loser that you can't even build a harem right, like you're supposed to sleep with them all not pay doctors to impregnate them you dork"
Pierre Poilievre is the more impressive politician.
I've no doubt that if it weren't for Trump he'd clearly win this election.
Donald Trump is going to do terrible damage to the right across the Western world.
On one level, it's really simple. All the non-populist right has to do is point out the wrongness with the populist right before they get as far as wanting to absorb your country.
It's that simple. For all sorts of reasons, it's also that impossible. Fear of attacking a potential ally, disliking the left even more, bowing down before the great leader, wanting aspects of the populist manifesto. There may be more charitable reasons.
The record of the soft right in standing up to the hard right in global history isn't great.
LD vote standing still is enough as Tories bleed votes to Reform and Labour bleed votes to Greens.
Vote Reform, get LibDems...
My hope in Bruntingthorpe division - South Leicestershire on May 1st! 1,250 addressed postal voter letters delivered before postal votes arrived. Will finish delivering my main leaflet this weekend -5,000 more for last week squeeze (see drop in labour vote in Horsham) arriving early next week.
A comment I've just seen in another place, about Musk:
"imagine being such a loser that you can't even build a harem right, like you're supposed to sleep with them all not pay doctors to impregnate them you dork"
Don't the issues with Musk's... dork... make that difficult?
A comment I've just seen in another place, about Musk:
"imagine being such a loser that you can't even build a harem right, like you're supposed to sleep with them all not pay doctors to impregnate them you dork"
Don't the issues with Musk's... dork... make that difficult?
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
Was that May? In any case, allowing asylum seekers to work is an obvious loophole in the work permit system that shouldn't be reopened. We need to remove the right to claim asylum on demand.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will today unveil plans to strip thousands of asylum seekers of the right to work while their claim to stay in Britain is being assessed.
Sudan is a brutal war zone. I am not surprised that Sudanese people are seeking asylum elsewhere, including in the country of the empire that occupied them for decades.
Presumably as a democrat you believe the people of that country have a right to decide whether to accept asylum seekers or not?
You're not suggesting an "in/out" referendum on it, I hope?
We've seen the folly of that.
They should be right back on the next boat out as illegal immigrants, it is a joke saying they are asylum seekers given all the safe countries they have travelled through. It will end in tears for sure , indigenous people getting hee haw and illegal immigrants living it up in fancy hotels, are politician's really as thick and lazy as they make out. Gifting it to Farage.
Jaw-dropping footage revealed by @markwhiteTV today showing what GB News believes to be Sudanese migrants showing off their 4* hotels.
This is a mockery. There are homeless British citizens sleeping rough on the street and economic migrants fleeing France are a priority for our government.
Keir Starmer promised he would end the migrant hotels, yet another failure.
These videos are nothing but an advertisement for others to come to the UK, of which we believe, there are thousands more queueing up.
If we allowed asylum seekers to work, which that moron May stopped, we wouldn't need to host them in hotels, 4* or otherwise.
Truly one of the worst policy decisions of my lifetime.
Was that May? In any case, allowing asylum seekers to work is an obvious loophole in the work permit system that shouldn't be reopened. We need to remove the right to claim asylum on demand.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will today unveil plans to strip thousands of asylum seekers of the right to work while their claim to stay in Britain is being assessed.
Sudan is a brutal war zone. I am not surprised that Sudanese people are seeking asylum elsewhere, including in the country of the empire that occupied them for decades.
Presumably as a democrat you believe the people of that country have a right to decide whether to accept asylum seekers or not?
You're not suggesting an "in/out" referendum on it, I hope?
We've seen the folly of that.
They should be right back on the next boat out as illegal immigrants, it is a joke saying they are asylum seekers given all the safe countries they have travelled through. It will end in tears for sure , indigenous people getting hee haw and illegal immigrants living it up in fancy hotels, are politician's really as thick and lazy as they make out. Gifting it to Farage.
So when Scotland gets independence, and there are floods of people from the South seeking refuge from a Reform government, how should these 'asylum seekers' be treated. Accomodation in the Bar-L?
>> Ghoul Cruise << Jet 2 must be shitting themselves
All good things come to an end, and sadly this week we waved goodbye to the Mark Steyn cruise, which wrapped up its tour of Spain and Portugal on Sunday.
Lucky guests on the luxurious liner - known as the Celebrity Apex - enjoyed some fantastic perks courtesy of the Canadian author, who left GB News in 2023 after his knuckles were rapped by Ofcom for promoting dodgy COVID vaccine scepticism.
As well as having direct ocean access to his views on the invasion of Iraq (pro) and Muslim immigration (anti), guests are also treated to tapings of The Mark Steyn Show and live versions of Mark Steyn Club features, including Sunday Poem, Tales for Our Time and Steyn's Song of the Week. All this for the bargain basement price of $3,500 a cabin – and upwards.
Guests also enjoyed some VIP speakers who came along for the ride (and the paycheck). Those guests included Lawrence "Lozza" Fox, former Miss GB Leilani Dowding, Dan Wootton, Naomi Wolf, Allison Pearson and Calvin Robinson.
Some of the finest brains from both sides of the Atlantic, while stuck on a vessel you cannot leave without descending to your own watery grave?
Comments
Will check YouTube
Interesting but hardly surprising to see Trump and Meloni apparently getting on well.
Both are strong on "immigration" which is apparently at the root of all Europe's problems.
Yet I hear no practical or coherent solutions - from "stop the boats" to "re-migration", there's a lot of people talking about immigration and saying something needs to be done but I've not heard a syllable of a practical and workable solution.
More "complaints" from Britain's greatest bunch of whingers, GB News, about Sudanese refugees at a 4* hotel - okay, fine. How do you get them out of that hotel? Where do you put them while their asylum cases are being processed? I'm led to believe (it's GB News so I take it with a bucketful of salt) there are thousands more waiting in Northern France to cross the Channel. Right - how do you prevent them crossing if that's the objective?
The whole debate is couched in sensationalist, fear mongering terms - practicality and common sense are noticeable by their absence.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4JFKL4WbNFmwYPGXkmMpHRM6_t7iXNWv
Couple of them are on archive.org too, again - I'm sure in full legal compliance.
** 99% entirely sure.
Last PMQs I watched, Kemi was average, Sir was barely intelligible. Gasping and gulping for air like a landed trout.
She's also had a very good week or so of it. Making the BBC look utterly unhinged, followed by Robert Jenrick (who has been amazing in the media and not particularly bothering himself to be respectful of Badenoch) making a bit of a tit of himself. Which must also have been slightly gratifying - not that they're enemies, but you know. Topped off by vindication from the Supreme Court. Best week for a while.
https://www.channel4.com/news/sudan-crisis-warring-sides-show-no-interest-in-peace-as-london-talks-held
12 million internally displaced, and most refugees either internal or in neighbouring countries like Chad. Murder, rape and famine all over. Credit to Lammy to try to get peace talks going, but neither side interested.
A Sudanese colleague of mine says there is no ideology to it, just rival warlords fighting over the spoils.
What's the etymological equivalent of nominative determinism, as that seems entirely apt for a queue to me.
Or is it another 'what are these Brexit freedoms I hear so much about?', and then you list them, and silence, and then a week or so later - 'So who can list me a single Brexit freedom?'
If it is a serious question, you can do a number of things.
Firstly you can address the asylum acceptance rate - https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/511/recent-change-in-the-uk-asylum-grant-rate
If our grant rate is three times that of France, where are you going to apply? We could do that by capping asylum figures. That could be done now.
Secondly, you could stop paying France eye watering millions upfront for what seems like zero assistance, and pay them on results - per boats destroyed, migrants detained, smugglers arrested.
Thirdly, you can detain migrants in basic purpose-built or hired accommodation. Airbases, barges. The hotels have to stop. A warm bed, safety, cleanliness and food is what someone claiming asylum should be entitled to, nothing else.
Fourthly, you can have overseas processing or overseas housing for asylum seekers, a la Rwanda. To make the latter work, you probably need to leave the ECHR. To make the former work, you don't necessarily, because there's no danger of refoulement if the successful claimants are shipped back to the UK.
Fifthly, you can actually go after the people smugglers. It took a massive BBC investigation to get the police to get their finger out of their arse and arrest the last one.
Sixthly, you can do tow backs. This is a cruel to be kind solution, as it does place boat people in a very stressful situation. It does have the upside of being a massive disincentive to ever get on a channel crossing, so in the long run probably save lives.
Want me to continue?
https://youtu.be/i4pjiLGUTtk?si=x8aRLAKnTt3iDRD5
Modi is busy erecting golden statues of Indian freedom fighters* in all sorts of prominent places, including Bose and similar. So while individual Brits are welcomed, Britain as a country is fairly unpopular.
* only Hindu ones, Muslim, Sikh, Dalit freedom fighters need not apply.
Stalin made a much neater job in Eastern Europe - but that coincided conveniently with some mass forced population movements,
Reagan appointee Wilkinson writes that the Trump admin's position is "shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans ... still hold dear."
https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1912946983150510346
Well, some of them.
Commendable optimism.
https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1912948423936073987
Judge Wilkinson: "We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos."
https://xcancel.com/DODResponse/status/1910713690220884090#m
I assume it's me looking out for the term, but once you notice it it's obvious.
Is that how they're going to dig themselves out of the unholy mess America has got itself into?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g05lrg5q1o
The UK is preparing to host the US president and first lady for a high-profile visit at the end of summer, as the Government seeks to reaffirm transatlantic ties in the wake of his trade war.
Sir Keir Starmer and Mr Trump are understood to have discussed the visit during a telephone call, with a plan close to being formally agreed.
The venue is set to be Windsor Castle, rather than Balmoral or Dumfries House as previously thought
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/17/donald-trump-to-visit-king-charles-in-britain-in-september/
Harry Maguire centre forward and one defender.
And vomiting.
I was taking issue with @Leon having asked an Albanian taxi driver a friend who is a Soviet expert.
How's your heart rate?
Paradise is at about 5400 feet. According to a quick Google search, there is more than 10 feet of snow on the ground there, now. (I was once up there in the middle of July, when there was still 5 feet of snow on the ground. As I skied along I saw a few flowers on the occasional bare patch.)
Tomorrow morning should be a good time to start to look, beginning about 4 AM Pacific Daylight Time. (Physicists will like the way the mountain changes color early in the morning.)
Late spring and early summer are often good times to play in the snow on the mountain. Just don't neglect the sun screen! And put it on thick.
Later in the year there can be quite good views from the higher cameras. For example, from Camp Muir, you can often see Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and even Mt. Hood in Oregon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Rainier and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Hood
Utterly astonishing and win 2 more games they are into next season European Cup
Maybe v Spurs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyoQgWY1FCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHWGSMf-Plk
Colgate and Rusper (Horsham) council by-election result:
LDEM: 30.3% (-0.3)
CON: 27.2% (-15.8)
GRN: 25.1% (+12.6)
REF: 13.8% (+13.8)
LAB: 3.5% (-10.4)
+/- 2023
Estimated turnout: ~32% (-2)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1k0l3lq/elon_musk_offered_millions_for_silence_as_he/#lightbox
Vote Reform, get LibDems...
India's decision to help Russia and profit from Ukraine's ruination is their decision, with no other factors involved.
They're like the bad shirts men used to go out clubbing in the early noughties.
I'd speak it like Alan Partridge and resort to Franglais after about 8 seconds.
I've no doubt that if it weren't for Trump he'd clearly win this election.
"BREAKING: The United States joined Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua, Niger and Sudan in voting against a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine.
The resolution, initiated by Luxembourg and Lithuania, was backed by 105 countries."
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1912909947077271642
F1: Only a couple of days until the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix. After which, Doohan was meant to be replaced by Colapinto, but there are rumours that's in doubt.
It's no surprise.
Drives her nuts.
About to spend 4 days cycling in torrential rain - typical west coast behaviour. Plan is to get the 80k done by lunch and spend the afternoons/evenings getting drunk.
I'm doing my first triathlon of the year on Sunday. Though the route instructions make it appear more like an orienteering endeavour than a triathlon. I am really looking forward to it.
"imagine being such a loser that you can't even build a harem right, like you're supposed to sleep with them all not pay doctors to impregnate them you dork"
It's that simple. For all sorts of reasons, it's also that impossible. Fear of attacking a potential ally, disliking the left even more, bowing down before the great leader, wanting aspects of the populist manifesto. There may be more charitable reasons.
The record of the soft right in standing up to the hard right in global history isn't great.
From Popbitch.
>> Ghoul Cruise <<
Jet 2 must be shitting themselves
All good things come to an end, and sadly this week we waved goodbye to the Mark Steyn cruise, which wrapped up its tour of Spain and Portugal on Sunday.
Lucky guests on the luxurious liner - known as the Celebrity Apex - enjoyed some fantastic perks courtesy of the Canadian author, who left GB News in 2023 after his knuckles were rapped by Ofcom for promoting dodgy COVID vaccine scepticism.
As well as having direct ocean access to his views on the invasion of Iraq (pro) and Muslim immigration (anti), guests are also treated to tapings of The Mark Steyn Show and live versions of Mark Steyn Club features, including Sunday Poem, Tales for Our Time and Steyn's Song of the Week. All this for the bargain basement price of $3,500 a cabin – and upwards.
Guests also enjoyed some VIP speakers who came along for the ride (and the paycheck). Those guests included Lawrence "Lozza" Fox, former Miss GB Leilani Dowding, Dan Wootton, Naomi Wolf, Allison Pearson and Calvin Robinson.
Some of the finest brains from both sides of the Atlantic, while stuck on a vessel you cannot leave without descending to your own watery grave?
Sign us up!