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Will we will see Nigel Farage’s rumba this parliament? – politicalbetting.com
Will we will see Nigel Farage’s rumba this parliament? – politicalbetting.com
Ladbrokes have some markets on what Nigel Farage may do, a golden rule when it comes to betting is not to get involved in betting markets where the bookie doesn’t offer both sides of the bet.
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However, given the way it is was discussed yesterday we are minded to permanently lift the ban in the next few days.
How would you be feeling today waking up if you were Emma Reynolds.
Israel has just assassinated Iranian military chief Ali Shademani.
If you thought it had already done that, it’s because it assassinated his predecessor on Friday.
https://x.com/EylonALevy/status/1934857364030603651
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of islamofascists. Deploy the micro-violins
The Economic Secretary is responsible, though more senior ministers share in decision-making, for the answering of written and verbal parliamentary questions and for the devising of regulations, orders and legislation in various matters. Until September 2022, these matters included banking and finance, including banks, insurance, personal savings, financial regulation, and foreign exchange reserves. He or she was also involved in taxation as it impacted on these areas, such as tax on savings and pensions, and Insurance Premium Tax. In addition, the Economic Secretary, until September 2002, advised on economic policy and continues to work with other Treasury ministers on the Comprehensive Spending Review and finance bills...
Does make me wonder yet again about October 7th though. Are we really to believe Israel had no advance warning of this from Iran’s surrogate?
F1: the moment some of you have been moderately interested in has arrived. Here's my review of the Canadian Grand Prix, which was pretty eventful (first Antonelli podium, McLaren clash, Racing Bulls forgetting to be fast etc). Plus the 2026 calendar and a couple of clashes:
Podbean: https://undercutters.podbean.com/e/f1-2025-canadian-grand-prix-review/
Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/f1-2025-canadian-grand-prix-review/id1786574257?i=1000713208937
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1AuUkSbYghXzA5kFL6dkuV
Amazon: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/bcfe213b-55fb-408a-a823-dc6693ee9f78/episodes/5e20db4e-a23a-410d-93ae-50b77c85b673/undercutters---f1-podcast-f1-2025-canadian-grand-prix-review
Transcript: https://morrisf1.blogspot.com/2025/06/f1-2025-canadian-grand-prix-review.html
I think it's been proven that October 7th was gross incompetence. The extent to which that was manufactured by reducing resources, or the different capabilities of their internal and external intelligence agencies, is up for debate.
"President Trump said the reason for his abrupt departure was “much bigger” than trying to strike a ceasefire between Iran and Israel. President Emmanuel Macron of France had earlier suggested Trump had left to personally intermediate a ceasefire.“Wrong!” Trump said on social media. “He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire.” "
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/16/world/iran-israel-news/770af1c3-e1f2-5f04-a265-a2753041c810?smid=url-share
Musing on tax and pension matters after my debate with MaxPB and others yesterday evening, I'm left with two thoughts.
The sense of being "over taxed" is compounded by the failure to raise thresholds. This "fiscal drag" or "stealth tax" instigated by the high-tax Conservative Government and now initated by its Labour successor has dragged so many more people into the higher tax bracket in the sense more of their income is now taxed at the 40% rate.
When I argued for a new 50% higher rate, apart from the usual howl of outrage, one or two failed to read the next bit which was to bring the thresholds to where they would have been allowing for annual RPI so the rates would rise so many middle to high income earners wouldm probably be better off from a simple 25p basic rate and 50p higher rate if the threshold from the former to the latter was set much higher than now.
The second point was about pensions - again, the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth about "public sector pensions" which are complex and by no means all the same - a Teacher's Pension is not a Local Government Officer's pension which in turn is not a Police pension or a civil servant pension.
In the Local Government Scheme (LPGS), there are swingeing penalties if you leave to take your benefits early - up to 25% if you go five years before your retirement. The problem is those staff are a) not likely to progress further andf b) are simply place-sitting preventing younger (and possibly more productive) staff from moving up and progressing. This needs to be re-thought within LPGS and elsewhere.
There are options for flexible retirement within LPGS whereby you can work fewer hours and start taking some of your pension and we might need to think about how we employ those 60 or above not only in terms of NI contribution but in terms of flexible hours and pension/salary provision.
We come back to the central question of how to being the public finances closer to balance in terms of reducing borrowing and the deficit. The debate can't be simply abandoned to the "supply side reform" proponents whose sole mantra is "tax cuts and spending cuts". We are well past it being either/or - it has to be tax rises AND spending cuts but getting the balance right between the two isn't easy. Osborne went for £5 of cuts for every £1 of tax rises but that was a different time and it may well be a more even apportion is apposite.
BREAKING: Trump wants "a real end" to the nuclear problem with Iran and this morning will find him in the White House Situation Room, monitoring developments in Middle East, he told us during his midnight departure from Canada.
"I didn't say I was looking for a ceasefire," he said on AF1. He said he wants "a real end," with Iran "giving up entirely" on nukes.
The Israelis aren't slowing up their barrage on Iran, he predicted. "You're going to find out over the next two days. You're going to find out. Nobody's slowed up so far."
Asked his thinking on calling for Tehran to evacuate, he told me he wants "people to be safe."
He needs to be present at the White House, not Canada, where he can be "well versed" and not have to rely on phones to know what's happening, he said.
Trump sounded undecided about sending Witkoff and/or VP Vance to meet with Iran. "I may," he said. But "it depends what happens when I get back," he said.
On any threat to US interests, he said Iran knows not to touch our troops. US would "come down so hard if they do anything to our people," he said.
Trump declined to say if the chairman of joint chiefs and SecDef have provided him with planning options should Iran attack U.S. bases in Middle East. "I can't tell you that," he told me.
Trump told me "we'll be talking to them" when asked if the Gang of Eight was briefed on anything yet. But "it's not necessary," he said.
Asked if US involvement would destroy Iran nuclear program, hope their program "is wiped out long before that."
Seth Frantzman is good on this although he says that Israel thought it wouldn't happen or that any incursion would be easily defeated. I disagree on that as per my above point.
Good work, me.
Mind you, it was each way so if he finishes 2nd that's fine.
I suspect he's out of it but we need to see how the next few races go.
Jon Stewart highlighted how the pro-Russian MAGA faction (Tucker Carlson etc) are totally against sending American troops to fight an overseas war in the Middle East, but are totally in favour of sending American troops to fight a domestic war in the US & to "liberate LA" from the Democrats.
https://x.com/repfine/status/1934742721350259094?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
Ol’ Randy was proudly wobbling one of his chins over Israel’s ‘mostly peaceful bombing of Iran’, presumably it’ll be the full five chin quiver when the USA gets involved in the peaceful war.
Unlike Hezbollah or the Iranian government. Who love technology.
So the portion of Hamas that planned 7th October went to super paranoid cell structures, with verbal communication. That plus using networks of close family members only, was relatively successful at keeping the Israelis out.
The paranoia went as far as not telling anyone outside the group what they were planing
It's a glorious morning here in downtown East Ham and doubtless those with privileged tickets will already be donning their finery for an afternoon in Berkshire.
If you want to add further financial pain to the joy of wearing a morning suit in the heat, try backing these:
Queen Anne Stakes: ROSALLION (win)
Coventry Stakes: AMERICAN GULF (each way)
King Charles III Stakes: ASFOORA (win), WASHINGTON HEIGHTS (each way)
St James’s Palace Stakes: HENRI MATISSE (win)
Wolverton Stakes: ENFJAAR (win).
A bit of early morning polling as we have been starved over the weekend and the gap is closing a bit again (in a MoE way).....
YouGov (15 to 16 Jun)
Ref 27 (-2)
Lab 24 (+1)
Con 17 (=)
LD 15 (=)
Grn 10 (=)
The OPs were sending back time after time accounts of drills and prep up and down the border for months on end even to the point of they were practising breaches. If anyone took away from that that the scale was not huge then they should (and may well still) be sacked.
Given his Merrie Englande image, it should perhaps be Morris Dancing.
BTW They may have lost another Councillor up @Taz 's way, one Michael David Ramage. As has been remarked elsewhere - is someone taking the P ?
The guy is not listed as being in the RefUK group on the Council website, and as an ex-Member of the relevant Ref UK facebook group, but does seem to know a fair but about construction - especially bus stations (that's a complement - he knows his stuff in this area, and is taking a real interest):
"Rushworth MP won't help people he considers are Reform Party members or Reform supporters or Reform Activists. So having alleged I am a Reform activist (I'm probably more socialist than him) he won't help me.... (case summary).
Alleged?
It's more likely that, if they are planning large scale bombing of the capital, Israel/the US wish to absolve themselves of responsibility for civilian casualties.
Can someone with a lifelong condition of suffering, who is not terminal, get an assisted death? No, ruled out by the stupid six months safeguard.
I can sign legally binding advanced directives in the UK, but can I sign a directive under this bill that if I get dementia then I'd rather get an assisted death than end up in a care home? No, again safeguarded away. Stupid.
There are far too many, not too few, safeguards in this bill. The people using the not enough safeguards argument would never be satisfied.
Again and again..
For the Strictly fans, has the BBC ever featured a politician before they were well over the political hill? Ed Balls, Anne Widdicombe and Vince Cable were all on the way out or the way down.
My wife and I have both expressly made our wishes clear to each other that in the event it ever happens we
1. Would like to be organ donors, if possible.
2. Would rather have life support turned off than live as a vegetable.
3. If we get dementia, we would rather an assisted death than end up in a care home.
Others may make other choices, that's their right. Our choices we should be able to make but the law doesn't permit it, and this proposed law has far too many safeguards that it still wouldn't permit it.
A Russian drone flew into Ukraine’s “hidden” Krab gun — and exposed a billion-dollar flaw in artillery design
https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/06/14/fpvs-hit-krab/
Ukraine has received 108 Krab self-propelled howitzers from Poland. In three years of hard fighting since the first of the 53-ton, five-person guns arrived in Ukraine, Ukrainian forces have lost no fewer than 35 of the howitzers, which fire Ukraine’s best 155-millimeter shells as far as 31 km.
On or just before 7 June, a Russian drone crew showed what happens when artillery gunners don’t take every precaution. The Russian crew flew two fiber-optic first-person-view drones through gaps in the front and back of one Krab’s covered, concealed dugout in a tree line somewhere along the 1,100-km front line—and lit the gun on fire, destroying it.
It’s probably the 36th Krab loss. And it was totally preventable. ..
Lightweight and concealable might replace such systems.
It was a good political decision to do the U-turn.
You guess about what they intend is as good as mine, but their statements were consistent on that.
The actual changes since July 2024 (allowing for rounding) are:
Reform +13
Labour -10
Conservative -7
LD +3
Green +3
We also know polling for the various local "Independents" is suspect so we don't know what's happening in places like East London or the Leicester and Birmingham seats where they polled well last year.
The "trend" in local council by-elections (with usual bucketfuls of salt) has been to see BOTH Labour and Conservative lose significant vote share and that's reflected in the 17-point combined fall in the national opinion polls.
Next year we'll have an intriguing round of local elections in London as well as for some of the new Shadow authorities but that's a lifetime away.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day but Trump doing the right thing and bombing Iran would be an incredible turn up for the books.
Its going to get the Baghdad 2003 treatment
And not to forget the Senedd and Holyrood elections
I don't have the Treasury computer model on my laptop so I don't know what that would do to the actual amount of tax receipt (we also need to look at CGT, VAT, fuel duty and other taxes).
Hamilton didn't really know what he'd hit until after the race, either.
I don't know, I would have assumed it would take more hits than just one night.
The good burghers of Stoke-on-Trent should be worried too.
It’s interesting how people seem to be really scrutinising Reform here but yesterday Labour lost its majority on a council in Cheshire with two councillors switching to independent and rather critical about Labour too.
Barely a murmur,
those against any bill, as you characterize above
those who look at the utterly bizarre choices of random hurdles that need to be jumped that are in the current bill.
It is baffling that the word "pain" appears only once in the bill - as a minor part of a future review of the bill.
Of those, Vince Cable was perhaps the only one with dancing skills, whilst the others threw themselves into the experience.
I could see a Reformista who is a decent dancer doing it so the BBC can say "look we've done all the parties", maybe one of the defenestrations if one comes along.
Lee Anderson would be interesting on Strictly. I have no knowledge of his dance sport abilities. It might be a good question to send in to his programme on Reform TV.
As is the groundhog.
Because Reform is highly likely to top the polls, with Conservative and Labour vote shares down sharply, while the LDs are probably going to be up a couple of points.
Outside of Scotland, the Conservatives are the main opposition in almost every LibDem seat. In which of these could enough votes transfer to Reform to threaten the LDs?
They’ll have reached 1,000 councillors, even before next May.
🔺BREAKING: Air India Boeing 787 flight to Gatwick cancelled over ‘technical glitch’
Flight on the same route from Ahmedabad as the ill-fated AI 171 had flown in from Delhi, as had the aircraft that crashed
https://x.com/thetimes/status/1934886175673602079
I'm not as viscerally anti-Labour as some indeed many on here. I don't think Starmer is a bad Prime Minister and I don't have the issues with him that some on here do.
BUT..
That was just plain awful from Emma Reynolds - the lack of preparation was inexcusable. She should have had media training and she should know you don't go on Nick Ferrari unprepared and expecting an easy time. Ferrari is a Tory but even he lost patience with them in the end but he's no friend of Labour, never has been.
You can defend a Minister who is asked questions outside his/her brief and struggles to some degree but the Economic Secretary to the Treasury should be able to answer questions about large scale infrastructure projects (if not perhaps to the granular detail) and should know where they are.
Not good and re-enforces the notion of a Government not up to the job. To be fair, she's hardly the first Minister, Labour or Conservative, who has ended floundering in interviews in recent times.
There a rhetoric around of needing Iran never to have nuclear weapons (eg Trump), and 'fix this once and for all', but istm that this will no more ensure a peaceful Middle East than did Operation Peace for Galilee in 1982 (invasion of Lebanon) ensured a peaceful northern region of Israel - especially at it was launched out of the blue whilst a dialogue process was ongoing.
And there are two things I think are pretty-much guaranteed:
1 - A further half century of hostility to Israel.
2 - Countries in the region, especially but not limited to Iran, will consider a nuclear deterrent to be essential. Just as Trump's demolition of the international order will very likely result in nuclear proliferation; the Victorian age is not coming back.
They might imo get 15 years of peace.
Calculated by the scheme actuary on a pretty neutral basis, AIUI. You can see that the lump sum reduction is much smaller, essentially because that only needs to allow for the difference between investment return and inflation, whereas the pension adjustment also needs to reflect the fact that an extra 5 years' instalments will be paid.
(An example of a special consideration were the monstrously generous terms offered by TFL when they wanted to lose middling-senior managers several years ago).
https://opencouncildata.co.uk/tracker.php
Playfully, the Conservatives are losing 10 Councillors a week on those figures - so that'll be another 250 gone by the end of the year at that rate.
My Question: What do ordinary Iranians think of it all
His Answer: They just want to get rid of the mullahs
Q: Do they care that it's Israel doing the getting rid of
A: No, in fact on X Iranians are tagging IGRC targets for the IDF and then the IDF attacks those targets [!!!!!!]
Q: What is the concern, if any
A: We are worried about the infrastructure
According to Mark Pack Lib Dems have won 75% of council byelections since the locals, where they and Reform were the top 2. The other 25% were former Labour seats where LDs came up into 2nd.
Labour and Tories have won 0% of head to heads with Reform since 1 May.