It’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pays off for Farage – politicalbetting.com
It’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pays off for Farage – politicalbetting.com
Given that 40% of current Reform MPs are former Tory MPs and by my count 100% of current Reform MPs have been Tories in the past and every week seem hear about former Tory MPs defecting to Reform then I am not sure this strategy will be effective.
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Regarding the header, "never trust a Tory" is possibly sound advice for Farage.
And of course, vice versa.
https://x.com/reformexposed/status/1983609600785211428
How dare you criticise sir? It is a strategy of pure genius.
By Keir Starmer.
Rollins: That if you are in a position where you cannot feed your family, and you are relying on that $187 a month for an average family in the SNAP program, we have failed you.
Speaker Johnson: To clarify, when she says we have failed you, she means we the Democrats.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1984269184961020186
Perhaps there's a ritual for former Tories defecting to Reform that has a similar effect?
It won't stop them turning a Has Been into a Never Will Be - Again.
Since the Maitlis interview at the very least, it would take a lot to make any journalist break a sweat about publishing a story about him.
PS. If posters choose to flag other posters doesn't natural justice dictate that we get told the names of our accusers?
Unstable, outdated and dangerous, oh you can fill in the punchline.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/prince-andrew-bombshell-claims-sex-35678527
Though Lee Anderson's proposal that disabled drivers be put back into Invacars which were entirely banned in 2003 as being too dangerous to be allowed out in public is a little bit ... Reform ... and would likely cost more money rather than save any is interesting.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15240421/blue-three-wheelers-motability-Reform-benefits.html
I find it interesting that it is getting debunked by the commenters at both the Telegraph and the Mail, whi are his target audience.
Someone needs to ask him whether he would impose one on his wife.
I will say it to your face @Roger when I disagree which is quite often, or more likely ignore your post
3 x 🇬🇧 RAF E7 #Wedgetail for £2.28 billion
3 x 🇸🇪 SwAF S 106 #GlobalEye for £0.795 billion
https://x.com/GripenNews/status/1984275982161973725
There isn't an enormous practical difference in capability - and if we'd just bought the Saab, the RAF would already be flying it, unlike the E7s we chose to go with.
If someone needs a wheelchair then that is different, but a vehicle? Pay for it yourself.
Unless, of course you feel Personal Independence Payment is not 'their own income'. But then presumably you'd say the same about Child Benefit, State Retirement Benefit, Pension Credit, Attendance Allowance... etc.? Not the recipient's income to spend as they wish.
But I agree with Roger, the flagger should be visible.
Perhaps in this case defection is a repudiation of what they did before they saw the light and began following St. Farage.
Other parties should definitely use this as an attack line, but I wouldn't be relying on it.
OTOH there's something to be said for allowing Reform UK to continue to demolish their own support base undisturbed, as a political tactic. He needs to do some surveys of his elderly wwc supporters, and find out how many use the scheme, or have relatives that do, and do so topped up with their earnings.
If he wants fewer disabled people to use motor vehicles to get to work, perhaps he should campaign for a better selection of less expensive mobility aids to be available through the same channels, and for better facilities to be available for them to be practically useable in the safer society he says he wants to build.
Not one of those is their own income, no.
https://petrolblog.com/articles/whatever-happened-ac-invacar
"Production actually ceased in 1977, but they remained in use until 31 March 2003. The UK government deemed the Invacar to be unsafe and ordered a total destruction of all remaining examples. Some 50 cars a week were being crushed as it became illegal to drive an Invacar on any public road.
A handful of Invacars slipped through the net, some of which are said to have V5 documents. I managed to track down a ‘barn find’ in Scotland which was available to buy should you wish to attempt that claimed 82mph top speed. Offers over £500 would have secured a piece of three-wheel history."
"Most of these seemed to be permanently sat on the touchline of football grounds up and down the country. Indeed, a lasting memory of watching football in the 1980s is seeing these just behind the corner flag at each ground. I was always slightly impressed when the rain was pouring down and the owner of the car would be eating a football pie while the single wiper cleared the screen.
A forerunner to the modern corporate box perhaps? Without the prawn sandwiches."
https://x.com/thetimes/status/1984301012035744167
And they both Leon...
It's weird how those on the right bleat on about left-wing statism but whilst at the same time wanting to interfere with everyone else's life.
While being grateful they are getting money they have not worked for, paid for by taxes on someone else's income they actually have worked for.
If a pensioner wants to spend their pension on a car, they can, just as if a working person wants to spend their income on one they can.
But let us never pretend that benefits and earned incomes are the same thing.
I don't think cash that other people have worked for should be redirected to third parties to go on motoring.
Get a job and pay for your own motor.
"When were these (unofficial) photographs (of German docks) taken? This morning, sir".
The Daily Mail used a photo of a BMW Isetta to illustrate their article, for some reason.
What I do care about is the triple lock and that benefits go up faster than wages.
Wages should always go up by at least as much if not more than benefits, not the other way around.
However, however as you say "people should spend their benefits like the pension as they please". So what is wrong with people spending their Personal Independence Payments as they choose, if they choose to spend it on hiring a car from Motability?
Earlier you said we should "just abolish the scheme altogether and get people to pay for their own transport out of their own income" (my bold).
I say, that's exactly what the scheme requires hirers to do.
The common thread seems to be hating now and hating the young.
Everything was great 40/50/60 years ago (see also Robert Jenrick's eulogy for 80's football grounds), and any deviations from that are simply wrong.
And yes, no change is cost-free. But overall, now is better than then. And the most important change, that people who were young in the 1970s are now old, isn't going to be reversed by any political party.
If you need a car, pay for it from your salary.
Did Mr Jenrick wax lyrical about the Invacar behind the corner flags in the 1980s footie grounds?
For balance, the buses round here do an excellent job looking after people, and there are also some great charities providing adaptive bicycles.
AIUI Lee Anderson's wife is a wheelchair user; I have seen him campaigning for better ramp access at his local Light Rail station (which I will not identify, but it is not Alfreton Parkway on the East Midlands Line where the recent upgrade is fairly good after 34 years but with one or two blatant faceplants).
The substantive question is whether Reform will become the Conservative Party 2.0 or whether it is a genuinely new political movement based on a nationalist, anti-immigration social conservatism. If it tries to be, in German terms, both AfD and BSW, it will trip over its own internal contradictions.
Looking for public sector savings is all well and good but if the only way to achieve that is via actual reductions in services, I can see problems ahead for Reform's political leadership as it will become detached from its voting base. Saving millions (or is it billions, who knows?) via an aggressive anti-immigration and deportation policy will work only if the savings aren't frittered on tax cuts but are spent on those services from which the "nativist" viewpoint benefits (health, education, law and order etc).
As parties grow and attract more support, the "tent" becomes bigger until it collapses - we've seen that regularly.
Taxes on their incomes should be as low as viable so they can afford a motor from their own income.
New: The Pentagon cleared giving Ukraine long-range Tomahawk missiles after assessing that it would not negatively impact US stockpiles, despite Trump suggesting earlier this month that the US might not have enough to give away. Final decision largely political now.
https://bsky.app/profile/natashabertrand.bsky.social/post/3m4iy7tsxd225
Note that the US is pivoting to providing much of the capability of AWACS from LEO orbit.
But that requires rationality, and no one is interested in doing the hard yards of detailed thinking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_County,_Washington )
In order: I voted on a constitutional amendment to the state constitution,
a special tax for emergency services in the county,
a state senator,
a state representative,
the county executive,
three commissioners for the Port of Seattle,
four positions on the Kirkland city council,
a municipal court judge,
two directors for the Lake Washington school district, and
three commissioners for a Public Hospital district
And then signed and dated the ballot, and took it over to the local post office, and deposited it.
The county will begin counting ballots next Tuesday, and we will have partial results by that evening.
Reminder: Ballots are legal in Washington, as long as they are postmarked by election day, or deposited in one of the drop boxes before 8 PM Tuesday. So the election offices will not have all the ballots by Tuesday.
More later.
My guess is that some in the Pentagon would like to get rid of the oldest, least capable airframes in the stockpile - some of them are decades old. And replace with new production. It's what's happened with other systems supplied by the West to Ukraine, after all.
The Ukraine War is a great opportunity to develop production capacity to be ready for a conflict with China over Taiwan.
(And 50 tomahawks aren't going to do a great deal for Ukraine. 50 tomahawks every month, ramping up to 50 every week, ramping up to 50 every day - now you're talking.)
The VVD is very much the British Conservative Party - it's shifted markedly away from "centrist" positions and is unlikely to be able to co-exist in a D66-led Government with the GL/PVDA - the VVD leader has some personal history.
The days of Rutte being the archetypal centrist are long gone and of course the VVD was happy to be a partner with Gert Wilders, the PPV and NSC. The fact alone of the three VVD avoided big losses does make me wonder whether in the British scenario the Conservatives could survive being junior partners in a Reform-led coalition far better than the LDs did in a Conservative-led coalition but the parallels are imprecise.
I don't know if the VVD will go into Government with D66, the CDA, the CU and the GL/PVDA - they have before but that was the party they were not the party they are.
Indeed, the GL/PVDA had an awful result and may want to stay out of Government - who knows?
A classic of the genre - years ago, the local council dismantled a children's playground, in the corner of a small park. It was a bit tatty, admittedly. They moved the surveying play funnier to a park in a ward that voted for the majority on the council.
A local journalist sniffed around.
Overnight the storey went from "No money to maintain the playground" to "We found £30K to build a new playground"
The playground in question was literally 10m by 10m.
I watched them build it. Two guys, with a very battered flatbed truck, over a couple of days. Poured some concrete footings one day (from templates). Came back a bit later, boiled the fence and play equipment to the footings. I did some checking online - the play equipment, fencing etc was less than £10K.....
So please in the name of natural justice could the moderators who know the posters name reveal it and do it in full sight or explain why not.
Guaranteed peace prize now...
Given most of their voters and MPs are ex Tories not a great tactic from Farage to dismiss them either
I mentioned this morning in response to a post from @Malmesbury about the problems some students and younger people have looking for work and a facet of that is multiple jobs or "poly-employment" (about 1.3 million people). That number has been rising since the pandemic and it's connected to the cost of living - if you can't survive on one job, you take a second (perhaps in a warehouse or similar) and the two jobs pays the rent, food, utilities or other costs.
But Tory a trust never also works.
I want him to keep on thinking that I flagged him,
And there's a lot of never, cheaper kit on the way, which might render full replacement a waste of effort.
A spokesman for Tory leader Kemi Badenoch signalled to journalists on Wednesday that proposals that could result in migrants settled in the UK having their indefinite leave to remain (ILR) revoked retrospectively was no longer Tory policy. But shadow home secretary Chris Philp later insisted this did not mean all of the party’s ILR plans had been thrown out, after it was seized upon by Reform UK...
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/tories-deny-they-have-thrown-out-plans-to-toughen-up-indefinite-leave-to-remain/ar-AA1PrwXQ
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/22/deporting-legally-settled-people-broadly-in-line-conservative-policy-kemi-badenoch
Asked about Lam’s comments, Badenoch’s spokesperson said some had been “pulled out of context”. He said: “She said there are a large number of people who came to this country legally but shouldn’t have been able to do so. The leader of the opposition agrees with that.”
Highlighting the party’s plan to strip ILR from people who receive benefits, who commit a crime or whose income falls below £38,700 for six months or longer, he said: “I think that’s broadly in line with what Katie said and that is the Conservative party policy.”
By which they mean, jobs at below minimum wage. There is enormous competition for minimum wage jobs at the moment, it seems.
I do wonder whether we are seeing a massive disfunction in the job market - after all we have GP roles empty and qualified GPs unable to get a job. Has the enshifitication of HR (See copy and pasta LinkedIn and "AI") completely collapsed things?
A straw in the wind - the manager of the chain restaurant my daughter got a job at, said that the torrent of applications he got via corporate were useless. "More than half" didn't answer the phone number on the CV....
It is a simple matter of timing. The Boriswave (that even Starmer admits was hugely excessive) cannot be granted ILR, allowing them to claim benefits and bring dependents, who will also claim benefits. No way, no how.
That entailed the Tories and Reform having a policy that allowed them to rescind ILR, because the Boriswave migrants would have been granted ILR already when they got into power.
Now that Labour has announced a 10 year delay, Kemi no longer sees the need for the policy, and Nigel still does.
I find the Never Trust a Tory bit to be largely panto.
This country is sick of soft open borders pro immigration wets
The target should be negative net migrants vs 2010 numbers
It doesn't mean you need to go full BNP as well
You are divided between people who think immigration is the root of all our problems and those that are broadly content with most of it, bar the boats and hotels. So your policies vary week to week, your messaging is unclear and confusing, and you lose the trust and respect of both groups.
Make your mind up and stick with it. Don't flirt with the other group whichever path you take.
What is the alternative plan to reduce the number of migrants in the UK ? Not reduce the RATE of increase but reduce them full stop. No one else seems to have one