To get a majority the next general election will be a Labour v Reform battle. However if Farage fell short he would need Tory support even with Kemi and Labour would need LD support
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Wouldn’t be a “crash”.
Value of £1m Tax @ 0.5% = £5k Less council tax = £1.5k Net tax increase = £3.5k Capitalise at 20x = £70k
So for someone living in a nice house valued at 2.5x the national average there is a 7% impact on prices - less than 1 year’s “natural” price increase (salary increase of 2% x lending multiple of 4.5x = 9%)
What I hadn't considered is that lower value homes will experience the opposite effect, with their tax bills lower and, in theory, their values higher. So it might all balance out from a tax revenue perspective?
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Well the only Reformy member of my family is an 83 year old cousin who watches Fox News all day and loves Donald Trump.
I didn't think Fox News was available in the UK these days?
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
Long sleeved linen shirt with the sleeves folded back is more stylish - top tip.
..and Sir Keir's fav High St tailor, Charles Tyrwhitt, has them for £34.95 each. Absolute bargain, I have bought five
How long are the back/sleeves compared to the sizings ?
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Well the only Reformy member of my family is an 83 year old cousin who watches Fox News all day and loves Donald Trump.
The Herald did a straw poll of voters in Hamilton. The two Reform voters were, no surprise, a 66 year old woman and another woman in her 50s.
A 25 year old man was voting SNP & another 32 year old man was voting Labour.
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Has the tv career gone down the tubes that much? I know they kicked him back over hear from the US and League of their Own has got shit canned, so more "last ever" Gavin and Stacey episodes or become London Mayor?
Money, fame, power. Corden will have made a sackload of cash in America and being Mayor will get him into the papers whenever he pops out for milk. Whether he actually has any political ambition is another question.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
We have done this before. The evidence on this is extremely debatable on the direct effects of sugar tax. Sticking a few pence on sugary drinks doesn't seem to have dissuaded teenage kids drinking lakes full of sugary energy drinks.
A bigger measure / impact was the government convinced the food industry to reduce sugar content in a wide range of food voluntarily. So consumers are consuming less sugar from their food without any idea or via the idea that taxation is nudging them away from full sugar coke to sugar free sparkling water.
Indeed. As I have argued before that to get better health outcomes in the general populace, a good way is to make the foods that we all consume better for us, rather than scolding people about what they eat - where the scolding is probably misguided anyway.
People need to be taught to cook at home.
I'm in my 40s and certainly don't know how to do it, unless it's chilli con carne, lasagne or curry which I learned by rote.
You do realise you can teach yourself?
I did, over a few years. And not in any boring way - it was fun. Cooking is fun. You try new recipes, you use your hands in a pleasurable way, it’s relaxing and convivial. And at the end, you can cook
It’s something that some people just don’t seem to get, even if they try. I’m not quite sure why ?
Yes it’s strange
Some people are just too stupid to cook. You do need a decent IQ to understand measurements and processes and new words
But lots of bright people like @Casino_Royale can’t cook. My dad was a clever man and sort-of-tried to learn to cook - and failed
Humanity is peculiar
Buy meat.
Buy seasoning
Put seasoning on meat.
Put meat in air fryer.
Turn on for time that suits that meat.
Halfway through turn it over.
Take out.
Eat.
What IQ is needed for those instructions? Not everything needs to be super complicated.
Similar instructions can work for veg and potatoes too.
Only joking. Good for you. It does sound like quite simple food but if you enjoy it and it keeps you healthy (and you say it does) then 👍
I do wish I could get an air fryer. But my kitchen simply doesn’t have room. If and when I emigrate to a condo in chiang mai it’ll be first on my list
An air fryer is just a tiny fan oven. I’ve never really understood the hype!
Is that all it is?? Ooh. Thanks. You’ve cured my FOMO
It's a powerful, tabletop, convection oven.
Cooks considerably faster than a traditional oven and does so at a fraction of the cost. Doesn't need preheating either so much quicker to operate with.
A meal that could take 40 minutes to cook in a conventional oven, including preheating, might only take 20 minutes in an air fryer.
Pays for itself in lower bills too.
The odd question about air fryers is that they are called air fryers, thus suggesting to the casual browser in Currys that they are for making chips.
When we got our first one, about 15 years ago or so, that's literally all it was marketed for. As an alternative to a deep fat fryer, for chips.
It's basket was even quite comparable to a deep fat fryer one.
We started trying more food in it until eventually we realised we could cook practically anything in it.
Now they seem to have become ubiquitous, but the name has stuck.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Overall yes. But it used to be that the only young women you saw on the right were the slightly odd young conservative kind. Feels quite different now.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
True, but the Conservative Party's problems started well before that.
A political movement that was fully right in the head wouldn't have headed down the Eurosceptic-to-Better off Out-to-No compromise rabbit hole in the first place. Maybe the virus entered the system with the fall of Maggie; residual guilt at what was done to her morphing into hatred of centrist Conservatism and anything to do with Europe.
Hence Brexit, hence the shambles since. They just made the problem worse, but a lot of human coping mechanisms do that.
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Has the tv career gone down the tubes that much? I know they kicked him back over hear from the US and League of their Own has got shit canned, so more "last ever" Gavin and Stacey episodes or become London Mayor?
Money, fame, power. Corden will have made a sackload of cash in America and being Mayor will get him into the papers whenever he pops out for milk. Whether he actually has any political ambition is another question.
Well I suppose being a famous person off the telly with a reputation of being a massive arse seems have been a winning formulae on more than one occasion recently.
Do we think Sadiq Khan will try to return to being an MP with a view to a bigger job?
Today's photo is from the top of Helsby Hill. You know the one with the profile of the Red Indian as you head along the M56 to Wales? That one. A small hill - you can get up here from Helsby in half an hour - but a rewarding one: you can see for miles. Liverpool Cathedral, Moel Famau, the new Mersey Bridge, Eddisbury Hill. You can see to Manchester on a less hazy day, and the Pennines behind. Theoretically you can see six counties. It's just lovely. You have to not mind the industrial foreground of Ellesmere Port and Runcorn, but the background is so vast that you don't. It's lovely inany weather, but today Iam happily baking myself in the may afternoon - the background hum of the motorway is almoat drowned out by birdsong and the crowing of a demented cockerel and the rustle of wind through leaves and grass. It's all of England at once. Also, it's like a fucking tinderbox. I've never seen it so ready to burn, not even at the end of summer 2022.
Sadly, this is all self-inflicted. The Johnson/Truss administrations simply destroyed the trust and confidence of their supporters.
Many of their problems predate that.
for example the increase in student fees crippled them among young graduates.
Something which was accentuated by unaffordable housing in southern England.
The Conservatives became reliant upon the support of the over 50s and C2s.
Demographics which Farage could be attractive to.
The Conservatives ceased to be aspirational. Especially for younger people.
If Cameron was serious that we were "all in it together" he should have announced the triple lock would move to a double lock by 2025 (in 15 years time from 2010) which would now be taking effect, and lower stamp duty and incentivised downsizing.
My parents have literally just rejected doing this due to cost, and losing c.£80k in so doing, so are now living in a house that's far too big for them.
What's that 80k calculation? Is that the difference made by Stamp Duty, or is it Inheritance Tax?
The Stamp Duty one would be met by the set of proposals around to replace Council Tax with a 0.5% house value tax, which also incorporate abolition of Stamp Duty.
I think I came up with the 0.5% figure. Treat with extreme caution. I think you'd want 0.6 to be safe.
Thanks for the reply.
I got it from the full set of proposals known as the Proportional Property Tax a couple of years ago, and the proposals have been around for a number of years. They use 0.48%.
The issue is it would crash the value of small houses in high demand area. That's not necessarily a bad thing on a macro scale, but it would mean the revenues would be lower than expected. £5k per annum on a small terrace in North London...
Good.
Whats the problem?
I made that clear in my post. Working out what revenues you would raise is difficult because you don't know to what extent a tax will depress house prices.
There is a house for sale in Edinburgh for £2.2 million. Will it still be worth that much with an £11k annual council tax bill? That's three times higher than it is now.
Rule of thumb - take the annual increase in tax (net) and multiply by 20 for the price impact
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
You have to spend some time curating your own version of X - a month or so of determined muting and blocking - at which point it becomes quite usable again.
You can then maintain it that way with much less effort.
Or you can just go nowhere near it and rely on PB to link you to anything worthy of attention. Much less tiresome.
That's what I do with the single extra feature of looking Matt, who delivers free the bit of the Telegraph that's actually worth having.
PB does really work as a useful filter for those whose time is anything less than infinite.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
You're hopelessly biased. I think you'd admit that.
I am hopelessly biased. I cordially despise him. But the polls are not biased - and his polling is horrible and getting worse
And I'm suggesting that 4 years of day in day out muscular messaging between now and GE29 will lead to people viewing him as muscular. Otherwise, why do it? He's not stupid, you know.
“Muscular” is about as far away from an adjective I’d use to describe SKS.
Even if he tries it with his new found Tough Sir Keir twitter persona, try imagining him saying it in his voice - it just sounds forced.
Disagree actually. I think he does have an authentic strongman persona and I say this as someone who recoils from that sort of thing.
Thickset, suit, glasses – Sir Keir Starmer or a middle-aged Ronnie Kray?
Starmer's tough guy image is undermined by his relatively high-pitched voice. Is plastic surgery on vocal cords a thing?
Thatcher had pitch training
Starmer took his voice training so seriously that he left his family at Xmas and flirted with breaking covid rules for lessons
The worst voice coach, or voice student, in history?
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
You're hopelessly biased. I think you'd admit that.
I am hopelessly biased. I cordially despise him. But the polls are not biased - and his polling is horrible and getting worse
And I'm suggesting that 4 years of day in day out muscular messaging between now and GE29 will lead to people viewing him as muscular. Otherwise, why do it? He's not stupid, you know.
“Muscular” is about as far away from an adjective I’d use to describe SKS.
Even if he tries it with his new found Tough Sir Keir twitter persona, try imagining him saying it in his voice - it just sounds forced.
Disagree actually. I think he does have an authentic strongman persona and I say this as someone who recoils from that sort of thing.
Thickset, suit, glasses – Sir Keir Starmer or a middle-aged Ronnie Kray?
Starmer's tough guy image is undermined by his relatively high-pitched voice. Is plastic surgery on vocal cords a thing?
Thatcher had pitch training
Starmer took his voice training so seriously that he left his family at Xmas and flirted with breaking covid rules for lessons
The worst voice coach, or voice student, in history?
Well the need was so severe that it was deemed key worker status...
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Has the tv career gone down the tubes that much? I know they kicked him back over hear from the US and League of their Own has got shit canned, so more "last ever" Gavin and Stacey episodes or become London Mayor?
Money, fame, power. Corden will have made a sackload of cash in America and being Mayor will get him into the papers whenever he pops out for milk. Whether he actually has any political ambition is another question.
Well I suppose being a famous person off the telly with a reputation of being a massive arse seems have been a winning formulae on more than one occasion recently.
Do we think Sadiq Khan will try to return to being an MP with a view to a bigger job?
You got there before me.
We really need a moratorium on refugees from light entertainment entering politics. Trump and Johnson were/are disasters.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
Long sleeved linen shirt with the sleeves folded back is more stylish - top tip.
..and Sir Keir's fav High St tailor, Charles Tyrwhitt, has them for £34.95 each. Absolute bargain, I have bought five
How long are the back/sleeves compared to the sizings ?
From the bottom of the collar to the bottom edge of the shirt is 71cm and from the shoulder hem to cuff it’s 62cm. This is slim fit, small. I’m 6ft and 11st 10 and they fit well. I initially bought extra slim fit bit they were a bit tight… amazingly CT take them back even if the shirt has been worn and washed.
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Has the tv career gone down the tubes that much? I know they kicked him back over hear from the US and League of their Own has got shit canned, so more "last ever" Gavin and Stacey episodes or become London Mayor?
Money, fame, power. Corden will have made a sackload of cash in America and being Mayor will get him into the papers whenever he pops out for milk. Whether he actually has any political ambition is another question.
Well I suppose being a famous person off the telly with a reputation of being a massive arse seems have been a winning formulae on more than one occasion recently.
Do we think Sadiq Khan will try to return to being an MP with a view to a bigger job?
You got there before me.
We really need a moratorium on refugees from light entertainment entering politics. Trump and Johnson were/are disasters.
It could have been worse, the likes of Doctor Oz were put up for elected positions.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
When I was in Hereford recently I didn't particularly notice that the town centre was in a bad state, I was just enjoying the fact that it's a wonderfully spacious town centre compared to most English towns.
It’s definitely spacious, and it has the shape and location to be a really pleasant place. The trouble is that “high town” was given the 1980s treatment and needs reinvention: it was pedestrianised, given over to large chain stores like M&S and Woolworths, emptied of pubs and restaurants (those are all in the streets outside high town), and fitted with a small undercover precinct called Maylord Orchard. The latter is almost entirely boarded up.
People don’t shop at those chain stores anymore, and the ones they do - like TKMaxx or H&M - have moved out to a new development a stone’s throw away on the old cattle market. So the centre is emptying.
But it could be transformed.
1. Convert some units to residential 2. Allow more outdoor seating for restaurants and cafes 3. Plant trees and gardens in the central area, which is practically large enough to count as a square 4. Get markets and food trucks in
In any case, the part of Hereford running from the old bridge through the cathedral close, castle street and down to castle green remains one of the prettiest city centres in the country.
I ought to visit Hereford more often, especially as it doesn't take that long to get to, about an hour by train.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Oh do stop it. You are BartholomewRoberts. I have no clue what your 'real life' name is.
Really?
I thought that he was actually the Dread Pirate Roberts and “Bartholomew” was his cover name?
To get a majority the next general election will be a Labour v Reform battle. However if Farage fell short he would need Tory support even with Kemi and Labour would need LD support
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Not surprised. Young women have suffered more than anyone else from the woke pandemic.
It's usually quite personal as well. My wife (well then gf) had a big swing to the right when a man in a dress started using the women's changing rooms in their gym and was very obviously perving on her and her friends according to them. I suggested she complain to the gym management that there was a man using the women's changing rooms but they were deaf to the complaints and when they tried to cancel their memberships the gym forced them to pay the cancellation fees which for most of them was 50% of the monthly fee for the remaining months, so about £500 each for four women. She and get friends refused to pay and the gym threatened them with debt collectors etc... all because a man in a dress wasn't told he needed to use the men's changing room.
Since then she's been very active in the space along with two of her friends. It's definitely driven them much further to the right than they otherwise would have been. When we first met her view on sex equality was very much women should have 50% representation everywhere but now she's much more nuanced and recognises that women are better at certain things and men others so gender splits in the workplace can arise naturally. She even said her 25 year old self would have shouted and screamed and shouted at her now 34 year old self and called her a bigot etc...
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Doesn’t Andy’s analysis belie that somewhat? Except for Ireland and France, I’m not convinced there’s determined anti-British sentiment among the European public.
I don’t follow Eurovision but it appears that the UK did better than expected last night given the universal dislike of the song. MarqueeMark’s post was eloquent.
F1: exciting race. Very unlucky for certain bets. Aston Martin's strategy was to fall between two stools, neither undercutting nor staying long to benefit from a VSC or safety car. Ah well.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
You have to spend some time curating your own version of X - a month or so of determined muting and blocking - at which point it becomes quite usable again.
You can then maintain it that way with much less effort.
Or you can just go nowhere near it and rely on PB to link you to anything worthy of attention. Much less tiresome.
But have you noticed how many of the news stories come from there ? Like it or not (I don't particularly), it remains uniquely useful in what it provides.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
It's bitter cultural resentment that the whole show and most of the songs are all conducted in English. Seriously. I do believe that is the reason. We've got them all to speak OUR language, not theirs, and this feels colonial, and dammit they don't have to vote for us AS WELL (Brexit surely made this resentment worse)
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
There's a plethora of reasons why, and "Brexit" is just a label embraced by some, not the main reason. And the pro-EU Remainer position is disproportionately popular on this site but not necessarily as widespread nationally.
In fact more domestic concerns are as big, or bigger, an issue than Brexit.
The Conservative Party at its best is a widespread party of aspiration. Unfortunately the party has turned its back on aspiration, which means that there's little reason for many people to vote for them now.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Not surprised. Young women have suffered more than anyone else from the woke pandemic.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Have you studied the bounce back data?
Point is that the negative effects of obesity - on heart disease; cancer; inflammation; diabetes etc - massively outweigh those of the drugs. And the efficacy of the drugs in treating obesity greatly outstrips that of other therapies.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
This is so obviously true
I wonder if it's because, deep down, people see obesity as a sin and Ozempic as a cheat by the sinner, like buying your way into heaven with indulgences
Fact is, the drugs work. And obesity is cripping health systems worldwide. No brainer
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
The original sin of Brexit was that the Prime Minister opposed it. If Cameron hadn’t done that, it would have been much easier for both the Tory party and the country to come back together again after the referendum.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Have you studied the bounce back data?
Point is that the negative effects of obesity - on heart disease; cancer; inflammation; diabetes etc - massively outweigh those of the drugs. And the efficacy of the drugs in treating obesity greatly outstrips that of other therapies.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
This is so obviously true
I wonder if it's because, deep down, people see obesity as a sin and Ozempic as a cheat by the sinner, like buying your way into heaven with indulgences
Fact is, the drugs work. And obesity is cripping health systems worldwide. No brainer
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
Probably Sam Ryder, that song actually made number one in our charts and did well all across European charts in the run up to the event. That was the year we got second place behind Ukraine.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Have you studied the bounce back data?
Point is that the negative effects of obesity - on heart disease; cancer; inflammation; diabetes etc - massively outweigh those of the drugs. And the efficacy of the drugs in treating obesity greatly outstrips that of other therapies.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
This is so obviously true
I wonder if it's because, deep down, people see obesity as a sin and Ozempic as a cheat by the sinner, like buying your way into heaven with indulgences
Fact is, the drugs work. And obesity is cripping health systems worldwide. No brainer
They don't have side-effects?
Relatively minor compared to the enormous benefits, is the consensus
Massive pot bellies, shit tattoos, weird "fash" hair and stupid Rag and Bone men beards. Necking Neck Oil or Madri a vape or a cancer stick and then ordering a burger or pizza. And calling his own son "mate". Yuk.
Very occasionally you get the opposite: a gym freak guy out with others who'll only touch Huel and Water and has got biceps like they've been on steroids. But are as boring as hell.
What a choice.
How did it come to this?
Thanks for the first hand report from the Reform pub. It’s appreciated that you visited there so that we don’t have to.
This is a posh pub in rural Hampshire, albeit family friendly. They attract on the weekends.
I'd say it's pretty rife now.
Probably not unrelated, is the fact that unless you go to a really good tailor, it's quite difficult to find decent menswear. When I was younger, places like M & S, Dunn's, BHS, all had decent suits, shirts, and ties. So many men just dress like slobs.
You notice the contrast, if you've ever been to Madrid, or Granada. Most of the locals dress immaculately in the evening.
Also, very noticeable, in churches with substantial numbers of Africans in the congregation, is just how immaculately dressed they are.
It’s not difficult to find a smart short-sleeved collared shirt and a decent pair of chinos. Mind you, I will need to make a conscious effort to be smarter when we visit Germany, Switzerland and France next month.
Long sleeved linen shirt with the sleeves folded back is more stylish - top tip.
..and Sir Keir's fav High St tailor, Charles Tyrwhitt, has them for £34.95 each. Absolute bargain, I have bought five
How long are the back/sleeves compared to the sizings ?
From the bottom of the collar to the bottom edge of the shirt is 71cm and from the shoulder hem to cuff it’s 62cm. This is slim fit, small. I’m 6ft and 11st 10 and they fit well. I initially bought extra slim fit bit they were a bit tight… amazingly CT take them back even if the shirt has been worn and washed.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
It's not bullshit. Brexit consumed the Cons to the exclusion of all else for years. It's why they got the unfit for office Johnson and then Truss after he imploded. During that period they became decadent, corrupt and self-indulgent. Lightweights and sycophants found favour over competence and integrity. They forgot how to govern and - the killer - lost their USP of trusted with the finances. Brexit might not explain all of their collapse (no single thing does) but it sure as hell contributed hugely.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Doesn’t Andy’s analysis belie that somewhat? Except for Ireland and France, I’m not convinced there’s determined anti-British sentiment among the European public.
I don’t follow Eurovision but it appears that the UK did better than expected last night given the universal dislike of the song. MarqueeMark’s post was eloquent.
Isn’t the issue also geographical? The countries that do best on televoting get a lot of votes from near neighbours who tend to have the same cultural reference points and often the same TV and radio stations. We only have Ireland (who usually give us decent votes).
We also suffer from not having to go through the heats, which are a chance for viewers to get to know the songs.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
Probably Sam Ryder, that song actually made number one in our charts and did well all across European charts in the run up to the event. That was the year we got second place behind Ukraine.
Yeah, exactly.
I was tempted to say "apart from Sam Ryder" but thought I'd leave it at just that.
Enter something that's not completely forgettable, and it gets the votes. Had it not been for Putin, then I expect Sam Ryder would have won it that year.
Every other entry - can't remember any of the songs, why would people vote for any of them?
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Doesn’t Andy’s analysis belie that somewhat? Except for Ireland and France, I’m not convinced there’s determined anti-British sentiment among the European public.
I don’t follow Eurovision but it appears that the UK did better than expected last night given the universal dislike of the song. MarqueeMark’s post was eloquent.
Isn’t the issue also geographical? The countries that do best on televoting get a lot of votes from near neighbours who tend to have the same cultural reference points and often the same TV and radio stations. We only have Ireland (who usually give us decent votes).
We also suffer from not having to go through the heats, which are a chance for viewers to get to know the songs.
I feel you have to do unironic camp to succeed at Eurovision, and the UK only does ironic camp.
It came after the FDF waged a campaign to put pressure on the DHSC to rewrite its nutrition policy, lobbying officials to remove the push to minimally processed food in the guidance issued to retailers, according to documents and emails reviewed by the Guardian.
In response to a freedom of information request, the government released a cache of emails between the FDF and the DHSC.
Most of the correspondence was heavily redacted. The government cited section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act, “which provides for the protection of personal information”, and section 35(1)(a), “which provides protection for the information that relates to the formulation or development of government policy”.
The emails, sent between October 2022 and April 2023, reveal how the FDF, which represents firms with a combined annual turnover of more than £112bn, lobbied the DHSC to drop the guidance pushing retailers to promote minimally processed food...
I'm no food expert and subsist on a perfectly balanced diet of fish (protein) and chips (fat and carbohydrates) every day, and an apple.
But I'm suspicious of food arguments that lump "ultra-processed food" into a single category. Over the decades, everything around food resembles one set of faddists arguing with another group of faddists. Or fattests.
Nor am I shocked that industry lobbyists lobby for industry-favourable outcomes. That's their mission statement.
OTOH measures which industry lobbyists moan about have been significant successes - the extra tax on high sugar, for example, which reduced sugar levels in drinks to just below the threshold. And which has shown to deliver health benefits.
Sugar is a single thing. Ultra-processed food is lots of different things lumped together.
I've become convinced this is poisoning us. I've seen kids born just six or seven years ago (so after May came to power) already be extremely fat. Everyone is eating shit and ordering terrible pizzas from Deliveroo.
I'm not sure what the right policy response is, but I'm definitely in the something must be done category now.
Luckily we have incredible new anti-obesity drugs
Mounjaro is a phenomenon and they are only getting better and cheaper. Soon they will come in pill form and cost a few quid
For the first time in forty years obesity is now falling in the USA (and quite fast). Americans are rich and can afford these drugs. We are quite rich - we can’t afford NOT to use these drugs
Every person we save from obesity saves the NHS £££££
But that's exactly why public services like the NHS are in trouble - always finding ways to treat rather than prevent issues.
It's a bit like claiming that prison is a great way to reduce crime - simply lock up the habitual criminals! But that's damned expensive and it would be better for everyone to get the intervention in much earlier (probably pre-school/pre-natal).
I don't think having 60%+ of the population, including young children, on prescription drugs is a place we want to end up. It's taxpayers absorbing the enormous negative externality of food producers putting loads of crap in their food.
Completely disagree
Obesity is a monstrous worldwide problem - trust me, I’ve seen it - and now we have miraculous drugs that fix it. eg Mounjaro taken over 70 weeks induces an average 20% loss of total body weight. That’s remarkable
At the same time it looks like these drugs do amazing things against cancer, Alzheimer’s, all kinds of addiction
Are these drugs dangerous and new? Well no, not really - they’ve been used by diabetics for yonks
The human race has lucked out at a crucial moment. These obesity drugs could be as game changing as antibiotics. We must use them
Yes of course it would be great if we could get everyone to slim down via yoga, Pilates and salads but let’s be real
Have you studied the bounce back data?
Point is that the negative effects of obesity - on heart disease; cancer; inflammation; diabetes etc - massively outweigh those of the drugs. And the efficacy of the drugs in treating obesity greatly outstrips that of other therapies.
Being able to do without them is very likely preferable. But so far, it's not clear how, for a lot of people who require them.
This is so obviously true
I wonder if it's because, deep down, people see obesity as a sin and Ozempic as a cheat by the sinner, like buying your way into heaven with indulgences
Fact is, the drugs work. And obesity is cripping health systems worldwide. No brainer
They don't have side-effects?
Trivial side effects.
Some not so trivial - but that generally means those who can't tolerate the drug just stop using it. As far as the long term is concerned, no one really knows yet.
The long term effects of obesity range from bad, to worse, of course.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
The most Reformy person in my family circle is my young niece, bright and articulate. 29 years old. Mother of two small kids
Not surprised. Young women have suffered more than anyone else from the woke pandemic.
It's usually quite personal as well. My wife (well then gf) had a big swing to the right when a man in a dress started using the women's changing rooms in their gym and was very obviously perving on her and her friends according to them. I suggested she complain to the gym management that there was a man using the women's changing rooms but they were deaf to the complaints and when they tried to cancel their memberships the gym forced them to pay the cancellation fees which for most of them was 50% of the monthly fee for the remaining months, so about £500 each for four women. She and get friends refused to pay and the gym threatened them with debt collectors etc... all because a man in a dress wasn't told he needed to use the men's changing room.
Since then she's been very active in the space along with two of her friends. It's definitely driven them much further to the right than they otherwise would have been. When we first met her view on sex equality was very much women should have 50% representation everywhere but now she's much more nuanced and recognises that women are better at certain things and men others so gender splits in the workplace can arise naturally. She even said her 25 year old self would have shouted and screamed and shouted at her now 34 year old self and called her a bigot etc...
Very interesting. However, what is 'left' or 'right' about the various different views and perspectives here? Are they not all variants on the almost universal liberal consensus that women and men are equal and that women and men for certain particular purposes need their own protected space. Nothing left or right about any of the options, I suggest.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
It's bitter cultural resentment that the whole show and most of the songs are all conducted in English. Seriously. I do believe that is the reason. We've got them all to speak OUR language, not theirs, and this feels colonial, and dammit they don't have to vote for us AS WELL (Brexit surely made this resentment worse)
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
It's not bullshit. Brexit consumed the Cons to the exclusion of all else for years. It's why they got the unfit for office Johnson and then Truss after he imploded. During that period they became decadent, corrupt and self-indulgent. Lightweights and sycophants found favour over competence and integrity. They forgot how to govern and - the killer - lost their USP of trusted with the finances. Brexit might not explain all of their collapse (no single thing does) but it sure as hell contributed hugely.
There's a rewriting of history there.
Truss had been attending Cabinet for nearly a decade before she became Prime Minister. Long before the Brexit Referendum, and in consecutive Prime Minister's cabinets from Cameron onwards.
In fact if I recall correctly she was chosen by the Remain campaign to represent Remain in one of the Brexit Referendum debates.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Doesn’t Andy’s analysis belie that somewhat? Except for Ireland and France, I’m not convinced there’s determined anti-British sentiment among the European public.
I don’t follow Eurovision but it appears that the UK did better than expected last night given the universal dislike of the song. MarqueeMark’s post was eloquent.
Isn’t the issue also geographical? The countries that do best on televoting get a lot of votes from near neighbours who tend to have the same cultural reference points and often the same TV and radio stations. We only have Ireland (who usually give us decent votes).
We also suffer from not having to go through the heats, which are a chance for viewers to get to know the songs.
I feel you have to do unironic camp to succeed at Eurovision, and the UK only does ironic camp.
Or earnestness more broadly. We tend to look like we’re taking the piss out of Eurovision. It’s like our early 1900s attitude to world cups.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
There's a plethora of reasons why, and "Brexit" is just a label embraced by some, not the main reason. And the pro-EU Remainer position is disproportionately popular on this site but not necessarily as widespread nationally.
In fact more domestic concerns are as big, or bigger, an issue than Brexit.
The Conservative Party at its best is a widespread party of aspiration. Unfortunately the party has turned its back on aspiration, which means that there's little reason for many people to vote for them now.
Brexit has bugger all to do with that.
Yet Reform lead the polls on a strongly pro Brexit platform and a policy more anti immigration and anti woke than pro aspiration and one more Nimby than the Tories
The original sin of Brexit was that the Prime Minister opposed it.
The original sin of Brexit is that it was fucking stupid.
The PM opposed it because it was fucking stupid.
The party split because BoZo wanted to be PM, and was willing to burn everything in pursuit of his ambition.
The 2015 manifesto, that you enthusiastically supported, promised to hold a referendum on it. I think that Cameron is personally responsible for people like you being unable to accept what happened.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
For anyone any good it would be a potentially career ending move.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
Which is kind of fine... It's a fun light entz evening, with about as much to do with the serious business of music as Jesus sans Frontiers did to sport. The Big five rarely win, because their top musicians don't need the publicity. If anything, I'd be more concerned the UK started taking it more seriously.
Hauling it back to politics, it shows how misleading FnPTP can be. Only the top ten get anything, so an OK-but-not-brilliant song and performance (or medley of about eight songs, as Remember Monday had) can easily not trouble the scorer.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
For anyone any good it would be a potentially career ending move.
Well that still leaves plenty of other British acts like Radiohead and Coldplay who could possibly do it....
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
How do you know that TikTok is full of alt.right teenies?
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
It's bitter cultural resentment that the whole show and most of the songs are all conducted in English. Seriously. I do believe that is the reason. We've got them all to speak OUR language, not theirs, and this feels colonial, and dammit they don't have to vote for us AS WELL (Brexit surely made this resentment worse)
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
I don't think the voting quite works like that. Intense dislike doesn't really show up. All you need is for a small core to like your song (or you) enough to vote for you. This works in favour of countries which are fuzzy at the edges and have big blobs of population who identify as that country technically within the borders of another country. Like most Balkan countries.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
It's not bullshit. Brexit consumed the Cons to the exclusion of all else for years. It's why they got the unfit for office Johnson and then Truss after he imploded. During that period they became decadent, corrupt and self-indulgent. Lightweights and sycophants found favour over competence and integrity. They forgot how to govern and - the killer - lost their USP of trusted with the finances. Brexit might not explain all of their collapse (no single thing does) but it sure as hell contributed hugely.
There's a rewriting of history there.
Truss had been attending Cabinet for nearly a decade before she became Prime Minister. Long before the Brexit Referendum, and in consecutive Prime Minister's cabinets from Cameron onwards.
In fact if I recall correctly she was chosen by the Remain campaign to represent Remain in one of the Brexit Referendum debates.
And was even in the Lib Dems once.
However the relevant history is that she ran for the leadership as a Brexit ultra and attempted for five minutes to govern as one.
Farage claimed her budget was “the best since 1986”.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
Spaceman was good, and finished 2nd, though given Ukraine hoovered up all the douze points in the televote it still got 100 more points from the Jury than the televote. I feel that the BBC should give up the idea of an internal selection and have a Swedish style national final with heats, semi finals and final. ESC fans watch other countries national finals so the winning song will already have a fanbase going into spring and it'll be something that at least we like listening to.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
For anyone any good it would be a potentially career ending move.
I suspect that for many European entries, Eurovision gives them a potential wider audience and great publicity. So good entries have an incentive to try and accept the publicity.
Whereas for British entries, they already get a very wide audience (our music already spreads potentially globally) and publicity ends more negative than anything else.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Honestly a lot is to do with song quality. Our song was shit yesterday and unappealing to audiences. As someone pointed out - when it released as a single in the UK it could only muster a rank of 95 in the top 100 charts. The British public didn't enjoy it so why would the European public?
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
What was the last UK Eurovision song that wasn't completely forgettable?
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
Probably Sam Ryder, that song actually made number one in our charts and did well all across European charts in the run up to the event. That was the year we got second place behind Ukraine.
Yeah, exactly.
I was tempted to say "apart from Sam Ryder" but thought I'd leave it at just that.
Enter something that's not completely forgettable, and it gets the votes. Had it not been for Putin, then I expect Sam Ryder would have won it that year.
Every other entry - can't remember any of the songs, why would people vote for any of them?
I mean, yes, conspiracies aside - the main reason we keep losing is that we keep entering bafflingly forgettable songs. For the country which is by far the best at pop musicin Europe, this is a puzzle.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
There's a plethora of reasons why, and "Brexit" is just a label embraced by some, not the main reason. And the pro-EU Remainer position is disproportionately popular on this site but not necessarily as widespread nationally.
In fact more domestic concerns are as big, or bigger, an issue than Brexit.
The Conservative Party at its best is a widespread party of aspiration. Unfortunately the party has turned its back on aspiration, which means that there's little reason for many people to vote for them now.
Brexit has bugger all to do with that.
Yet Reform lead the polls on a strongly pro Brexit platform and a policy more anti immigration and anti woke than pro aspiration and one more Nimby than the Tories
I think that's where the Conservatives went wrong. The remainy, working, vaguely affluent, mortgage holding 48% abandoned them and they were left with Brexit voters. They did not adjust to this reality and have been supplanted.
I guess CCHQ couldn't face becoming MAGA-lite. The most stark contrast is with the SNP, which fully owned Indy and absorbed Yes voters in the runup to the 2015 election.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
It's bitter cultural resentment that the whole show and most of the songs are all conducted in English. Seriously. I do believe that is the reason. We've got them all to speak OUR language, not theirs, and this feels colonial, and dammit they don't have to vote for us AS WELL (Brexit surely made this resentment worse)
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
I think that Cameron is personally responsible for people like you being unable to accept what happened.
LOL
It's the Brexiteers who have failed for the last 9 years to accept what they voted for
I've accepted it and am happy that we have what I voted for.
A UK Government to be held accountable for the decisions it makes, as opposed to an unelected bureaucracy making decisions and never able to be held to account.
James Corden has opened the door to running for London Mayor as Labour searches for a successor to Sir Sadiq Khan.
Has the tv career gone down the tubes that much? I know they kicked him back over hear from the US and League of their Own has got shit canned, so more "last ever" Gavin and Stacey episodes or become London Mayor?
Money, fame, power. Corden will have made a sackload of cash in America and being Mayor will get him into the papers whenever he pops out for milk. Whether he actually has any political ambition is another question.
Well I suppose being a famous person off the telly with a reputation of being a massive arse seems have been a winning formulae on more than one occasion recently.
Do we think Sadiq Khan will try to return to being an MP with a view to a bigger job?
Sadiq is in his mid-50s so there is still time in theory but the logistics are against him. He is Mayor until 2028 with a general election likely in 2029, but if, as I expect, Starmer retires first then that door closes. The Lords and a legal appointment might work for a former solicitor who shadowed those roles in the past. In one sense Sadiq is the anti-Corden: lots of politics but no money.
You are and you know it. I've asked you very politely and clearly not to use my real life name and @PBModerator has said that's a rule too not to doxx people.
I don't know why you feel the need but it's rude.
Oh do stop it. You are BartholomewRoberts. I have no clue what your 'real life' name is.
Really?
I thought that he was actually the Dread Pirate Roberts and “Bartholomew” was his cover name?
I'll buy that.
But seriously, we are who we are and always have been. That's the deal, isn't it.
I think the biggest issue we have with Eurovision is that any artist who is good enough to win is also good enough to get a record contract and go for the big time. In Europe the contest is seen as a potential platform for a European artist to go global or at least get some long term success if they win. Over here it's not and the potential upside is low for someone really good but the downside risk is huge if you end up in a year where there is a big political event that makes us unpopular (Brexit, the Iraq war etc...) in Europe you could see your career growth strangled at birth with a low placing or the dreaded null points.
The best way to think about it is what would have been in it for Charli xcx to do Eurovision before she released her first singles or EP? She is clearly super talented, why take the risk?
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
How do you know that TikTok is full of alt.right teenies?
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
How do you know that TikTok is full of alt.right teenies?
Because I've watched them. Next question
That probably says more about you and your algorithm and likes than it does about TikTok or the youth.
I don't use TikTok, my wife does, and I've never once heard anything alt-right on her streams.
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
I told the story on here before about bumping into Denis Thatcher on his holidays. Yes he was husband of the PM and different times in terms of an active IRA, but there were Range Rovers full of bodyguards ready to tackle a 10 year old kid to the ground.
If you work here illegally or employ people who do, we’re coming for you.
Illegal working raids are up 40%. And we won’t stop there.
No messing about there. Polls will confirm (or not) but a word that probably leaps to many people's minds when thinking about Keir Starmer is "muscular". He'd take that, I reckon, if it turns out to be the case.
Ahahahahaha
I guarantee that if you did a word cloud on Starmer the term “muscular” would not appear. He is seen as a weak, pitiable figure, except when he wants to persecute white people
Look at his abysmal polling, which has recently got even worse
You're hopelessly biased. I think you'd admit that.
I am hopelessly biased. I cordially despise him. But the polls are not biased - and his polling is horrible and getting worse
And I'm suggesting that 4 years of day in day out muscular messaging between now and GE29 will lead to people viewing him as muscular. Otherwise, why do it? He's not stupid, you know.
“Muscular” is about as far away from an adjective I’d use to describe SKS.
Even if he tries it with his new found Tough Sir Keir twitter persona, try imagining him saying it in his voice - it just sounds forced.
Disagree actually. I think he does have an authentic strongman persona and I say this as someone who recoils from that sort of thing.
Thickset, suit, glasses – Sir Keir Starmer or a middle-aged Ronnie Kray?
Starmer's tough guy image is undermined by his relatively high-pitched voice. Is plastic surgery on vocal cords a thing?
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
It's bitter cultural resentment that the whole show and most of the songs are all conducted in English. Seriously. I do believe that is the reason. We've got them all to speak OUR language, not theirs, and this feels colonial, and dammit they don't have to vote for us AS WELL (Brexit surely made this resentment worse)
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
I don't think the voting quite works like that. Intense dislike doesn't really show up. All you need is for a small core to like your song (or you) enough to vote for you. This works in favour of countries which are fuzzy at the edges and have big blobs of population who identify as that country technically within the borders of another country. Like most Balkan countries.
I'm sure this resentment is part of it. But it's not exclusively a British thing. France does relatively very badly in Eurovision as well, I suspect this is jealousy of French cultural influence and "bigness", same with the UK but different
Germany is another. Big powerful countries do badly, small "innocent" countries - Ireland, Sweden, Moldova - do well
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
When Boris was FS, he still lived in Islington and I lived nearby. I’d pass him out running on the canal, red-faced and huffing, surrounded by his burly security detail.
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
When Boris was FS, he still lived in Islington and I lived nearby. I’d pass him out running on the canal, red-faced and huffing, surrounded by his burly security detail.
That is what I would have expected. So it sounds like Boris had round the clock security detail.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
How do you know that TikTok is full of alt.right teenies?
Because I've watched them. Next question
That probably says more about you and your algorithm and likes than it does about TikTok or the youth.
I don't use TikTok, my wife does, and I've never once heard anything alt-right on her streams.
Sigh. I do my best with people like you, but there's only so much to work with, in your case
I am not imagining it, nor am I following my own algo, it is a known phenomenon
"TikTok Brainrot Is Normalizing Alt-Right Ideologies
Rabbit Holed is Kieran Press-Reynolds’ weekly column exploring songs and scenes at the intersection of music and digital culture, separating shitpost genius from shitpassé lameness. This week, Kieran investigates how nasty bigotry has wormed its way into the endless scroll of TikTok brainrot."
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
It's bitter cultural resentment that the whole show and most of the songs are all conducted in English. Seriously. I do believe that is the reason. We've got them all to speak OUR language, not theirs, and this feels colonial, and dammit they don't have to vote for us AS WELL (Brexit surely made this resentment worse)
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
I don't think the voting quite works like that. Intense dislike doesn't really show up. All you need is for a small core to like your song (or you) enough to vote for you. This works in favour of countries which are fuzzy at the edges and have big blobs of population who identify as that country technically within the borders of another country. Like most Balkan countries.
I'm sure this resentment is part of it. But it's not exclusively a British thing. France does relatively very badly in Eurovision as well, I suspect this is jealousy of French cultural influence and "bigness", same with the UK but different
Germany is another. Big powerful countries do badly, small "innocent" countries - Ireland, Sweden, Moldova - do well
I don't think so, I suspect its more than big German and French acts already are (to a lesser extent than British but close) already very popular without the need for Eurovision to break out.
Meanwhile a Scandinavian or Austrian or similar act can find a much wider audience with Eurovision success.
A successful British artist wants to be in the charts and touring and maybe going to America etc - Eurovision is not an ambition of theirs. It can be for European acts.
So don't be surprised we don't get the votes, when we only send the dredges of our potential.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
How do you know that TikTok is full of alt.right teenies?
Because I've watched them. Next question
That probably says more about you and your algorithm and likes than it does about TikTok or the youth.
I don't use TikTok, my wife does, and I've never once heard anything alt-right on her streams.
Yes TikTok takes your own tastes and magnifies them until everything you get is directly in tune with your own political views, cultural preferences and hobbies. No wonder Leon is getting alt-right teenies. My son’s feed is full of libs concerned about climate change.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
It's not bullshit. Brexit consumed the Cons to the exclusion of all else for years. It's why they got the unfit for office Johnson and then Truss after he imploded. During that period they became decadent, corrupt and self-indulgent. Lightweights and sycophants found favour over competence and integrity. They forgot how to govern and - the killer - lost their USP of trusted with the finances. Brexit might not explain all of their collapse (no single thing does) but it sure as hell contributed hugely.
There's a rewriting of history there.
Truss had been attending Cabinet for nearly a decade before she became Prime Minister. Long before the Brexit Referendum, and in consecutive Prime Minister's cabinets from Cameron onwards.
In fact if I recall correctly she was chosen by the Remain campaign to represent Remain in one of the Brexit Referendum debates.
But by the time she succeeded Boris she had well and truly downed the kool aid. It was a prerequisite.
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
I told the story on here before about bumping into Denis Thatcher on his holidays. Yes he was husband of the PM and different times in terms of an active IRA, but there were Range Rovers full of bodyguards ready to tackle a 10 year old kid to the ground.
I literally bumped into Gerry Adams once and I'm sure that one of his rather burly 'aides' reached for a gun before realising it was just an accident.
I did a bit of work on jury v televote points since the ESC started to release the data in 2014.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points) Ukraine 120 Poland 95 Moldova 93 Russia 89 Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points) North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist) Malta 105 Australia 103 Sweden 65 Portugal 60 United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points 2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271 2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251 2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247 2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237 2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points 2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232 2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214 2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200 2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189 2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
I really do struggle to understand why the UK is perpetuately punished by the European public for, what, Brexit (?) whilst Israel that is committing actual war crimes right now gets off scot free.
We get punished for entering sub-standard fare. Like last night.
To be clear, the song was decent and the performance was excellent. If it was 1985 rather than 2025 it would have had a good shot at winning.
Indeed, the fact that the jury vote put it in the top 10 shows it wasn't a bad song on a technical level, although for me, it was both too stop/start and too repetitive; it didn't develop or deliver a climax.
But. The Song Contest isn't a song contest. This is a point the BBC repeatedly fails to understand: it's a performance contest. The music is only one part of the act: the staging is the other.
And on that score, the UK was dismal: a thoroughly boring bounce around effort with no visuals of note and certainly no 'wow' factor. I bet no-one remembers the Austrian song but they'll certainly remember the entry. Visuals matter. Interactivity matters. Active engagement with the set, props, CGI, background screens and the rest matters. If you go on with just a song and a microphone then the song and the performance has to be multiple levels better than the rest if you're going to challenge for the win.
The annoying thing is that Britain has tremendous creative talent across all the sectors that could deliver an outstanding entry but it needs an overarching vision to bring it all together.
Before you even get there though there needs to be a concept that will work. Eurovision is an election and as in elections, the commissioners and producers should focus group with viewers across Europe what they like and what they don't (what they like is *far* more important than what they don't: it's very difficult to vote tactically against a song - by contrast, you do need to be getting in people's top three, and preferably most liked; being everyone's eighth preference is no good: if people aren't dialling your number, you're out of it).
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
I told the story on here before about bumping into Denis Thatcher on his holidays. Yes he was husband of the PM and different times in terms of an active IRA, but there were Range Rovers full of bodyguards ready to tackle a 10 year old kid to the ground.
Its British civil service computer says no penny pinching. Apparently the Italians offered a car, and the officials said no that’s not within our expenses rules.
Hard to imagine the French or Italian foreign minister having to do this.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
But, then, you're looking at the symptom not the cause.
You have to look at the wider changes in political trends over the last 25+ years, and the failure of the Tories to respond to them.
Fascinating article on how Bluesky is tailing off, and slowly self-destructing
TLDR: it's become a bubble chamber of leftoids, who are angry and intolerant of opposing opinions (esp but not always rightwing opinions). This makes it hostile to a lot of newcomers, and so the newbies stop coming. Without opposing opinions to tackle, the Blueskyers either turn on each other, or tediously and pointlessly agree with each other. And they become increasingly misinformed
So basically like all social media channels, then. Especially X.
I still use X quite a bit. Is there no longer a range of views on there? I would say there is (even if it's become open to nutters).
Absolutely there is a range of views.Let's do an experiment. I can look at my feed right now. I deliberately follow people all along the spectrum.
First ten definitely political tweets in my feed as of this moment:
1. Centre left Scottish Nationalist (ex of PB!)
2. Alt right feminist lady
3. Toby Young
4. Centre left Economist journo Shashank Joshi
5. Conservative Polish MEP
6. Trumpite American
7. Very left Briton angry about Israel
8. Centre right Canadian
9. Soft left American journalist
10. Reformy Brit
That's a pretty good mix. It tilts somewhat to the right but it's not absurd, and there are lots of left voices
But that is in my curated feed. The For You stuff is much wilder
An "alt right feminist" ... that's pretty niche.
QED
You think that's niche because you never encounter these people
There is a growing number of western women who are very feminist but also alt-right on issues like migration, because they think mass immigration has been bad for women, made the streets less safe, reintroduced patriarchal attitudes, etc
Look at the leaders of the populist right on the continent. Le Pen, Meloni, Alice Weidel (AfD)
Much of this movement is driven by women
I think Labour should be less worried about Farage than the increasing number of articulate young women identifying with the right. I don't remember a situation like that in my adult life.
Where are you getting this impression from? Young women are more left inclined than ever. Many articles written on how they're going the opposite way to young men.
Look younger, and look across the world
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
How do you know that TikTok is full of alt.right teenies?
Because I've watched them. Next question
That probably says more about you and your algorithm and likes than it does about TikTok or the youth.
I don't use TikTok, my wife does, and I've never once heard anything alt-right on her streams.
Yes TikTok takes your own tastes and magnifies them until everything you get is directly in tune with your own political views, cultural preferences and hobbies. No wonder Leon is getting alt-right teenies. My son’s feed is full of libs concerned about climate change.
No, this is a thing. This denial is really low IQ stuff when 2 minutes search would show I am right
"Europe’s far right uses TikTok to win youth vote Gen Z influencers inspire right-wing leaders like France’s Jordan Bardella ahead of June’s EU election."
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
I told the story on here before about bumping into Denis Thatcher on his holidays. Yes he was husband of the PM and different times in terms of an active IRA, but there were Range Rovers full of bodyguards ready to tackle a 10 year old kid to the ground.
Its British civil service computer says no penny pinching. Apparently the Italians offered a car, and the officials said no that’s not within our expenses rules.
Hard to imagine the French or Italian foreign minister having to do this.
Not to have any security detail at all, I honestly wouldn't have thought that would be an option regardless of cost.
Anyone who thinks the Tories problems are down to Brexit needs their head examining.
Much of the challenges we and they face today are down to decisions the Coalition did, or didn't, take. And the Tories got virtually nowhere in by-elections or in the opinion polling after 1997 until Gordon Brown took office and the GFC hit.
They just lost confidence and political awareness and slowly atrophied after the early 1990s.
Brexit begat Johnson and Truss. Johnson begat the Boriswave.
Brexit, destroyed any pretence to economic competence, or indeed to actual conservatism as long understood.
Brexit provided a sugar rush of populist support but fatally tarnished the brand. It wasn’t the only factor of course, but it was the coup de grace.
You go on about it because you hate it and you want it to be the answer to any problem that is postulated.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
I was merely responding to your post, not “going on about it”. Your chronology of the Tory party’s decline has a glaring great hole called Brexit.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Because your position is bullshit.
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Perhaps ask yourself why this board contains several ex Tories who will never go back.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
But, then, you're looking at the symptom not the cause.
You have to look at the wider changes in political trends over the last 25+ years, and the failure of the Tories to respond to them.
There’s no such thing as a completely independent variable in history.
Brexit was of course a symptom unto itself, but it was also the coup de grace for the Tories.
Iraq played an almost similar role for Labour, bringing us Corbyn, for example.
Both Brexit and Iraq were essentially betrayals of the underlying promise the Tories and Labour made to the public.
Brexit was ultimately more damaging because it took on a revolutionary cast, which required for example the exile of Remainers, who tended very highly to make up the non-loony, non-fantasist, and non-incompetent component of the parliamentary party.
If the taxi driver was trying to rip off his passengers, it's quite amusing it turns out he was carrying people who were rather more important than he'd assumed. (Someone just wrote an article in the Spectator about getting ripped off by taxi drivers in foreign countries, oddly enough).
Why on earth was the Foreign Secretary being driven 360 miles in a taxi between two countries with no bodyguards or offficials? Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.
I genuinely thought that the Foreign Secretary would have body guards and officially organised transportation for everything. It is one of the most senior roles in government. Where as if somebody told me Lisa Nandy has to get her own Ubers everywhere that is totally believable.
I told the story on here before about bumping into Denis Thatcher on his holidays. Yes he was husband of the PM and different times in terms of an active IRA, but there were Range Rovers full of bodyguards ready to tackle a 10 year old kid to the ground.
Its British civil service computer says no penny pinching. Apparently the Italians offered a car, and the officials said no that’s not within our expenses rules.
Hard to imagine the French or Italian foreign minister having to do this.
Not to have any security detail at all, I honestly wouldn't have thought that would be an option regardless of cost.
People made a big thing about Boris Johnson attending that party in Italy without his security detail.
Comments
A 25 year old man was voting SNP & another 32 year old man was voting Labour.
https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25171466.reform-can-win-hamilton-by-election-take-power-holyrood/
It's basket was even quite comparable to a deep fat fryer one.
We started trying more food in it until eventually we realised we could cook practically anything in it.
Now they seem to have become ubiquitous, but the name has stuck.
Top 5 countries (average televote - jury points)
Ukraine 120
Poland 95
Moldova 93
Russia 89
Romania 77
Top 5 countries (average jury - televote points)
North Macedonia 189 (but only one finalist)
Malta 105
Australia 103
Sweden 65
Portugal 60
United Kingdom is 12th with 37 more jury points than televote points.
Top 5 acts with most televote points over jury points
2024 - Israel - Eden Golan "Hurricane" Televote 323, Jury 52, Difference 271
2019 - Norway - Keiino "Spirit in the Sky" Televote 291, Jury 40, Difference 251
2022 - Ukraine - Kalush Orchestra "Stefania" Televote 439, Jury 192, Difference 247
2025 - Israel - Yuval Raphael "New Day Will Rise" Televote 297, Jury 60, Difference 237
2016 - Russia - Sergey Lazarev "You Are the Only One" Televote 361, Jury 130, Difference 231
Top 5 acts with most jury points over televote points
2018 - Sweden - Benjamin Ingrosso "Dance You Off" Jury 253, Televote 21, Difference 232
2025 - Switzerland - Zoë Më "Voyage" Jury 214, Televote 0, Difference 214
2018 - Austria - Cesár Sampson "Nobody but You" Jury 271, Televote 71, Difference 200
2019 - North Macedonia - Tamara Todevska "Proud" Jury 247, Televote 58, Difference 189
2017 - Australia - Isaiah Firebrace "Don't Come Easy" Jury 171, Televote 2, Difference 169
We have only got more televote points than the jury in one contest, SuRie in 2018 got 25 televote points and 23 jury points.
A political movement that was fully right in the head wouldn't have headed down the Eurosceptic-to-Better off Out-to-No compromise rabbit hole in the first place. Maybe the virus entered the system with the fall of Maggie; residual guilt at what was done to her morphing into hatred of centrist Conservatism and anything to do with Europe.
Hence Brexit, hence the shambles since. They just made the problem worse, but a lot of human coping mechanisms do that.
Do we think Sadiq Khan will try to return to being an MP with a view to a bigger job?
Today's photo is from the top of Helsby Hill. You know the one with the profile of the Red Indian as you head along the M56 to Wales? That one. A small hill - you can get up here from Helsby in half an hour - but a rewarding one: you can see for miles. Liverpool Cathedral, Moel Famau, the new Mersey Bridge, Eddisbury Hill. You can see to Manchester on a less hazy day, and the Pennines behind. Theoretically you can see six counties.
It's just lovely. You have to not mind the industrial foreground of Ellesmere Port and Runcorn, but the background is so vast that you don't. It's lovely inany weather, but today Iam happily baking myself in the may afternoon - the background hum of the motorway is almoat drowned out by birdsong and the crowing of a demented cockerel and the rustle of wind through leaves and grass. It's all of England at once.
Also, it's like a fucking tinderbox. I've never seen it so ready to burn, not even at the end of summer 2022.
PB does really work as a useful filter for those whose time is anything less than infinite.
The worst voice coach, or voice student, in history?
We really need a moratorium on refugees from light entertainment entering politics. Trump and Johnson were/are disasters.
You are intelligent enough to know that simply isn't true.
6ft and 11st 10 and they fit well. I initially bought extra slim fit bit they were a bit tight… amazingly CT take them back even if the shirt has been worn and washed.
One doesn’t exactly need to be Sigmund Freud…
Brexit if anything postponed the Tories decline and bought them time.
Once again, I’m astonished you are employed in a job that requires some sort of analysis.
I thought that he was actually the Dread Pirate Roberts and “Bartholomew” was his cover name?
Since then she's been very active in the space along with two of her friends. It's definitely driven them much further to the right than they otherwise would have been. When we first met her view on sex equality was very much women should have 50% representation everywhere but now she's much more nuanced and recognises that women are better at certain things and men others so gender splits in the workplace can arise naturally. She even said her 25 year old self would have shouted and screamed and shouted at her now 34 year old self and called her a bigot etc...
Except for Ireland and France, I’m not convinced there’s determined anti-British sentiment among the European public.
I don’t follow Eurovision but it appears that the UK did better than expected last night given the universal dislike of the song. MarqueeMark’s post was eloquent.
Like it or not (I don't particularly), it remains uniquely useful in what it provides.
To overcome this - and it can happpen - we need an exceptional song
In fact more domestic concerns are as big, or bigger, an issue than Brexit.
The Conservative Party at its best is a widespread party of aspiration. Unfortunately the party has turned its back on aspiration, which means that there's little reason for many people to vote for them now.
Brexit has bugger all to do with that.
https://youtu.be/J61mDnxTYVg?si=blmQgS3fizbt6Rst&t=157
Last year's was even worse, I still don't understand why the BBC doesn't do what they did with Sam Ryder and find another Tiktok star that can sing, has a good personality and give them a really good pop song.
The UK creates some very good music - but we don't enter it into Eurovision.
Le Pen gets big suppport from the young. The AdF are really big with German kids. Girls very much included
TikTok is full of alt.right teenies and 19 year old white priders. Part of it is surely the youthful desire to shock. Being a commie or a transsexual no longer remotely shocks, being hard right really does. But also it is a genuine political shift
We also suffer from not having to go through the heats, which are a chance for viewers to get to know the songs.
I was tempted to say "apart from Sam Ryder" but thought I'd leave it at just that.
Enter something that's not completely forgettable, and it gets the votes. Had it not been for Putin, then I expect Sam Ryder would have won it that year.
Every other entry - can't remember any of the songs, why would people vote for any of them?
The PM opposed it because it was fucking stupid.
The party split because BoZo wanted to be PM, and was willing to burn everything in pursuit of his ambition.
As far as the long term is concerned, no one really knows yet.
The long term effects of obesity range from bad, to worse, of course.
Truss had been attending Cabinet for nearly a decade before she became Prime Minister. Long before the Brexit Referendum, and in consecutive Prime Minister's cabinets from Cameron onwards.
In fact if I recall correctly she was chosen by the Remain campaign to represent Remain in one of the Brexit Referendum debates.
Hauling it back to politics, it shows how misleading FnPTP can be. Only the top ten get anything, so an OK-but-not-brilliant song and performance (or medley of about eight songs, as Remember Monday had) can easily not trouble the scorer.
But really, it's a bit of fun.
However the relevant history is that she ran for the leadership as a Brexit ultra and attempted for five minutes to govern as one.
Farage claimed her budget was “the best since 1986”.
Whereas for British entries, they already get a very wide audience (our music already spreads potentially globally) and publicity ends more negative than anything else.
It's the Brexiteers who have failed for the last 9 years to accept what they voted for
I guess CCHQ couldn't face becoming MAGA-lite. The most stark contrast is with the SNP, which fully owned Indy and absorbed Yes voters in the runup to the 2015 election.
A UK Government to be held accountable for the decisions it makes, as opposed to an unelected bureaucracy making decisions and never able to be held to account.
But seriously, we are who we are and always have been. That's the deal, isn't it.
The best way to think about it is what would have been in it for Charli xcx to do Eurovision before she released her first singles or EP? She is clearly super talented, why take the risk?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14724413/David-Lammy-forced-deny-having-GUN-French-ski-trip-visit-taxi-row-deepens.html
I don't use TikTok, my wife does, and I've never once heard anything alt-right on her streams.
I told the story on here before about bumping into Denis Thatcher on his holidays. Yes he was husband of the PM and different times in terms of an active IRA, but there were Range Rovers full of bodyguards ready to tackle a 10 year old kid to the ground.
Germany is another. Big powerful countries do badly, small "innocent" countries - Ireland, Sweden, Moldova - do well
I am not imagining it, nor am I following my own algo, it is a known phenomenon
"TikTok Brainrot Is Normalizing Alt-Right Ideologies
Rabbit Holed is Kieran Press-Reynolds’ weekly column exploring songs and scenes at the intersection of music and digital culture, separating shitpost genius from shitpassé lameness. This week, Kieran investigates how nasty bigotry has wormed its way into the endless scroll of TikTok brainrot."
https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/tiktok-brainrot-is-normalizing-alt-right-ideologies/
Meanwhile a Scandinavian or Austrian or similar act can find a much wider audience with Eurovision success.
A successful British artist wants to be in the charts and touring and maybe going to America etc - Eurovision is not an ambition of theirs. It can be for European acts.
So don't be surprised we don't get the votes, when we only send the dredges of our potential.
To be clear, the song was decent and the performance was excellent. If it was 1985 rather than 2025 it would have had a good shot at winning.
Indeed, the fact that the jury vote put it in the top 10 shows it wasn't a bad song on a technical level, although for me, it was both too stop/start and too repetitive; it didn't develop or deliver a climax.
But. The Song Contest isn't a song contest. This is a point the BBC repeatedly fails to understand: it's a performance contest. The music is only one part of the act: the staging is the other.
And on that score, the UK was dismal: a thoroughly boring bounce around effort with no visuals of note and certainly no 'wow' factor. I bet no-one remembers the Austrian song but they'll certainly remember the entry. Visuals matter. Interactivity matters. Active engagement with the set, props, CGI, background screens and the rest matters. If you go on with just a song and a microphone then the song and the performance has to be multiple levels better than the rest if you're going to challenge for the win.
The annoying thing is that Britain has tremendous creative talent across all the sectors that could deliver an outstanding entry but it needs an overarching vision to bring it all together.
Before you even get there though there needs to be a concept that will work. Eurovision is an election and as in elections, the commissioners and producers should focus group with viewers across Europe what they like and what they don't (what they like is *far* more important than what they don't: it's very difficult to vote tactically against a song - by contrast, you do need to be getting in people's top three, and preferably most liked; being everyone's eighth preference is no good: if people aren't dialling your number, you're out of it).
But these realities seem to pass the BBC by.
Hard to imagine the French or Italian foreign minister having to do this.
Starmer sounds like he’s responsible for health and safety at a model railway convention.
You have to look at the wider changes in political trends over the last 25+ years, and the failure of the Tories to respond to them.
"Europe’s far right uses TikTok to win youth vote
Gen Z influencers inspire right-wing leaders like France’s Jordan Bardella ahead of June’s EU election."
https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-far-right-european-parliament-politics-europe/
https://www.occrp.org/en/news/youth-tiktok-and-the-far-right-a-growing-concern-across-europe
https://www.dw.com/en/far-right-afd-appears-as-strongest-german-party-on-tiktok/a-69264717
Brexit was of course a symptom unto itself, but it was also the coup de grace for the Tories.
Iraq played an almost similar role for Labour, bringing us Corbyn, for example.
Both Brexit and Iraq were essentially betrayals of the underlying promise the Tories and Labour made to the public.
Brexit was ultimately more damaging because it took on a revolutionary cast, which required for example the exile of Remainers, who tended very highly to make up the non-loony, non-fantasist, and non-incompetent component of the parliamentary party.