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Angela Rayner is in touch with the public (sadly they are both wrong) – politicalbetting.com
Angela Rayner is in touch with the public (sadly they are both wrong) – politicalbetting.com
In justifying votes at 16, Angela Rayner cited that the marriage age in England is 16 – the only problem is it's notThe deputy PM is in good company, with 47% of Britons making the same mistake – only 29% correctly identified that the age limit in E&W is now 18yougov.co.uk/topics/socie…
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There’s a surprise !
Keir Starmer may be lacking in man-management skills, but he’s not the worst PM in that department. The clear winner is Ted Heath, who was sulky to his enemies and inconsiderate to his allies. The former Tory chairman Chris Patten wrote speeches for Heath and tells the Rosebud podcast that he was once summoned on a Saturday morning to Heath’s hotel suite and made to wait for 90 minutes before a kimono-wearing leader let him in, without the offer of a cup of coffee.
Heath’s housekeeper brought in a tray of Chablis, lobster and cheese. “Our eyes were out on stilts because we were absolutely starving,” Patten says. Heath suddenly asked the team if they’d had anything to eat and, when they said no, replied “Oh, you must be very hungry”. He then returned to his meal without a second thought. Patten found this particularly ironic as Heath was asking them to write about “care and compassion”.
Downing Street may attract many with the offer of power, but it is rarely a happy place to work. JoJo Penn, who as Theresa May’s deputy chief of staff had a rougher time than most, tells The Rundown podcast that she was given fair warning by Oliver Dowden, who had been her predecessor in David Cameron’s No 10. “It’s not a job to enjoy,” Dowden told her. “It’s a job to look back on.”
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/ted-heath-hunger-games-mps-qmsnmrbqm
I was visualising him forcing his staff to strangle each other in order to achieve promotion from that headline.
I woke up this morning looking forward to a wonderful day, a very long lunch ahead with some very beautiful women, not a trouble in my world and then you break the news that Angela Rayner is wrong about something and my whole belief system and hopes for the future under her glorious leadership collapsed.
She’s an absolute moron whose sole selling point to her fellow travellers is her one eyed tribalism and that is it.
Especially for women.
Trump sues Murdoch and Wall Street Journal over Epstein article
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c23g5xpggzmo
Even in the vanishingly unlikely event that he wins, the amount of dirty laundry that will be aired about him is going to be enormously embarrassing.
I suppose the question is whether his base will actually care. Very probably not given they're all even more delusional than he is, but if even just a few of them do that has alarming implications for the Republicans in the mid-terms.
Ironically I think that one of the two parties who will do very well off this is Reform UK. The other is the Greens.
I'll fpt this one:
Post-midnight, so now I have my photo quota back, this is one before/after shot from the actions of Israel in Gaza.
This is comparing March 25 2025 and July 4 2025. Checking the timeline *, the ceasefire was January 19, 2025, which Israel broke on Match 18 2025.
I don't know if anyone else has comparisons, but I'm thinking of cities deliberately demolished to expel their people and prevent return, after occupation has been achieved. I'm not even sure if Mariupol or Warsaw 1944 are in that category. What comparisons can we make?
There's a whole series of Geneva Convention breaches here. Netanyahu will imo have Trump's support, as he wishes to destroy the international rule of law.
BBC piece, with fuller analysis.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-33fccfbe-abcc-4af1-bdd2-632b2787cf59
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Gaza_war_ceasefire
When we used to go round local schools and ask them about votes at sixteen, usually we politicians were mostly in favour but our young audiences typically split fifty-fifty. The most common reason they gave for opposing votes at 16 was that they didn’t know enough, whereupon we would race to be the first to suggest they should go meet some of our adult voters….
Ironically we could perhaps instance the destruction of Jerusalem after the Bar Kochba revolt in 136 as a parallel.
It's instructive I'm looking back at classical antiquity for comparators. Maybe some of the actions of the US in Vietnam might be comparable even if they were on a smaller scale?
But it all fits with the wider move in progressive as well as conservative circles towards the infantilisation of young adults.
So I ask you: why 16, and not 15? Or 14? Or 10? Why is setting the voting age at 18 wrong, and 16 right, but 14 wrong?
As for 'low-information': there are plenty of your fellow travelers on the left who are that as well...
(*) Unless you believe newborns should get the vote...
I can't decide whether the greater factor for the blues and turquoises * is that 16-17s tend to vote green "because they do not have a clue" or "young men vote for the right". We'll see.
My comments:
1 - I think that Wales and Scotland already have votes at 16. Especially in Scotland, do we have any records that could inform?
2 - I'm interested that no newspapers have mentioned the measures to help prevent foreign interference in UK elections by shovelling money in.
* (What is the plural of turquoise when made into a noun? Turquoises is a little like "the wrong advices" - clunky. I'm inclined to go for "The Turquoise".)
Probably neutral to mildly negative for Lib Dems given their flat age voting profile.
ETA someone has to stir up dissent on a Saturday now that Moscow has cut the budget.
(This disconnect was probably the same when I was a kid.)
My son was appalled. My son's friend get really, really upset, as that's an enormity of money to him. More than his mum's savings.
Three kids the same age, and three very different attitudes to money.
The big elephant in the room though is Fox, its viewership who support Trump will already have a large proportion of people who want the Epstein “files” released and Fox can easily spin it that Trump is covering his arse etc and really turn a large part of his base against him as being part of the dark state himself.
He would have been better off just stonewalling and saying “they can print what they like but it wasn’t done by me” and laughing it off as his disciples would have likely believed him.
But for GCSE philosophy, what is the moral difference between proxy voting for demented adults and infants? Neither has the capacity to make their own choice.
For GCSE sociology, why not give votes to newborns as an incentive to reproduce?
Given that the purported aim of this was to release the hostages and destroy Hamas, neither of which have occurred as a result, yet more evidence that mass area bombing has limited utility.
Gen Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi did it in dramatic style - dressed in military-like uniform and surrounded by masked police officers with automatic weapons, he called a press conference to accuse Police Minister Senzo Mchunu of having ties to criminal gangs.
He also said his boss had closed down an elite unit investigating political murders after it uncovered a drug cartel with tentacles in the business sector, prison department, prosecution service and judiciary.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c39zygp0d8yo
I’m sure you could arrange a golf buggy related fatality, though I accept no Trump would be an end to his entertainment value.
Was then told in short order by Trump to STFU.
Vance can see the prize edging ever nearer.
I will not be entirely surprised to see Trump have a significant "health event" in the next ix months. actual or manufactured. After images of his bloated feet, they have had to release details of his vein condition:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1jw1pdyp0jo
That will go with his vain condition.
We have a problem in this country (common in many others) with not enough children being born, partly - it seems - due to a lack of family-supportive policies. Why not multiply up parents' votes to address that?
I'm not sure how serious I am, but it would change the voter demographic somewhat. I could see shared tax allowances and transferred tax allowances for children happening and Scandinavian style childcare and parental leave...
Parents to transfer vote to their child as soon as they wish, but at latest by 16 (or 18, but I'm fine with 16 year olds having their own vote).
A fair chunk of that is the changing dependency ratio- which is a bit of a pro level concept, but explains a lot of our problems.
The bit that is less OK is that the current pensioner cohort were fine for their parents to have increasingly stingy pensions (thanks to the early Thatcher reforms), no winter bonus et cetera.
Of course, at that point, they were paying.
Democracy's far from perfect but fiddling with the voting weight of individual based on politically approved metrics is a recipe for disaster. Want to deprive the elderly of a vote because they'll be dead soon - are you going to tell the terminally ill they can't vote either? If a man votes by post then gets hit by a bus is his vote cancelled because he won't experience the consequences of his democratic choice?
Let's promote families by having more votes for parents! Sure, but which demographics are benefiting? Because it sure as hell won't be spread evenly. And bad luck people who desperately want kids and can't have them, or who had them but they died in childhood. Why not give more voting weight based on IQ? Or average income?
There are so many ways to gerrymander a system to erode its legitimacy and dilute public trust even further.
Individually these ideas might not sound bad and may even appear appealing. But the end result is going to be to reduce even further confidence in the system and to encourage political parties to rig the electoral power of voters based on their own self-interest.
Admittedly, opinion polling by constituency could be tricky.
Also: es regnet
Good morning, PB
Yes collateral damage happens in war. That's why war should be a last resort but last resort was met by the seventh and until the war is won then it must continue.
Hamas could end the war today by surrendering. I blame Hamas for the innocents dying, it's not Israel's fault.
During war innocents can normally seek refuge outside the warzone to shelter for protection. Egypt is denying innocents that option currently which means more people will inevitably die.
You've basically said it would have been OK to kill everyone in Belfast or Manchester until the IRA surrendered because they are acceptable collateral damage.
And after a high court ruling, “family member” can mean almost anything - “there is no requirement for a blood relationship or legal connection”
Do the maths. We could easily end up with 100,000+, many of whom will be entirely dependent on the state. On us. And large numbers of whom will be actively suing us for more billions, thanks to the data breach
Northern Rock bank run, day 4
We need fewer children to be born, not more.
And importing adults rather than producing children avoids the cost of education.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd0vxg3r24vo.amp
The war continues. Bombing during war is legitimate.
The settlers were a massive part of the 'though flawed' clause above.
Now, however, it is hard, if not impossible, to make Israel out to be the 'better' guys. I understand your view, and I am in no way sympathetic to Hamas, but Israel has simply gone too far. It is not that Hamas are in same way 'better' than they were; they were, and still are, contemptible, evil asshats.
It's just that Israel are descending down to their level. There may be an argument that they have needed to descend down to that level in order to eradicate the threat Hamas poses, but it also makes it harder, if not impossible, for outsiders to support Israel, and makes criticism of the supporters of Hamas hypocritical.
And that will hurt Israel immensely in the medium and long term.
I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged:
Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay.
https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1946220407725384136
He has missed the wood for the trees here going down the AI rabbit hole. Girls have been outperforming boys at school, that leads to going to better unis / better courses e.g. medicine is a very hard course to get on, as is also clear from the example at the bottom, entry level at law firms is now dominated by women.
"[video game] as a community theater production" may be one of the most delightful Veo 3 Fast prompts. Please enjoy, in order: GTA, Pokemon, Mario Kart, The Witcher 3, Stardew Valley, Tetris, Mortal Kombat, The Sims, & Death Stranding(!)
https://x.com/emollick/status/1946406544171569438
To be blunt, I think that Netanyahu and his backers want a state of permanent war, because they see political advantage from it. Even if Hamas surrendered unconditionally, they would find a pretext to keep on fighting and bombing.
Precision bombing is pretty irrelevant if the enemy being bombed is an insurgency, or is willing to shelter amongst civilians. You just use fewer munitions to kill civilians as well as the target.
(Which makes Russia's use of precision weapons to target and destroy civilian infrastructure and civilians much worse. I wish the pro-Hamas shits in the west would do more to acknowledge the evils that Russia are committing.)
We never went to war against the IRA and the IRA were never as bad as Hamas.
We did go to war against Germant and we were willing to bomb Dresden and other cities until.the enemy surrendered unconditionally. There was no numerical limit to the war either. That is a better, local comparison. An actual war.
Why do 16 year olds travel to Gretna Green in Scotland to get married ?
“DISGUSTING: Muammar al-Sharaa, cousin of the Syrian president Ahmad al-Sharaa, posted on his Facebook account about Druze: “It is permissible to enslave their women.””
https://x.com/ihabhassane/status/1946274588964339775?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
There are now multiple videos of regime Syrians massacring the Druze
To call it at "war" at this point is simply an abuse of language.
Hamas are now effectively an insurgent group, or terrorists - in a manner very similar to the IRA.
Population 18 and over is roughly 52-52 million.
Population 16-17 is roughly 1.5 million.
And that leaves out 2024 turnout for 18-24s being 10 points less than the general figure.
it looks to me to be "yes, but not much more than at the edges".
Golden tickets all round.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/19/afghan-heroes-left-behind-bogus-asylum-seekers-flock-uk-mod/
If lacking clarity and possessing an inability to assimilate facts from lies should deny a franchise, can I remind you all of those people who voted to leave the European Union due to their inability to assimilate facts from lies?
My conclusion? If 16 and 17 year olds are not up to the cognitive requirement for voting, should "Leave" voters also be removed from the electoral roll?
*It is legal to buy them drinks, just not drink the drink themselves, unless cider accompanied by a meal etc.
There have always been different ages for different activities, so I find this a very poor argument against votes at 16.
They are going round building by building, and block by block, setting demolition charges to flatten whole areas.
For age, a line has to be drawn somewhere. The only disagreement is where.
But, yours is about the worst argument in favour that I've read.
But if the argument is if voters are incapable of making rational decisions I say fair enough. I also say voters voting to impose economic sanctions on themselves are incapable of making rational decisions, so should they be allowed to vote?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test