The public are clear about how to deal with Russian aggression – politicalbetting.com
The public are clear about how to deal with Russian aggression – politicalbetting.com
Donald Trump yesterday said that NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft that enter their airspace – a stance that most Britons (55%) agree with
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It has to happen
With Trump in the White House we no longer have a reliable friend or ally. We need to be aware of that. This does not mean that we do nothing but it does mean that we should not be operating under any illusions.
There was a lot of hand wringing about a punchy response to Russia's drone attack on Poland. A few days later and we have jets over Estonia. Astonishing how people simply cannot learn the lessons of the last decade when it comes to Putin.
Much as my teeth are grinding (actually I'm typing, so it's knuckles not teeth) I think Trump is in the right place on this. Only a show of strength from the west that this is a line Russia cannot cross, will prevent anything further.
Should be 95% if anyone’s studied history.
Just because Donald Trump says it, doesn’t make it automatically wrong.
In other news, at least three Russian O&G facilities have a smoking problem at the moment, the fuel shortages are now not far from Moscow, the Black Sea is undefendable, as is Crimea, and Russia is basically out of air defences except for central Moscow.
They're Officially Deleting The Bee Gees
The Bee Gees' official channel have pitch-corrected their 1989 performance, replacing the original vocals. The same has happened to Freddie Mercury's voice on the official Queen channel. This could impact how younger generations perceive these iconic artists.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vaRNvppwQx0
I think they are more likely to be fertile ground for absorbing then maintaining the conspiracy narrative. Suspicion of Government motives is likely to be a greater factor, and viewing vaccines as big-government control, which can then feed into vaccine resistance. The intense literalism amongst MAGA Evangelicals could itself feed a suspicion.
I've heard the debate across many UK evangelical groups, and the typical stance is that routine medical care is integrated theologically as God's working through other people and human science. But potentially 'vaccination' can work it's way into a different category. That's quite parallel to traditional churches having a history of "healing ministry" going back to the very start.
But the USA is a different place, and they do things differently there.
Ukraine has, at least to an extent, impressed Trump with their campaign against Russian oil refineries, a clear demonstration of Russia's weakness and Ukrainian strength. That is more likely to win Trump's support than demonstrating weakness with an appeal for air defences to defend against Russian air attacks.
So I think that Europe has to show a bit of strength in its own defence to have any chance of receiving any support from Trump. It's a bit crude, but if I was Keir Starmer I'd certainly hope it was a RAF plane that shot down the next Russian jet that violates NATO airspace, rather than a French or Italian one.
Even if it's completely a matter of which jet happened to be on patrol or standby at the relevant time and place, it's a symbolism that Trump will notice.
Something else we picked up on before the herd is that President Trump's demands that Big Pharma charge their lowest prices to Americans would be bad news for the NHS.
I don’t particularly like the escalatory feeling this brings, but it is now clearer than it has ever been that Putin is pushing the envelope, little by little, piece by piece, testing the waters, and if he doesn’t get slapped back he will continue to push his luck until we are on the very brink of conflict.
Exc: Sky News understands the Arena and Convention Centre Liverpool was unaware of any event booked on the dates of the conference.
ACC spox said: "All event enquiries are handled in strict confidence"
Corbyn's spox says he's "assured it has been booked"
Start with all the pharma ads on TV, the revolving door between regulators and regulated, the millions of political lobbying dollars sponsoring legislation, a long history of drugs being pulled for killing people, how getting a simple scan or drug can cost you more out of pocket with insurance than without it thanks to kickbacks through the system. It’s all a total mess.
“Should we shoot down military aircraft from an enemy nation who bust our airspace?” should be damn near a 100% answer.
Why do they think we have those Typhoons at Lossiemouth and Conningsby?
"But the USA is a different place, and they do things differently there."
We have our own problematic histories, but imo we in a better place on public health campaigns and questions.
I shared houses with pharmacy students at university, and the attitude to "pill-rollers" was ... interesting.
The problem is that all too often, militaries who try this mistake civilian craft for military ones.
This is not a reason not to do it; just that there may well be consequences to doing so.
Now they can’t organise a pissup in Liverpool, of all places.
If I were to take a guess, they either tried to book the venue with an alias, or couldn’t front the deposit required after the ‘confirmation’ email.
These arena venues cost five figures per day, and they don’t like void days.
It’s unclear from week to week quite how he feels about Russia.
This is something to do with a potential or actual conflict of interest around Doncaster Airport, but detail is a little obscure. The RefUK Council group leader seems on the surface to have done the right thing.
It follows the establishment of ‘Fly Doncaster (Auxiliary Services) Ltd’, which was registered on Companies House over the weekend with both Knight and Reed as co-directors.
The controversial company shares the first part of its name with the “arms-length” business created by Doncaster Council to run Doncaster Sheffield Airport (DSA).
Cllr Guy Aston, Reform UK group leader, said: “It is essential that the public can have complete trust in their elected representatives. Councillor Knight’s decision to establish this company without consultation caused reputational damage and placed our group’s work under unnecessary strain.
https://www.doncasterfreepress.co.uk/news/politics/reform-uk-boot-councillor-over-doncaster-airport-company-controversy-5332383
Estonia didn’t shoot down the Russian jets because it doesn’t yet have the capacity (it will by next year).
And the visiting NATO forces are much more constrained by NATO rules of engagement as to what they can do above another member state’s territory,
But I think it’s fairly clear that European NATO attitudes are hardening, and those rules of engagement won’t be quite so restrictive in the future.
One asylum seeker told the BBC he had taken a 250-mile journey to visit a GP, with the driver telling him the cost to the Home Office was £600.
Asylum seekers are issued with a bus pass for one return journey per week, but for any other necessary travel, such as a doctor's appointment, taxis are called.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2j3regpdno
I’ll keep defending Charlie Kirk on here, because he was at his heart a good man who didn’t deserve to suffer his fate, and that if we were all to be judged by our worst online comments then the world would not be a better place.
That's a disastrous narrative for Labour.
I make no judgment about whether he was good or bad as a person.
What do we gain from doing it now?
The maths back then said that escorting them was a better idea. If they kept on going deeper and deeper, one of the escorts would be directly behind them - which meant the Soviet pilots knew they were a second or 2 away from death.
Almost every negative quote about Kirk since his death has been so far out of context, that unless it’s on his own Twitter account or on a video that contains a minute either side of the contentious quote, it’s almost certainly bollocks that would be libellous were he to be alive.
But I’m not going to pass a final moral judgment on someone, gunned down at that age, who was not really a Trump or a Miller (for whom I’m quite prepared to do so).
Which is why he was killed.
That makes no sense. If Kirk was such an angel as you make out, surely he would have criticised his own side over the performance shitbaggery they were doing against Zelensky?
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/charlie-kirk-black-pilots/
It was at best a joke, and at worst an aside, in the middle of a discussion about companies prioritising DEI criteria over ability when hiring, in the context of companies in the US who were changing eligibility criteria based on race such that young white male pilot school graduates were finding it impossible to be recruited by airlines.
RefUK are going to DOGE the UK !!!@cnn.com
Hundreds of federal employees who lost their jobs in Elon Musk’s cost-cutting blitz are being asked to return to work.
https://bsky.app/profile/cnn.com/post/3lzlucmbw6r2j
The BBC really are useless.
Nick Ferrari took down Farage on LBC with a gotcha that has Farage pleading the 5th as far as Trump's link between Paracetamol/ Tylenol and autism is concerned. Farage even denied science by suggesting scientists didn't realise how dangerous Thalidomide was until we realised it was, implying Trump may have a point about Paracetamol. It has been the top story on LBC all day.
I was thus interested to see how BBC PM broached a clear error by Farage. The answer is it didn't. The story didn't make the programme, although they did find a New Statesman article that hints at a huge bust-up between Burnham and Starmer.
So Farage f**** up and the BBC bury it.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/24/farage-refuses-criticise-trump-paracetamol-health-experts-dismiss-autism-claims
"When Farage was asked if he would side with medical experts who say it is dangerous to make the link, he added: “I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. When it comes to science, I don’t side with anybody, right? You know? I don’t side with anybody, because science is never settled. We should remember that.”
I think (hope) this will become a real weakness. Drinking the RFK/Trump kool aid on health and medicine is not going to persuade many of the great British public of your prime ministerial credentials - at least, I hope not.
I said that it was unfortunate that he joined in the pile-on, and that he was a good man whose legacy shouldn’t be defined by the worst thing he ever wrote on Twitter.
You should too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F330LdV33F4
Was the GP back in France?
ETA the story comes from a BBC investigation so one of us should listen to the programme.
They’ll only have themselves to blame if Reform get in and finish them off .
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/who-were-the-real-bigots-in-epping/
Your point is?
I want my media to be as truthful and open as possible; preferably giving different sides to a story. That's a big ask, but it can occur. Kemmel did not do it; Kirk certainly did not. He was a propogandist, and you like him because you agreed with, or excuse, his propaganda.
Even when he was against Ukraine.
Either there is wrong stuff and government should have acted to deal with it because of the ordinary values of a society. Or its generally all fine and all this is performative nonsense.
Good government generally does the right thing regardless of whether anyone is looking.
It's just after 33m 30s in the radio programme, it was for a hospital (not GP) appointment because the patient had been moved 250 miles from their previous accommodation.
This has happened because of deliberate govt policy to slow down processing of asylum applications leading to the backlog and the huge increase of people in temporary accommodation. The longer you delay decisions on asylum the greater the likelihood that they will develop ties to the community, have children, become ill and so have grounds for appeal.
Anyone who voted Conservative (probably unwittingly) voted for the current situation
see the stats here https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-uks-asylum-backlog/ if that isn't what you wanted then you should have voted for Brown and Miliband.
https://x.com/MrHarryCole/status/1970899220032090354?s=19
Sky News
Cabinet minister Bridget Phillipson has accused Number 10 of carrying out "sexist briefings" against her.
The education secretary, who is running against Lucy Powell to be deputy leader of the Labour Party, has widely been seen as Downing Street's preferred candidate.
But Phillipson has denied this is the case - and has said that negative briefing about her has led to "nonsense... written in the papers".
Speaking to Matt Chorley on BBC Radio 5 Live, the deputy leadership hopeful was asked if she had been on the receiving end of sexist briefings.
"Yeah, completely," she said. "But you know, that's life." She added: "I've been underestimated most of my life, I'll just continue getting on and doing what I'm doing, not worrying too much about some of the nonsense that gets written in the papers. But I do slightly have to laugh because there's this idea swirling around somehow that I'm Number 10's preferred candidate for all of this. I'm not quite sure that's what you and many colleagues in the media have been saying in recent months with all of this negativity and nonsense that I've faced. So there's a certain irony, I would say in some of the way that this is being approached."
Pushed on whether she believes that Number 10 has spent months briefing against her, she responded:
"That's what lots of people have been writing for months. So, others can come to their own conclusions"
There have been rumours that there is a sexist culture within Downing Street, with former chief of staff Sue Gray raising the issue repeatedly before she left the role.
Asked if this is a fair representation of Sir Keir Starmer's operation, Phillipson responded that people have
"got to get better at working together as a team in parliament but also uniting our party and movement".
She added: "That's what I would bring in terms of my ability to unite the party, and to allow us to get into it the strongest possible position for the really vital elections we've got coming up next May."
Phillipson is running against Powell for the role left vacant by the departure of Angela Rayner, who quit after she was found to have breached the ministerial code.
A new deputy leader will be announced on 25 October.
Downing Street has been approached for a comment.
Nah. He was a racist, misogynistic shit who deserved to be shouted down, not shot up.