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The voters have little faith in Farage in delivering reform – politicalbetting.com
The voters have little faith in Farage in delivering reform – politicalbetting.com
Nigel Farage has promised to halve the amount of crime in Britain if he wins the next election, but 70% of Britons think he'd be unlikely to deliver on this promise, including a third of Reform UK votersLikely: 18%Unlikely: 70%2024 Reform UK votersLikely: 59%Unlikely: 33%
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Voters choosing Farage are not expecting him to succeed but they are making the classic mistake of thinking that he is at least not the other lot.
Thank you for the article on the previous thread. I enjoyed it and its predecessors. I look forward to the next entry, as I'm sure we all do. The published ones in Gareth's "The Challenge For..." series are:
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/02/the-challenge-for-labour/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/12/the-challenge-for-plaid-cymru/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/06/21/the-challenge-for-reform-uk/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/07/11/the-challenge-for-the-liberal-democrats/
https://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2025/07/22/challenge-for-the-snp/
Eleven-minute race for food: how aid points in Gaza became ‘death traps’ – a visual story
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/jul/22/food-aid-gaza-deaths-visual-story-ghf-israel
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/live/cly1e4x4gyet
Its the easy way to cut crime.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2le45rj1dno
I mean, it's all obvious bollocks anyway, and the "halving crime" thing is plucked out of thin air. But presumably that's the argument.
Mike Johnson shuts US House until September to avoid Epstein vote
https://www.ft.com/content/6a42cc0c-82bf-4433-b74b-d67497e9977b
He may be right.
But yes, we could do with a clearer legal code.
While plenty of people will point out the weaknesses of that argument, it's likely to convince enough people who want to believe.
Front cover of today's i newspaper.
Interesting acknowledgement from Farage which won't be popular with many of his potential voters.
Something like 20% of pension early sixties, 60% late sixties and 100% early seventies.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/laura-anne-jones-reform-nigel-farage-wales-b2793660.html
Seems to best known for speeding and making racial comments.
Fairly typical profile for a Tory-to-Reform defector. I don't know her either, but suspect she was unlikely to make the cut in the Welsh Tory selections. Similar phenomenon with Scottish defectors.
God I love news.
The great bundles of tumbleweed blow past the yellowing parks, the residents getting their sun cream and holiday clothes ready, and the banned hosepipes.
Like 2001.
How can someone capable of such sublime film making as Full Metal Jacket make such as dross as Barry Lyndon or 2001?
(I realise this is a minority view.)
I don't think it requires some radical reshaping or our criminal justice system. I think it merely requires us to fund the police, lawyers and courts properly. So that people are more likely to get caught, prosecuted and punished.
Former Unite boss Len McCluskey enjoyed private jet flights and football tickets arranged by the firm building a multi-million pound hotel for the union, according to an internal report.
Flanagan Group, which is run by friends of Mr McCluskey, overcharged Unite by at least £30m for the Birmingham hotel and conference centre project, the Unite report says.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3kgg55410o
Back in the days of celluloid, it was technically rather difficult, and this was the first time it was fully realised.
To do so Kubrick used three of the then ten existing superfast Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lenses (developed a decade earlier for the Apollo program). Adapting the still camera lenses for cinema photography was quite the task - as was focusing them, since the depth of field for most of the scenes was about one inch.
Nerdy stuff.
The film was a bit boring, but that probably reflected the reality of 18th C life, too,
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1947645742799008106
Now I am not Starmer and Lammy's biggest fans, but even I think that is a bit strong.
Without looking it up:
a) who used to shadow Big Ange's Enormous Department?
b) who the hell are they?
There might be someone brilliant (or even with potential to be brilliant) in the 26 newbies, but otherwise, the Conservatives have almost as much of a government-in-waiting credibility issue as Reform.
I don’t want to pay any more tax.
There’s the unsquared circle, folks.
It is getting dangerous.
Trump declares that Obama is guilty of treason: Barack Hussain Obama, have you heard of him? He is guilty. It’s not a question. This was treason.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1947687629048500321
https://x.com/GHFUpdates/status/1947396227097907200?t=2JKGP7-oDIBvzA-ny8rsrg&s=19
As neither of us is in Gaza we'll just have to flip a coin as to who is telling porkies.
It might be tasteless to labour the point that this applies to the boomerocracy/gerentocracy that puts its collective thumb on the political scale whenever it can, but it is part of our problem as a nation and a world.
News from civil servants preparing Liz Kendall's pensions review.
Kendall wants to look at "phasing in" the pension starting with 25% of a pension at age 68 and getting 100% of the pension at age 72.
This will be represented as not affecting the triple lock.
It's already the worst pension in Europe.
Jul 22, 2025 · 2:05 PM UTC
I am not going to survive that. That's not going to work. I am moving from "I don't like this government" to "I will vote for anybody who will throw it out".
https://x.com/AmnestyUK/status/1945811909782982923
The Guardian article is about the dangerous, often lethal character of the inadequate scheme which replaces the UN effort.
As I said neither of us know but I am comfortable with their version just as you are comfortable with the Guardian's.
🟡 All: 81%
🔵 DEM: 89%
⚪️ IND: 81%
🔴 GOP: 73%
YouGov / July 21, 2025
https://x.com/USA_Polling/status/1947701741836751102
"I'm waiting for the PB rebuttal of the article."
"Here you go sugartits."
If you make the 25% rate from 63, then you suddenly get a lot of people in the 50-65 age range who may be in favour of such a change, or at least neutral to offset the lost votes of those facing immediate loss.
When my father retired it was terrible, he put on weight, he wasn't as mentally sharp, spent too much time watching crap on tv. After a couple of year, he went back into the workforce for another 10 years. He didn't even really want to pack it in when he did, change of management at the company binned him, rather than carry on having a very experienced worker come in a couple of days a week.
At a very senior age now he is still extremely fit and mentally sharp and I am convinced that he wouldn't be if he had carried on down the route he was going upon retiring.
And I'm not sure the baseball cap was that smart an idea, either.
Oh, sorry, that was Haig.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reportedly signed law that curtails independence of anti-corruption bodies by forcing them to coordinate decisions with Prosecutor General’s Office
Lawmakers, activists warn the move effectively strips them of autonomy
https://x.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1947697657666801948
I believe this is the first viral public call for an antigovernment protest in Kyiv since the start of Russia's full-scale war. And it's from a soldier: "Friends, let's gather for the action and defend what we've built over the last decade. We're meeting at 20:00 on the square near the Ivan Franko Theater. It's the closest available place to the President's Office. So, I hope we'll be visible from their windows."
https://x.com/ChristopherJM/status/1947687034421944371
In Q1 2025 there were 4.02 million.
Has the value of the services provided by the government increased by that much? Assuming a median salary of £30k that’s £30bn of extra spending.
The government spends enough money. It just spends it badly.
What an opportunity for the PB Tories, but they can't can they?