As the polls open in Gorton & Denton here’s the latest betting – politicalbetting.com
As the polls open in Gorton & Denton here’s the latest betting – politicalbetting.com
My bold prediction for today is that turnout will be reported as brisk.
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Turnout will be key and who had the best postal vote operation and Labour and the Greens will be battling to present themselves as the main alternative to Reform and Reform could still win if the left of centre vote is near split down the middle
‘Matt Goodwin is the WORST of Britain!’ | Labour swoop on Gorton and Denton 24 hours before polling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqJlADNs2B8
The a risk is that nobody can be arsed to vote for any of them.
How is that strategy of grinding down Ukraine until it can no longer defend itself, Russia?
By taking her children to her grandparents’ village at the weekend, the PM’s wife is keeping the memory of her Jewish ancestors alive
...
Lady Starmer’s father, Bernard Alexander, was born in Britain in 1929 to Jewish parents who are both believed to have migrated to England from Budzisław Stary in the 1920s. The rest of the family stayed behind in Koło, a small town two hours to the west of Warsaw by road. It is understood that none survived the Holocaust.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/02/25/victoria-starmers-polish-family-were-killed-by-the-nazis/ (£££)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSVhnk2Az9M
https://united24media.com/latest-news/ukraine-unleashes-robotic-donkey-while-russia-sends-real-ones-to-the-front-8120
When I toured eastern europe a decade ago there was a ghostly absence of that complex and varied centuries old Jewish culture of Poland, Hungary and Czechia.
I read this book on my travels, a book on a culture about to go extinct.
https://amzn.eu/d/06oDdPzt
Fighting a war on two fronts makes things much more difficult.
I am surprised that Ukraine has weatherd the 4th year of the war as well as it has despite the loss of most US support.
Quite where they found the camels I have no idea, Mariupol zoo?
"it’s going right down to the wire between Labour and Reform"
Also:
"we’ve built a team of over 1,000 volunteers, delivered nearly half a million leaflets, and spoken to 30,000 voters"
As I noted on the last thread, all that's missing is a positive reason to vote Labour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Mid_Bedfordshire_by-election
Greens, total nutters, economically illiterate, bossy, nannying, patronising.
Labour, making a right mess of the country, incompetent, unable to see the consequences of their policies, all over the place.
Reform, bunch of quasi fascists, bigoted, racist, just vile.
Everyone else: absolutely nowhere.
I think I would be edging towards Labour. No matter how bad they are the alternatives are even worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZY3A2Lb6EM
They can make a couple of dozen new T-90s per month, pretty much all of the older stuff (T-72, T-64 etc) is basically scrap metal now. Everything that can be refurbished has been.
The Ukranians say they’ve hit 11,000 tanks during the war. Now some of those might have been repaired and hit again, but that’s around half the world’s extant tanks destroyed in the last four years!
All 3 independendent Tacticsl vote organisations say vote Green to stop Reform.
Lying scumbags
But Eiffel off!
I did Rue the day.
No doubt the MoD will come to the same conclusion in 50 years or so.
There’s clearly a bigger pool of left leaning voters in the constituency who didn’t vote at the GE .The low turnout in 2024 a symptom of Labours huge lead in the opinion polls and they didn’t have the fear of Reform winning then .
I think a higher turnout would finish off Reforms chances .
I'm sure someone, perhaps not Mr "I Just Put Another Ton on the Greens" though it may be a good call - what do I know, will make hundreds. But I lost £2 and I'm happy to have capped it.
In Dorset?
Yes, she'd recommend it to absolutely anybody
Rarest of beasts
Now, if you vote Green or Reform you are possibly contributing to the momentum that could lead to them at least being part of the Government after the election. The LibDems are nowhere.
Good morning, everybody.
Evens if Labour win
Down if Reform win
Not sure it is going to happen though.
FPT (Cicero): One of the reasons that nursing became a graduate job, is because on the job training is less safe and more expensive than having dedicated classroom studies away from the hospital wards. NHS trusts do not have the budget to teach their own staff and they cannot spare staff away from front line roles in any event. The same is true of apprentices- the cost of a full on apprenticeship is high, whereas the students themselves largely bear the costs of training in colleges and Universities, even if they are sandwich courses with work placements. That is a no brainer for most companies.
AI is about to disrupt the White collar world of work in ways that could lead to the wholesale nationalisation of the means of production, with the capital generated by AI businesses being used to fund state and social businesses. The skill set for tradesmen will remain in demand, as will people jobs, such as teaching or social work... Accountants, lawyers and travel agents, not so much. We probably need more poets than book keepers anyway- though good poets are not often graduates and few, if any get pensions or even payment for their work. I guess we are going to need to think about what is valuable for the good of general society pretty soon.
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Traditionally, technological change has been absorbed and people redeployed, but in a painful and messy process that took years. I expect the same may be true of AI. I've seen my translation business virtually disappear - I'm 75 so I don't really care much, but I do have the problem of offering advice to teenage relatives. What jobs can they go for that are going to be proof against AI takeover in 10-20 years?
The answer is probably selective jobs involving a manual element, not necessarily a trade - e.g. surgery or dentistry are probably viable. The idea that we'll all be more free to take up poetry etc, is attractve, but probably not how society works - rather, people investing in AI or taking up the remaining professions will benefit. But advising young people to consider a manual trade isn't the crazy idea for well-educated people that it used to be, and the tradespeople who I know are steadily raising their prices and remain extremely busy. What you WANT to do is possibly different, but perhaps influenced by traditional biases against manual trades among us effete intellectuals?
Well for just proven that’s total nonsense. After centuries of dispute, when even the brightest scientists have decided the question must be unanswerable, I have just definitively shown that No, you cannot ride an e-bike into the Pacific Ocean
Labour absolutely have to finish above the Greens. That's way more important to Labour than whether Reborn elect another MP.
That sounds like Tom Jones syndrome.
Is it common?
It's not unusual!
The battlefield is definitely more hostile with the addition of ubiquitous drones, but in order to advance you still need to provide your soldiers with a combination of manoeuvrability, protection and firepower and that's the tank.
People concentrate on drones in this war, but almost as consequential is that neither side has achieved air superiority. My uninformed guess is that tanks become a lot more useful when supported with airpower, and when the battlefield is more mobile.
When first past the post gives us a totally idiotic result that will be our choice. And I will glory in the the fate of politicians that over the years supported FPTP wailing and tearing their ties off in horror.
Bring it on.
See, for instance, the sentencing remarks of Mr Justice Wall to the three men convicted last December of a plot to slaughter Jews in Manchester - https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Sentencing-Remarks-Saadaoui-and-others-final.pdf. The details of the plot are horrific. Those men did not come out of nowhere. There has been a steady increase in attacks on Jews in this country in recent years and too little has been done to counter this or to criticise those doing it and far too much has been done to justify it or explain it away or to blame Jews for the attacks on them.
If you were interested in the Wasserstein book you should also read "Uprooted" by Lyn Julius - about 3000 years of Jewish history and civilisation in the Middle East and how it too vanished as a result of the wrongdoing of others. When ignorant tossers shout "Go back to where you came from" to Jews, the Middle East is where they come from and where they have every right to be. "Last Days in Babylon" by Marina Benjamin is also worth reading.
I think it was you who recommended "Crooked Cross" by Sally Carson, which I read and enjoyed (if "enjoy" is the right word). There was a reading of it on BBC Sounds, though the episodes are no longer available, infuriatingly. It is on Audible though.
Good job it wasnt on a Rosie Barnes to add to the confusion
They had a chap from one of their "independent" "thinktanks" ("Centre for Migration control", founded by a Reform UK activist), and did some out-of-the-arse calculations about the cost (eg Greens would give 800k people a Basic Income of 19k per annum) plus £4 billiojn of NHS costs abracadabra costing £120bn per annum.
They had a Green person on who pointed out that it was BS.
I'm not sure what the appropriate conclusion should be.
1) Do you want to vote for Scottish, Welsh or British nationalism? No
2) Do you want to vote for centrism? Yes
3) Do you think the Tories might sustain a Reform government? Yes, they might.
Answer: In most seats, Labour. In about 100 seats, LD.
If you added a fourth question:
4) Will you only vote for a party reasonably good at politics and communication, set policies out clearly and are capable of running everything the state runs very well while making incremental improvements
Then you stay at home.
Politics is about compromise, tactical voting doesn't always favour the party you're fanboying for, but its the right thing to do - vote Labour and keep Reform out, I'm glad Tactical Choice agree 👍🏻
https://x.com/oliverryanuk/status/2026782518565912849?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
On Gorton and Denton the best result for the country would be a labour hold
I see little difference between Reform and the Greens in their divisive and dangerous policies
If I had a vote I would vote conservative
https://news.sky.com/story/politics-latest-mandelson-starmer-labour-farage-badenoch-12593360
It sounds pretty easy to me, if slightly inadvisable.
I suspect it will be towards the historically low end of the scale.
A pox on ALL your houses
I think there is a fair to middling chance that the Green Communists and the Red Tories cancel each other out and Goodwin takes the glittering prize.
Although with Tiny Tom as the new Whitehouse favourite fascist this might be Reform's last hurrah.
The only thing I would say is that the Greens winning would give them a big boost in terms of publicity. Reform can always say that the seat was challenging and that realistically their only hope was a split Labour-Green vote.
Much wailing and gnashing of teeth.
My online friend Tod Maffin (Canadian influencer, who was a national radio personality for 2-3 decades) is repeating his "Americans, come and visit Nanaimo (on Vancouver Island)" again this April. Last year 500 came.
And it seems they have recruited 40 Healthcare Workers from the USA over the last year to come to his city.
Short news report: "The Nanaimo Infusion - We're Doing It Again!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8no3Bscpno
He's now writing and producing an online series not unlike Lake Wobegone Days, called "Mirror Falls".
https://www.mirrorfalls.com/
Whats the opposite of he's running?
Rachel Reeves and Starmer are both hubristic and very poor at politics.
The rest of you? Suck it up.