In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
I sat through five hours of Tristan and Isolde in Edinburgh on Wednesday, and while it was great, just occasionally you felt that a five minute executive summary and three crisp bullet point conclusions wouldn't come amiss.
A friends of ours, who died three years ago, had a mission in life to convert everyone to a love of Wagner. In his memory we bought a DVD of Tristan and Isolde. We watched the 1st Act, which was looong. My husband and I decided to leave it a couple of years before we watched the 2nd Act but haven't yet found the will to go back.
Are there any Wagner enthusiasts who can recommend one of his works which is more accessible (and shorter)?
Wagner is fantastic on heroin
I had a classical music friend who got free tickets to the Royal Opera House in his job. Also he was into heroin, like me
We smoked a ten bag each then went to see Tristan - all 109 hours or whatever - and it was glorious. At times I nodded out for an hour or two but it didn’t matter. I woke to find the same people shrieking the same beautiful music. And it went on and on
It was genuinely sublime. I appreciate “take heroin if you’re going to see a Wagner opera” is not massively practical advice. But maybe you’ve got a good dealer
If not, the Green Party will organise one for you.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
And presumably with no actual evidence, like all the best spats on PB.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
The petrol currently in the pumps and in storage wasn't bought at $100 per barrel but the petrol at my local Tesco's has gone up 12p since all this began.
The alternative is to face down the Government and the public when the petrol which has been purchased on the futures market at $100 a barrel comes to the filling stations and the price shoots up and everyone gets silly.
About half (a bit more with VAT) of the cost of every litre of fuel goes to the Treasury. That adds up to £25 billion or about 2% of all the money the Government gets in so it's not insignificant.
It's the old argument - if you want to cut taxes, fine, I get that, but how do you make up the shortfall or in other words, from where are the £25 billion in cuts going to come and if you answer, "welfare", let's be more specific, whose benefits will be cut and by how much?
If a petrol station is making 12p a litre on the fuel it sells and the cost to replace that fuel goes up by more than 12p (assuming they have absolutely no other overheads at all whch of course they do) how do they pay for replacing it?
As I predicted, the Stock Profits crap has started.
It will be Murder Tuesday for months, all over again.
Sorry Malmesbury I genuinely don't understand that comment.
Back during COVID, it was noticed that reported death rates jumped every Tuesday. This was a reporting artefact, caused by the fact that on weekends, the paperwork wasn't being done - the medics were preferring to waste time on saving lives and such. So lots of reports of deaths were entered into the system on Monday, and ended up on the stats on Tuesday.
Despite explaining to the press repeatedly, for months, there were headlines about the "spike in deaths" on Tuesdays.
Similarly, in previous oil price shocks, despite explaining "stock profits" carefully and with simple, small words, the press could never seem to get their head round the concepts involved.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
No as I've daid
Are you always happy to take any view to attack the government?
The retailers will raise prices and screw us all
The retailers will raise the prices even if governments reduce tax
The public suffer.
You are a complete hypocrite. Yelling at Government for doing nothing, shouting minute Tories say they might do something, yet because it's Labour moan moan moan.
Your precious Kemi wants Labour to call off a tax rise that doesn't come in for 24 weeks
What utter bullcrap.
Labour acting now at speed you moan
Same old Tories Same old Lies
Probably worried Retailers will cut funding to Tory Party.
Same old Tories Same old Lies
You are resorting to your usual hysteria
Unlike you I provide sources for breaking news which in this case was Sky news not me
Your attempts to close down any negative story about the government through unfounded accusations and whataboutery does you no credit
Your attempts to shit house every thing the government does shows you up for the hypocritical tory you are.
If blinking Kemi had the same meeting you d be telling us how great it was.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
The retailers just log the reg and ban them from every forecourt in the country. I was a serial banner of customers when I worked in retail because my teenage/student staff were worth more to the shop than one ridiculous entitled ****. Don't give them an inch.
I simply do not agree with you
As has just been said in the media, language matters and it is that the PRA are complaining about as their staff see increaesd levels of abuse
Sorry Big_G , no excuses for that kind of behaviour and I'm surprised you'd tolerate them. I can't imagine you doing that in any other circumstance.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
People who abuse retail staff are barely a step up from the shit posters on Twatter who want to burn migrant hotels.
Back in the day, Greenpeace lying about the Brent Spar inspired one moron to carry out a bomb attack on a petrol station in Germany.
Not long after the Greenpeace ship rocked up at a harbour where Shell was the sole marine fuelling option. Their bunkers were basically empty.
Some advocated for not selling them oil. I suggested selling to them with 4,000% special one-off tariff.
I agree but where is the evidence.
The fact is the retailers hide behind the staff
It would appear that the retail body did not wish to be questioned by the media.
The media that start every news bulletin with scare stories about the petrol prices and slag off the government for doing nothing.
Reeves has got them off the golf course on a Friday afternoon
She wants the media there to see and report that she means business?
The retailers bottle it...
Hopefully she will give them a bollocking and a firm warning.
You seem incapable of understanding that retail staff will be abused if the government generate hostility to petrol retailers
A sensible government would meet the industry to discuss solutions
It's the PRA that have withdrawn from the meeting with the Government.
What started the hostility to staff? The alleged price-gouging was reported before the Government asked the retailers not to price gouge. It's the PRA members taking advantage who've put their staff at risk of abuse.
What proof do you have of the PRA members are taking advantage of the situation ?
I have long had an app that provides the location and prices at the pumps which means I can buy the cheapest fuel available anyway
It’s like that Brass Eye episode.
There is no evidence, but it’s a fact.
All mob mentality stuff and govt blame avoiding.
None, that's why I said "alleged", the media have been sensationally reporting high prices and Badenoch and others have jumped on it to demand tax freezes or cuts to save consumers from high prices.
I've no idea if petrol prices have gone up and don't care if they have.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
Nobody could ever accuse malcy of being quite inoffensive...
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
That depends though. If people incite the act, then they surely bear some responsibility.
Like that idiot who wanted people to burn migrant hotels.
Which is why there is centuries of legal precedent on the concept of incitement.
Remember Uncle Malmesbury's simple rules for not bing a racist - 4 tricks that Prosecution Lawyers don't want you to know!
1) Don't set immigrants on fire 2) Not even small ones 3) Especially not small ones 4) Don't advocate setting fire to immigrants
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
The retailers just log the reg and ban them from every forecourt in the country. I was a serial banner of customers when I worked in retail because my teenage/student staff were worth more to the shop than one ridiculous entitled ****. Don't give them an inch.
I simply do not agree with you
As has just been said in the media, language matters and it is that the PRA are complaining about as their staff see increaesd levels of abuse
Sorry Big_G , no excuses for that kind of behaviour and I'm surprised you'd tolerate them. I can't imagine you doing that in any other circumstance.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
Nobody could ever accuse malcy of being quite inoffensive...
You'd probably get sued by malcy for suggesting he is inoffensive.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
You have to hand it to Epstein, he may have been evil but he certainly knew how to get into parties and meetings and photos with the rich and powerful in the US and UK so that if he was done he was going to drag down many of them with him
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
No as I've daid
Are you always happy to take any view to attack the government?
The retailers will raise prices and screw us all
The retailers will raise the prices even if governments reduce tax
The public suffer.
You are a complete hypocrite. Yelling at Government for doing nothing, shouting minute Tories say they might do something, yet because it's Labour moan moan moan.
Your precious Kemi wants Labour to call off a tax rise that doesn't come in for 24 weeks
What utter bullcrap.
Labour acting now at speed you moan
Same old Tories Same old Lies
Probably worried Retailers will cut funding to Tory Party.
Same old Tories Same old Lies
You are resorting to your usual hysteria
Unlike you I provide sources for breaking news which in this case was Sky news not me
Your attempts to close down any negative story about the government through unfounded accusations and whataboutery does you no credit
Your attempts to shit house every thing the government does shows you up for the hypocritical tory you are.
If blinking Kemi had the same meeting you d be telling us how great it was.
Not that she ever works on a Friday
What you are experiencing and not coping with is exactly what happened to the Johnson /Truss government when on a daily basis Starmer and labour were attacking the government and demanding resignations
We all know the conservatives deservedly suffered a humiliation in 2024 and labour are on course to experience the same in May and at GE 29
Maybe if the government weren't so rubbish at everything then they would not get the opprobrium which is their's to have
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
People who abuse retail staff are barely a step up from the shit posters on Twatter who want to burn migrant hotels.
Back in the day, Greenpeace lying about the Brent Spar inspired one moron to carry out a bomb attack on a petrol station in Germany.
Not long after the Greenpeace ship rocked up at a harbour where Shell was the sole marine fuelling option. Their bunkers were basically empty.
Some advocated for not selling them oil. I suggested selling to them with 4,000% special one-off tariff.
I agree but where is the evidence.
The fact is the retailers hide behind the staff
It would appear that the retail body did not wish to be questioned by the media.
The media that start every news bulletin with scare stories about the petrol prices and slag off the government for doing nothing.
Reeves has got them off the golf course on a Friday afternoon
She wants the media there to see and report that she means business?
The retailers bottle it...
Hopefully she will give them a bollocking and a firm warning.
You seem incapable of understanding that retail staff will be abused if the government generate hostility to petrol retailers
A sensible government would meet the industry to discuss solutions
It's the PRA that have withdrawn from the meeting with the Government.
What started the hostility to staff? The alleged price-gouging was reported before the Government asked the retailers not to price gouge. It's the PRA members taking advantage who've put their staff at risk of abuse.
What proof do you have of the PRA members are taking advantage of the situation ?
I have long had an app that provides the location and prices at the pumps which means I can buy the cheapest fuel available anyway
It’s like that Brass Eye episode.
There is no evidence, but it’s a fact.
All mob mentality stuff and govt blame avoiding.
None, that's why I said "alleged", the media have been sensationally reporting high prices and Badenoch and others have jumped on it to demand tax freezes or cuts to save consumers from high prices.
I've no idea if petrol prices have gone up and don't care if they have.
They have gone up. My local Sainsbury’s by 6p. However that’s the market price. So be it. There are loads of petrol stations. It’s not a monopoly.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
That depends though. If people incite the act, then they surely bear some responsibility.
Like that idiot who wanted people to burn migrant hotels.
The government has not asked people to abuse retail workers, FFS. And that's a pretty dark logic - you wouldn't want to extend that to the Iran war, for example.
If you shout fire in a crowded cinema are you responsible for the subsequent crush that kills people?
How the hell is that equivalent to the government expressing concern about price gouging and some nasty piece of work abusing some 20-year old at a fuel station?
I guess this is what late-stage capitalism is going to look like.
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
The article itself is 1,800 words long and is perfectly readable. The Appendices, Sources and Discussant Contributions contribute the 18,000 words that come after. Mods willing, the 1,800 article is the thing that gets published, the Appendices, Sources and Discussant Contributions will be published in a separate document which the mods will link to.
This enables you to gaze upon my glory without the full magnitude blinding you with the full awe. And I'm sure everybody will thank me for it.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
Howay. Malc is ace. But I always found Foremain perfectly pleasant too.
I do remember the two didn’t see eye to eye.
If they met IRL I bet they’d get on like a house on fire. Enjoy a large dram together
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
The retailers just log the reg and ban them from every forecourt in the country. I was a serial banner of customers when I worked in retail because my teenage/student staff were worth more to the shop than one ridiculous entitled ****. Don't give them an inch.
I simply do not agree with you
As has just been said in the media, language matters and it is that the PRA are complaining about as their staff see increaesd levels of abuse
Sorry Big_G , no excuses for that kind of behaviour and I'm surprised you'd tolerate them. I can't imagine you doing that in any other circumstance.
No you are right. You've got to be pretty thick to beat up on a forecourt attendant because Donald Trump has bombed the shit out of the Middle East. The retail companies have clearly been gouging the price of fuel, the stuff still in their tanks was going up the weekend before last, but that is hardly the fault of some kid on minimum wage working the till.
Badenoch has clearly focus grouped fuel prices in September which is why she was banging on about it on Wednesday whilst Starmer was overseeing the burning of Tehran and Beirut without so much as a comment from either of them.
TRUMP: I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah. And he probably thinks we're helping Ukraine, right?
KILMEADE: And you are, right?
TRUMP: Yeah, we're helping them also, and so he says that, and China would say the same thing. It's like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
The petrol currently in the pumps and in storage wasn't bought at $100 per barrel but the petrol at my local Tesco's has gone up 12p since all this began.
The alternative is to face down the Government and the public when the petrol which has been purchased on the futures market at $100 a barrel comes to the filling stations and the price shoots up and everyone gets silly.
About half (a bit more with VAT) of the cost of every litre of fuel goes to the Treasury. That adds up to £25 billion or about 2% of all the money the Government gets in so it's not insignificant.
It's the old argument - if you want to cut taxes, fine, I get that, but how do you make up the shortfall or in other words, from where are the £25 billion in cuts going to come and if you answer, "welfare", let's be more specific, whose benefits will be cut and by how much?
If a petrol station is making 12p a litre on the fuel it sells and the cost to replace that fuel goes up by more than 12p (assuming they have absolutely no other overheads at all whch of course they do) how do they pay for replacing it?
As I predicted, the Stock Profits crap has started.
It will be Murder Tuesday for months, all over again.
Sorry Malmesbury I genuinely don't understand that comment.
Back during COVID, it was noticed that reported death rates jumped every Tuesday. This was a reporting artefact, caused by the fact that on weekends, the paperwork wasn't being done - the medics were preferring to waste time on saving lives and such. So lots of reports of deaths were entered into the system on Monday, and ended up on the stats on Tuesday.
Despite explaining to the press repeatedly, for months, there were headlines about the "spike in deaths" on Tuesdays.
Similarly, in previous oil price shocks, despite explaining "stock profits" carefully and with simple, small words, the press could never seem to get their head round the concepts involved.
Now I'm not saying that IT hardware levels are currently mad, but I've just sold 5 ancient 4tb Hard disks for £100 each on ebay.
To a parts recycler who will be charging way more than I did for them...
What’s special about them that they go for that price and have a higher retail value ?
I presume they are a bit more sophisticated than the Seagate or WD ones I use for my MP4 back ups.
Nothing, they've literally been sat in the garage for a couple of years because second hand they were worth about £20 so not worth the hassle of reformatting them.
Now they are going for £100 each on ebay which means spending 5 minutes reformatting them and packaging them up is worth the hassle.
The only change AI is purchasing memory cheaps and storage likes its about to be banned. So prices have gone utterly insane...
Do I need to watch the Ring Cycle in order? It's just that the local Arts Centre is screening "Siegfried" from the Met next month.
It starts with Rhinegold, which is easily the best. I love Lode’s attitude.
The Siegfried Idyll is a short standalone piece, composed for his wife, he sneaked musician’s in on Christmas morning for the musics world premier so his wife would awake to the sound of the music.
Do I need to watch the Ring Cycle in order? It's just that the local Arts Centre is screening "Siegfried" from the Met next month.
No. As a one off, Walkure is probably the best, but Siegfried is fine, although it doesn't have as many well known scenes.
You will miss some of the musical phrases referring to people and concepts from the earlier operas, but only the enthusiasts really care about whether a particular motif refers to a curse or a Nibelung or whatever.
The overall plot is not terribly complex, even if the themes it addresses are.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
The petrol currently in the pumps and in storage wasn't bought at $100 per barrel but the petrol at my local Tesco's has gone up 12p since all this began.
The alternative is to face down the Government and the public when the petrol which has been purchased on the futures market at $100 a barrel comes to the filling stations and the price shoots up and everyone gets silly.
About half (a bit more with VAT) of the cost of every litre of fuel goes to the Treasury. That adds up to £25 billion or about 2% of all the money the Government gets in so it's not insignificant.
It's the old argument - if you want to cut taxes, fine, I get that, but how do you make up the shortfall or in other words, from where are the £25 billion in cuts going to come and if you answer, "welfare", let's be more specific, whose benefits will be cut and by how much?
If a petrol station is making 12p a litre on the fuel it sells and the cost to replace that fuel goes up by more than 12p (assuming they have absolutely no other overheads at all whch of course they do) how do they pay for replacing it?
As I predicted, the Stock Profits crap has started.
It will be Murder Tuesday for months, all over again.
Sorry Malmesbury I genuinely don't understand that comment.
Back during COVID, it was noticed that reported death rates jumped every Tuesday. This was a reporting artefact, caused by the fact that on weekends, the paperwork wasn't being done - the medics were preferring to waste time on saving lives and such. So lots of reports of deaths were entered into the system on Monday, and ended up on the stats on Tuesday.
Despite explaining to the press repeatedly, for months, there were headlines about the "spike in deaths" on Tuesdays.
Similarly, in previous oil price shocks, despite explaining "stock profits" carefully and with simple, small words, the press could never seem to get their head round the concepts involved.
Cheers. I am slow on the uptake today.
You would have thought setting the price based on the cost of restocking would be something anyone could understand..
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
The retailers just log the reg and ban them from every forecourt in the country. I was a serial banner of customers when I worked in retail because my teenage/student staff were worth more to the shop than one ridiculous entitled ****. Don't give them an inch.
I simply do not agree with you
As has just been said in the media, language matters and it is that the PRA are complaining about as their staff see increaesd levels of abuse
Sorry Big_G , no excuses for that kind of behaviour and I'm surprised you'd tolerate them. I can't imagine you doing that in any other circumstance.
No you are right. You've got to be pretty thick to beat up on a forecourt attendant because Donald Trump has bombed the shit out of the Middle East. The retail companies have clearly been gouging the price of fuel, the stuff still in their tanks was going up the weekend before last, but that is hardly the fault of some kid on minimum wage working the till.
Badenoch has clearly focus grouped fuel prices in September which is why she was banging on about it on Wednesday whilst Starmer was overseeing the burning of Tehran and Beirut without so much as a comment from either of them.
The retailers have to buy fuel continuously. The refiners have to buy fuel continuously. etc.
This is why the price of fuel goes up rapidly and comes down rapidly when the price of oil changes. It has always done this. Stock Profits are a myth.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
Howay. Malc is ace. But I always found Foremain perfectly pleasant too.
I do remember the two didn’t see eye to eye.
If they met IRL I bet they’d get on like a house on fire. Enjoy a large dram together
I would be on 3 bottle evening. 2 dead bottles and a half.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
As a conservative I would join the opposition and take down a reform government
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
I sat through five hours of Tristan and Isolde in Edinburgh on Wednesday, and while it was great, just occasionally you felt that a five minute executive summary and three crisp bullet point conclusions wouldn't come amiss.
A friends of ours, who died three years ago, had a mission in life to convert everyone to a love of Wagner. In his memory we bought a DVD of Tristan and Isolde. We watched the 1st Act, which was looong. My husband and I decided to leave it a couple of years before we watched the 2nd Act but haven't yet found the will to go back.
Are there any Wagner enthusiasts who can recommend one of his works which is more accessible (and shorter)?
Wagner is fantastic on heroin
I had a classical music friend who got free tickets to the Royal Opera House in his job. Also he was into heroin, like me
We smoked a ten bag each then went to see Tristan - all 109 hours or whatever - and it was glorious. At times I nodded out for an hour or two but it didn’t matter. I woke to find the same people shrieking the same beautiful music. And it went on and on
It was genuinely sublime. I appreciate “take heroin if you’re going to see a Wagner opera” is not massively practical advice. But maybe you’ve got a good dealer
On the other hand, never, ever, watch the Japanese cyberpunk anime classic "Akira" on acid. I made that mistake that in the cinema field at Glastonbury in '92 when I didn't fancy whatever they'd got for the Pyramid Stage to replace Morrissey (who'd flounced out).
TRUMP: I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah. And he probably thinks we're helping Ukraine, right?
KILMEADE: And you are, right?
TRUMP: Yeah, we're helping them also, and so he says that, and China would say the same thing. It's like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness
He's going for that 'all big men together' vibe there.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
The retailers just log the reg and ban them from every forecourt in the country. I was a serial banner of customers when I worked in retail because my teenage/student staff were worth more to the shop than one ridiculous entitled ****. Don't give them an inch.
I simply do not agree with you
As has just been said in the media, language matters and it is that the PRA are complaining about as their staff see increaesd levels of abuse
Sorry Big_G , no excuses for that kind of behaviour and I'm surprised you'd tolerate them. I can't imagine you doing that in any other circumstance.
No you are right. You've got to be pretty thick to beat up on a forecourt attendant because Donald Trump has bombed the shit out of the Middle East. The retail companies have clearly been gouging the price of fuel, the stuff still in their tanks was going up the weekend before last, but that is hardly the fault of some kid on minimum wage working the till.
Badenoch has clearly focus grouped fuel prices in September which is why she was banging on about it on Wednesday whilst Starmer was overseeing the burning of Tehran and Beirut without so much as a comment from either of them.
Thanks - but remember that both supply and demand don't work as snapshots but take into account what suppliers and consumers expect to happen in the future. I think it's fair that the market price has gone up somewhat, even just taking into account the demand side - we just don't know whether the price we see now is a fair reflection of that or whether retailers are using some of their market power (which isn't insignificant) to put a margin on top.
It's cynical politics from Labour to pin it all on gouging but, you know, it's politics. It's mad to suggest that fairly benign comms like that is responsible for abuse - it's not like Starmer has accused retail workers of being class traitors or something.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
Howay. Malc is ace. But I always found Foremain perfectly pleasant too.
I do remember the two didn’t see eye to eye.
If they met IRL I bet they’d get on like a house on fire. Enjoy a large dram together
I would be on 3 bottle evening. 2 dead bottles and a half.
The half will be kept to flavour their porridge the next morning.
Edit: what happened to @Nigel_Foremain ? I haven’t seen him on here fora while.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday [March 4th] approved its first construction permit for a commercial nuclear reactor in eight years, one that will allow a Bill Gates-backed company to build a sodium-cooled reactor in western Wyoming.
TerraPower filed for the permit in 2024 and construction is now set to begin within weeks. Completion of the up to $4 billion plant is targeted for 2030, according to TerraPower. Microsoft co-founder Gates, who is eyeing nuclear generation as a power source for the electricity-hungry data centers behind artificial intelligence, is a founder of TerraPower and its primary investor.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
As a conservative I would join the opposition and take down a reform government
I think they should give confidence and supply up to the point they do something stupid or unpleasant, and then withdraw it. About three days, probably.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
That depends though. If people incite the act, then they surely bear some responsibility.
Like that idiot who wanted people to burn migrant hotels.
The government has not asked people to abuse retail workers, FFS. And that's a pretty dark logic - you wouldn't want to extend that to the Iran war, for example.
If you shout fire in a crowded cinema are you responsible for the subsequent crush that kills people?
How the hell is that equivalent to the government expressing concern about price gouging and some nasty piece of work abusing some 20-year old at a fuel station?
I guess this is what late-stage capitalism is going to look like.
I do actually agree with you about the blame lying with the abuser.
But the point is that other factors create the environment where the bullies feel empowered to commit the abuse. I am pretty sure you (and I for that matter) are happy to blame the rhetoric on asylum seekers, potential terrorists and foreign invaders promoted by the right wing parties and commentators, for the attacks on said asylum seekers and anyone else who looks the 'wrong' shade. Yet for some reason you do not want to extend the same logic to abuse handed out as a result of the demonisation of petrol retailers.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
I sat through five hours of Tristan and Isolde in Edinburgh on Wednesday, and while it was great, just occasionally you felt that a five minute executive summary and three crisp bullet point conclusions wouldn't come amiss.
A friends of ours, who died three years ago, had a mission in life to convert everyone to a love of Wagner. In his memory we bought a DVD of Tristan and Isolde. We watched the 1st Act, which was looong. My husband and I decided to leave it a couple of years before we watched the 2nd Act but haven't yet found the will to go back.
Are there any Wagner enthusiasts who can recommend one of his works which is more accessible (and shorter)?
No. It's all long.
The Ring is 14 hours total. But after Tristan The Ring feels like a medley of popular favourites.
IMHO if you don't warm to Act 1 of Die Walkure, (the second of the Ring cycle) and if the last 20 minutes of Act III doesn't move you, perhaps to tears, then don't bother. It isn't for you. There is, or at least recently was, on YouTube a super Opera North complete Ring Cycle, which is modest and unpompous, conducted by the modest and unpompous Richard Farnes It is best followed with an English text in front of you, Andrew Porter's version being the best around.
Incest and a house with a tree growing in the middle of it. It's laugh a minute.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
I sat through five hours of Tristan and Isolde in Edinburgh on Wednesday, and while it was great, just occasionally you felt that a five minute executive summary and three crisp bullet point conclusions wouldn't come amiss.
A friends of ours, who died three years ago, had a mission in life to convert everyone to a love of Wagner. In his memory we bought a DVD of Tristan and Isolde. We watched the 1st Act, which was looong. My husband and I decided to leave it a couple of years before we watched the 2nd Act but haven't yet found the will to go back.
Are there any Wagner enthusiasts who can recommend one of his works which is more accessible (and shorter)?
Wagner is fantastic on heroin
I had a classical music friend who got free tickets to the Royal Opera House in his job. Also he was into heroin, like me
We smoked a ten bag each then went to see Tristan - all 109 hours or whatever - and it was glorious. At times I nodded out for an hour or two but it didn’t matter. I woke to find the same people shrieking the same beautiful music. And it went on and on
It was genuinely sublime. I appreciate “take heroin if you’re going to see a Wagner opera” is not massively practical advice. But maybe you’ve got a good dealer
On the other hand, never, ever, watch the Japanese cyberpunk anime classic "Akira" on acid. I made that mistake that in the cinema field at Glastonbury in '92 when I didn't fancy whatever they'd got for the Pyramid Stage to replace Morrissey (who'd flounced out).
I’m watched the Japanese film ‘Audition’ once, on TV late night.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
That depends though. If people incite the act, then they surely bear some responsibility.
Like that idiot who wanted people to burn migrant hotels.
The government has not asked people to abuse retail workers, FFS. And that's a pretty dark logic - you wouldn't want to extend that to the Iran war, for example.
If you shout fire in a crowded cinema are you responsible for the subsequent crush that kills people?
How the hell is that equivalent to the government expressing concern about price gouging and some nasty piece of work abusing some 20-year old at a fuel station?
I guess this is what late-stage capitalism is going to look like.
I do actually agree with you about the blame lying with the abuser.
But the point is that other factors create the environment where the bullies feel empowered to commit the abuse. I am pretty sure you (and I for that matter) are happy to blame the rhetoric on asylum seekers, potential terrorists and foreign invaders promoted by the right wing parties and commentators, for the attacks on said asylum seekers and anyone else who looks the 'wrong' shade. Yet for some reason you do not want to extend the same logic to abuse handed out as a result of the demonisation of petrol retailers.
More Irregular Verbs
1) I orate 2) You use inflammatory language 3) He/She/They/It has been charged with incitement
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
Quite. PB remains one of the few places where a man’s testicles can be traduced at 1pm and his argument fairly assessed by 2pm.
On the article, I think “20,000 words” is less an invitation than a warning label, whatever the topic.
I recall, and think I'll always recall, a furious spat between Nigel Foremain and IshmaelZ that ran for three days and by the end was basically the two of them taking turns to denigrate the size of the other's penis. PB at its most raw.
Malcolm and Foremain didn't get on either. I found him quite inoffensive (Foremain not Malcolm).
I think Malcolm would regard being called “inoffensive” as deeply hurtful
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
To be clear, you don't advocate any kind of formal arrangement with Reform (including Confidence & Supply) but would review legislation on a case by case basis.
I understand but a King's Speech is a confidence measure - IF you abstain and the King's Speech falls, there will likely be a second election. In 1974, the opposition had the numbers to defeat Wilson's Queen's Speech but the Conservatives under Heath abstained and went on to lose in October when Wilson went for a second snap election.
I don't know how the polls would move in the event of a minority Reform Government - it could well be the Conservative position would improve but that's not certain and indeed Labour could advance and having a second election might mean a majority Labour Govenrment being returned for four to five years.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
I'm not a conservative but have voted for them on a number of occasions. For me the Conservatives would be mad to either form a coalition with Reform or confidence and supply a minority government. Better to oppose, or even try for a grand coalition. I liked the positive influence the lib dems had in 2010-2015 but the end result was a massacre of the Lib Dems. Reform, though, are a cancer. They need cutting out and disposal.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
Kemi would be utterly mad to go into coalition with Reform - best to leave them to it and vote on individual matters.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
To be clear, you don't advocate any kind of formal arrangement with Reform (including Confidence & Supply) but would review legislation on a case by case basis.
I understand but a King's Speech is a confidence measure - IF you abstain and the King's Speech falls, there will likely be a second election. In 1974, the opposition had the numbers to defeat Wilson's Queen's Speech but the Conservatives under Heath abstained and went on to lose in October when Wilson went for a second snap election.
I don't know how the polls would move in the event of a minority Reform Government - it could well be the Conservative position would improve but that's not certain and indeed Labour could advance and having a second election might mean a majority Labour Govenrment being returned for four to five years.
Yes but Farage would likely have to offer Kemi a Cabinet post to ensure she did not vote against or abstain on any confidence vote, though it may be that Reform still have more MPs than Labour + LDs + Greens +SNP + PC anyway in which case the Tories could abstain and Farage remain PM
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. If there were 53 Tory MPs after the next election Kemi Badenoch would not be the leader of the Party.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
To be clear, you don't advocate any kind of formal arrangement with Reform (including Confidence & Supply) but would review legislation on a case by case basis.
I understand but a King's Speech is a confidence measure - IF you abstain and the King's Speech falls, there will likely be a second election. In 1974, the opposition had the numbers to defeat Wilson's Queen's Speech but the Conservatives under Heath abstained and went on to lose in October when Wilson went for a second snap election.
I don't know how the polls would move in the event of a minority Reform Government - it could well be the Conservative position would improve but that's not certain and indeed Labour could advance and having a second election might mean a majority Labour Govenrment being returned for four to five years.
Yes but Farage would likely have to offer Kemi a Cabinet post to ensure she did not vote against or abstain on any confidence vote, though it may be that Reform still have more MPs than Labour + LDs + Greens +SNP + PC anyway in which case the Tories could abstain and Farage remain PM
And what is Farage going to do when she says "Nah - no thanks"?
Nobody else is going to join his Cabinet.
Farage will have to hope he doesn't do anything stupid to stop Kemi supporting him measure by measure.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
That depends though. If people incite the act, then they surely bear some responsibility.
Like that idiot who wanted people to burn migrant hotels.
The government has not asked people to abuse retail workers, FFS. And that's a pretty dark logic - you wouldn't want to extend that to the Iran war, for example.
If you shout fire in a crowded cinema are you responsible for the subsequent crush that kills people?
How the hell is that equivalent to the government expressing concern about price gouging and some nasty piece of work abusing some 20-year old at a fuel station?
I guess this is what late-stage capitalism is going to look like.
I do actually agree with you about the blame lying with the abuser.
But the point is that other factors create the environment where the bullies feel empowered to commit the abuse. I am pretty sure you (and I for that matter) are happy to blame the rhetoric on asylum seekers, potential terrorists and foreign invaders promoted by the right wing parties and commentators, for the attacks on said asylum seekers and anyone else who looks the 'wrong' shade. Yet for some reason you do not want to extend the same logic to abuse handed out as a result of the demonisation of petrol retailers.
That's stretching the causality way too far. I certainly do not blame people who express concerns about small boat migrants, or the impact of the Boriswave on public services, for racially aggravated acts of violence.
"Demonisation of petrol retailers". It's not the government you need to worry about in that respect - it's millions of comments across the BBC, Mail, callers into Radio Scotland... and PB. it's hardly the government that has instigated this - they were late to the game.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. If there were 53 Tory MPs after the next election Kemi Badenoch would not be the leader of the Party.
She would but not for long (breakfast time on the Friday?)
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
But would she stay as leader? I guess it depends who are the other 52.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
To be clear, you don't advocate any kind of formal arrangement with Reform (including Confidence & Supply) but would review legislation on a case by case basis.
I understand but a King's Speech is a confidence measure - IF you abstain and the King's Speech falls, there will likely be a second election. In 1974, the opposition had the numbers to defeat Wilson's Queen's Speech but the Conservatives under Heath abstained and went on to lose in October when Wilson went for a second snap election.
I don't know how the polls would move in the event of a minority Reform Government - it could well be the Conservative position would improve but that's not certain and indeed Labour could advance and having a second election might mean a majority Labour Govenrment being returned for four to five years.
Yes but Farage would likely have to offer Kemi a Cabinet post to ensure she did not vote against or abstain on any confidence vote, though it may be that Reform still have more MPs than Labour + LDs + Greens +SNP + PC anyway in which case the Tories could abstain and Farage remain PM
And what is Farage going to do when she says "Nah - no thanks"?
Nobody else is going to join his Cabinet.
Farage will have to hope he doesn't do anything stupid to stop Kemi supporting him measure by measure.
Chances of that? With 300 Reform MPs? Zero.
Indeed, if we get a hung parliament with Reform more than Labour plus the left of centre and liberal and Scottish and Welsh and NI nationalists combined but not more than those parties combined plus the Tories then Kemi becomes very powerful. She could abstain on a confidence vote but Farage could not get any bill passed without her support
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. If there were 53 Tory MPs after the next election Kemi Badenoch would not be the leader of the Party.
She would as she would not resign and nobody else would want the job anyway in that circumstance and Cleverly would have been projected to lose Braintree, so her main rival would also be gone
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. If there were 53 Tory MPs after the next election Kemi Badenoch would not be the leader of the Party.
She would but not for long (breakfast time on the Friday?)
Indeed. In fact. The closer it gets to an election in which the Tories look to have any possibility of falling to fifty odd MPs, then Badenoch won't be fighting that election.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It all depends on who leads the Tories
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
On the current Nowcast seats projection average Reform are projected 315 MPs so would need the projected 53 Tory MPs for a majority.
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
If there were 53 Tory MPs Kemi Badenoch would be out of a job.
No, the Tories are projected to hold NW Essex, her constituency amongst those 53 projected Tory holds
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying. If there were 53 Tory MPs after the next election Kemi Badenoch would not be the leader of the Party.
She would but not for long (breakfast time on the Friday?)
Indeed. In fact. The closer it gets to an election in which the Tories look to have any possibility of falling to fifty odd MPs, then Badenoch won't be fighting that election.
Yes, she might be replaced by Cleverly before the next general election but not after
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
I'm not a conservative but have voted for them on a number of occasions. For me the Conservatives would be mad to either form a coalition with Reform or confidence and supply a minority government. Better to oppose, or even try for a grand coalition. I liked the positive influence the lib dems had in 2010-2015 but the end result was a massacre of the Lib Dems. Reform, though, are a cancer. They need cutting out and disposal.
I think (hope) the Lib Dems have learned the lessons of the 2010 coalition. Which are threefold:
- Don’t build a seat base on tactical voting against a party, and then go into coalition with that party - don’t loudly proclaim a popular (or populist) objection to a policy during an election campaign then drop the objection in coalition negotiations, no matter how intellectually persuaded you become of its merits - don’t allow the governing party to take the credit for your good policies and blame you for their bad ones
I think the party would suffer electorally from a bilateral coalition with Labour or the Conservatives (and would be destroyed forever if they went in with Reform) but could actually make good political progress in a 3 or 4 way coalition with say Labour and Greens or Labour, Green and Plaid. That would allow them a more distinctive and differentiated role. Or in a grand coalition with Labour and Tory for similar reasons. They could play the plucky outsiders.
In my upcoming trans article (with discussant contributions from kyf_100 and Cyclefree, currently being pre-read by Taz and Andy_JS), another of the appendices (appendix 6) contains a list of comments prior to the article being written. In that discussion we see the following text...
This will be the most boring article ever published in the history of the Internet but I've come up with a snappy title to leaven the doughy misery of reading the fucking thing - "The Transgina Monologues".
As predicted.
No, @Dura_Ace is right, this sounds like the most monumentally boring thing in the Anthropocene Era, the only thing Dura got wrong is the name. It should be The Mangina Monologues, as that is funnier and it alliterates
Impressively, that manages to be both needlessly nasty and stratigraphically illiterate. Strictly speaking, we’re in the Holocene Epoch of the Quaternary Period, not the ‘Anthropocene Era’.
Impressively you manage to get your pompous correction completely and pompously incorrect
"What is the Anthropocene and why does it matter?"
"The Anthropocene Epoch is an unofficial unit of geologic time, used to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human activity started to have a significant impact on the planet’s climate and ecosystems."
Still digging, I see. Your original claim was “Anthropocene Era”, which is wrong. Even on the most generous reading, Anthropocene is only used informally as an unofficial epoch, not an era. Quietly changing the geological unit after the fact is correction by sleight of hand, not accuracy.
WTF are you on about now? You denied that the concept of "the Anthropocene" even existed, I showed you it did, now you're quibbling about era versus epoch to hide your tiny shrivelled testicles of shame
That last line actually made me spit out some tea and laugh out loud, bravo.
If I may continue pompously, I didn’t deny the existence of the Anthropocene, only that it isn't an era. However, I grant that I wrote it clumsily enough that your reading was a fair one.
What would PB be without a pinch of pomposity and a smidge of ambiguity?
Ah, good. I'm glad you've taken my slight against your testicles in good spirit. This is what makes PB special, we can insult each other's genitals and laugh about it later
BTW I do wish @viewcode well in his Trans Trilogy, the Ring Cycle of Misgendering, or whatever it is he (they?) is planning, but it is not surprising that some of us view a "20,000 word article" on this subject with less-than-eager anticipation
I sat through five hours of Tristan and Isolde in Edinburgh on Wednesday, and while it was great, just occasionally you felt that a five minute executive summary and three crisp bullet point conclusions wouldn't come amiss.
A friends of ours, who died three years ago, had a mission in life to convert everyone to a love of Wagner. In his memory we bought a DVD of Tristan and Isolde. We watched the 1st Act, which was looong. My husband and I decided to leave it a couple of years before we watched the 2nd Act but haven't yet found the will to go back.
Are there any Wagner enthusiasts who can recommend one of his works which is more accessible (and shorter)?
Wagner is fantastic on heroin
I had a classical music friend who got free tickets to the Royal Opera House in his job. Also he was into heroin, like me
We smoked a ten bag each then went to see Tristan - all 109 hours or whatever - and it was glorious. At times I nodded out for an hour or two but it didn’t matter. I woke to find the same people shrieking the same beautiful music. And it went on and on
It was genuinely sublime. I appreciate “take heroin if you’re going to see a Wagner opera” is not massively practical advice. But maybe you’ve got a good dealer
I'm guessing it was this performance since apparently the next one wasn't until 2009.
This conversation kinda sums up the dire state of the Tory Party. That a member can actually be arguing that a Conservative Party leader might stay on after an election with 53 MPs.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
As a conservative I would join the opposition and take down a reform government
I think they should give confidence and supply up to the point they do something stupid or unpleasant, and then withdraw it. About three days, probably.
I would not want the conservatives to assist reform to stay in government
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
As a conservative I would join the opposition and take down a reform government
I think they should give confidence and supply up to the point they do something stupid or unpleasant, and then withdraw it. About three days, probably.
I would not want the conservatives to assist reform to stay in government
I suspect what would happen is the King's Speech would be voted down and we have another election. What happens if Reform come top second time around, but with a minority, is anyone's guess
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
I'm not a conservative but have voted for them on a number of occasions. For me the Conservatives would be mad to either form a coalition with Reform or confidence and supply a minority government. Better to oppose, or even try for a grand coalition. I liked the positive influence the lib dems had in 2010-2015 but the end result was a massacre of the Lib Dems. Reform, though, are a cancer. They need cutting out and disposal.
I think (hope) the Lib Dems have learned the lessons of the 2010 coalition. Which are threefold:
- Don’t build a seat base on tactical voting against a party, and then go into coalition with that party - don’t loudly proclaim a popular (or populist) objection to a policy during an election campaign then drop the objection in coalition negotiations, no matter how intellectually persuaded you become of its merits - don’t allow the governing party to take the credit for your good policies and blame you for their bad ones
I think the party would suffer electorally from a bilateral coalition with Labour or the Conservatives (and would be destroyed forever if they went in with Reform) but could actually make good political progress in a 3 or 4 way coalition with say Labour and Greens or Labour, Green and Plaid. That would allow them a more distinctive and differentiated role. Or in a grand coalition with Labour and Tory for similar reasons. They could play the plucky outsiders.
Insist on control of Ministries as part of any agreement. That is. If you have, say, the Education Secretary, then all Junior ministers in that department are your Party too. The success or failure of Education is then yours.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
As a conservative I would join the opposition and take down a reform government
I think they should give confidence and supply up to the point they do something stupid or unpleasant, and then withdraw it. About three days, probably.
I would not want the conservatives to assist reform to stay in government
But plenty of your fellow Conservatives do. So what do you, or they, do when the decision goes the other way?
This conversation kinda sums up the dire state of the Tory Party. That a member can actually be arguing that a Conservative Party leader might stay on after an election with 53 MPs.
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
It wouldn't, 46% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Farage but just 11% of Conservatives have a favourable view of Starmer.
To be clear, you don't advocate any kind of formal arrangement with Reform (including Confidence & Supply) but would review legislation on a case by case basis.
I understand but a King's Speech is a confidence measure - IF you abstain and the King's Speech falls, there will likely be a second election. In 1974, the opposition had the numbers to defeat Wilson's Queen's Speech but the Conservatives under Heath abstained and went on to lose in October when Wilson went for a second snap election.
I don't know how the polls would move in the event of a minority Reform Government - it could well be the Conservative position would improve but that's not certain and indeed Labour could advance and having a second election might mean a majority Labour Govenrment being returned for four to five years.
Yes but Farage would likely have to offer Kemi a Cabinet post to ensure she did not vote against or abstain on any confidence vote, though it may be that Reform still have more MPs than Labour + LDs + Greens +SNP + PC anyway in which case the Tories could abstain and Farage remain PM
And what is Farage going to do when she says "Nah - no thanks"?
Nobody else is going to join his Cabinet.
Farage will have to hope he doesn't do anything stupid to stop Kemi supporting him measure by measure.
Chances of that? With 300 Reform MPs? Zero.
Indeed, if we get a hung parliament with Reform more than Labour plus the left of centre and liberal and Scottish and Welsh and NI nationalists combined but not more than those parties combined plus the Tories then Kemi becomes very powerful. She could abstain on a confidence vote but Farage could not get any bill passed without her support
Do I need to watch the Ring Cycle in order? It's just that the local Arts Centre is screening "Siegfried" from the Met next month.
It starts with Rhinegold, which is easily the best. I love Lode’s attitude.
The Siegfried Idyll is a short standalone piece, composed for his wife, he sneaked musician’s in on Christmas morning for the musics world premier so his wife would awake to the sound of the music.
I've been to Wagner's house near Lucerne in Switzerland, where the Siegfried Idyll was composed, and I listened to it for the first time standing on the same stairs where it was first performed, on Christmas Day 1870
Say what you like about Wagner being a raging anti-Semite, he was great at real estate. The location of his house is absolutely stunning, gazing over the lake to the Alps
Probably the "best located" of any "famous artist's house" I've ever visited. And I've visited lots
Do I need to watch the Ring Cycle in order? It's just that the local Arts Centre is screening "Siegfried" from the Met next month.
It starts with Rhinegold, which is easily the best. I love Lode’s attitude.
The Siegfried Idyll is a short standalone piece, composed for his wife, he sneaked musician’s in on Christmas morning for the musics world premier so his wife would awake to the sound of the music.
I've been to Wagner's house near Lucerne in Switzerland, where the Siegfried Idyll was composed, and I listened to it for the first time standing on the same stairs where it was first performed, on Christmas Day 1870
Say what you like about Wagner being a raging anti-Semite, he was great at real estate. The location of his house is absolutely stunning, gazing over the lake to the Alps
Probably the "best located" of any "famous artist's house" I've ever visited. And I've visited lots
“I've been to Wagner's house near Lucerne in Switzerland, where the Siegfried Idyll was composed, and I listened to it for the first time standing on the same stairs where it was first performed, on Christmas Day 1870”
It's staggering to think the Conservatives won 6,000 votes in Aigburth, in May 1979, compared with 8, yesterday. That year they won 2 Parliamentary seats in Liverpool, and a year later, 21 seats on the local council. Now, they are simply irrelevant in the city, as in Manchester, Newcastle, and Sheffield. In fact, the candidate who stood has written a Doctoral Thesis on the disappearance of the Liverpool Conservatives.
The Tories are not irrelevant at all, since that that would still imply existence. The Tories are in fact extinct.
Lol.
On latest opinion polls the LDs have gone from the 3rd party to the 5th despite decades of trying harder.
The Tories will be back, but probably not until a dose of Reform has been through the system.
Well, the polls may not be telling the whole story... True, the Lib Dems lost to the Greens in Liverpool, but won against them in Vale of the White Horse and held Cotswold and Penrith. So the running total is 21 net gains since last May, versus net losses of 25 for the Tories and 52 for Labour. Reform are up 67 over the same period, but it remains to be seen how sustainable that is- Lib Dems have boots on the ground in their strong regions and Reform are not doing so well where they unexpectedly won last year.
As we know, the polls are not as important as getting the votes in the boxes.
The LibDems will likely be fairly stable until such time as we have a hung psrliament and they have to make a choice. At which point their support falls off a cliff.
The change is the Conservatives are now in the same position. We know there's broad support out there but on the basis of "if only they could win". That's essentially where the Alliance was in the mid-80s - they regularly polled mid-40s IF the question said they had a chance of winning.
In Greenwich, at the 1987 by-election, the Conservative vote collapsed once it became clear only the Alliance could beat Labour but the Labour vote also fell as some Labour voters recognised their anti-Conservative vote wasn't necessary and they could vote against Labour without any fear of letting the Conservatives in.
Outside of areas of strength, surrounded by oceans of weakness, the Conservatives are nowhere in the face of Reform.
I'm told she will say nothing and I believe it but the big questions for Badenoch as the election approaches are a) the Conservative relationship with Reform in the event of no party winning a majority. Would the Conservatives offer confidence & supply (or more) to a minority Reform Government and b) if a minority Labour Government (with LD and Green confidence & supply and I wouldn't assume either) has more seats but the Conservatives (with Reform) could vote down a King's Speech and trigger a second election, would they do that or would they abstain?
The Conservatives certainly can't do a deal with Labour, it was doing a deal with the Tories that saw the LDs lose over half their voters in 2015.
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
The same might happen to the Conservatives if they were in a coalition with Reform as the junior partner.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
As a conservative I would join the opposition and take down a reform government
I think they should give confidence and supply up to the point they do something stupid or unpleasant, and then withdraw it. About three days, probably.
I would not want the conservatives to assist reform to stay in government
I suspect what would happen is the King's Speech would be voted down and we have another election. What happens if Reform come top second time around, but with a minority, is anyone's guess
That sounds like you're referring to the similar territory to the 1923 election where the Conservatives threw away their majority, winning 258 seats with Labour and the Liberals on 191 and 158 respectively. There was an argument at the time that the Liberals should have voted against both Conservative and Labour King's speeches and try to cobble together a minority government themselves. They were only 1% behind Labour in the popular vote and had an enormously experienced front bench. In the event they voted for Labour's King's speech and doomed themselves as a party of government. The Conservatives would be mad to follow a similar example.
Petrol Retailers Association, looking at short term measures, have withdrawn from a meeting with Reeves due to inflammatory language used by government minister's which has led to incidents of retail staff bring abused by the public
Snowflakes
Happy to screw all motorists but can't stand being told to play fair
You happy with retail staff being abused ?
This is a very weak argument. The responsibility for being abusive to retail staff lies solely with the abuser, not with the government, the retailer, the oil companies, anyone else. You're effectively excusing that behaviour by making such a point.
The retailers just log the reg and ban them from every forecourt in the country. I was a serial banner of customers when I worked in retail because my teenage/student staff were worth more to the shop than one ridiculous entitled ****. Don't give them an inch.
I simply do not agree with you
As has just been said in the media, language matters and it is that the PRA are complaining about as their staff see increaesd levels of abuse
Sorry Big_G , no excuses for that kind of behaviour and I'm surprised you'd tolerate them. I can't imagine you doing that in any other circumstance.
No you are right. You've got to be pretty thick to beat up on a forecourt attendant because Donald Trump has bombed the shit out of the Middle East. The retail companies have clearly been gouging the price of fuel, the stuff still in their tanks was going up the weekend before last, but that is hardly the fault of some kid on minimum wage working the till.
Badenoch has clearly focus grouped fuel prices in September which is why she was banging on about it on Wednesday whilst Starmer was overseeing the burning of Tehran and Beirut without so much as a comment from either of them.
The retailers have to buy fuel continuously. The refiners have to buy fuel continuously. etc.
This is why the price of fuel goes up rapidly and comes down rapidly when the price of oil changes. It has always done this. Stock Profits are a myth.
Restocking costs have been particular upmarked by household kerosene suppliers. 150% rises on receipt of new stock.
I am also aware of how the Rotterdam spot markets work.
I was admonished on here for suggesting fuel at the pumps would be up by teatime Tuesday (on a Monday Morning). I was told that wouldn't occur until the new stock was delivered. But it did.
Comments
Despite explaining to the press repeatedly, for months, there were headlines about the "spike in deaths" on Tuesdays.
Similarly, in previous oil price shocks, despite explaining "stock profits" carefully and with simple, small words, the press could never seem to get their head round the concepts involved.
If blinking Kemi had the same meeting you d be telling us how great it was.
Not that she ever works on a Friday
Remember Uncle Malmesbury's simple rules for not bing a racist - 4 tricks that Prosecution Lawyers don't want you to know!
1) Don't set immigrants on fire
2) Not even small ones
3) Especially not small ones
4) Don't advocate setting fire to immigrants
However, if the Conservatives could vote down a Labour minority government I am sure they would
We all know the conservatives deservedly suffered a humiliation in 2024 and labour are on course to experience the same in May and at GE 29
Maybe if the government weren't so rubbish at everything then they would not get the opprobrium which is their's to have
I guess this is what late-stage capitalism is going to look like.
This enables you to gaze upon my glory without the full magnitude blinding you with the full awe. And I'm sure everybody will thank me for it.
I do remember the two didn’t see eye to eye.
If they met IRL I bet they’d get on like a house on fire. Enjoy a large dram together
Badenoch has clearly focus grouped fuel prices in September which is why she was banging on about it on Wednesday whilst Starmer was overseeing the burning of Tehran and Beirut without so much as a comment from either of them.
KILMEADE: You think Putin is helping Iran?
TRUMP: I think he might be helping them a little bit, yeah. And he probably thinks we're helping Ukraine, right?
KILMEADE: And you are, right?
TRUMP: Yeah, we're helping them also, and so he says that, and China would say the same thing. It's like, hey, they do it and we do it, in all fairness
Now they are going for £100 each on ebay which means spending 5 minutes reformatting them and packaging them up is worth the hassle.
The only change AI is purchasing memory cheaps and storage likes its about to be banned. So prices have gone utterly insane...
The Siegfried Idyll is a short standalone piece, composed for his wife, he sneaked musician’s in on Christmas morning for the musics world premier so his wife would awake to the sound of the music.
You will miss some of the musical phrases referring to people and concepts from the earlier operas, but only the enthusiasts really care about whether a particular motif refers to a curse or a Nibelung or whatever.
The overall plot is not terribly complex, even if the themes it addresses are.
Let me ask you the questions which so many Conservatives on here seem unable or unwilling to answer - do you think, after the next election, the Conservative Party should support a minority Reform Government (even if only via confidence & supply) or should they sit on the Opposition benches and, if the opportunity arises to bring down the minority Reform Government, should the Conservatives join with other Opposition parties to force that second election?
The refiners have to buy fuel continuously.
etc.
This is why the price of fuel goes up rapidly and comes down rapidly when the price of oil changes. It has always done this. Stock Profits are a myth.
It's cynical politics from Labour to pin it all on gouging but, you know, it's politics. It's mad to suggest that fairly benign comms like that is responsible for abuse - it's not like Starmer has accused retail workers of being class traitors or something.
It works sequentially. Step by step.
I read the last one in the thread. V.16 IIRC.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/mar/13/donald-trump-us-marco-rubio-shoes-too-big
Edit: what happened to @Nigel_Foremain ? I haven’t seen him on here fora while.
The Conservatives should force a second election after a few months if polls show them making some gains if Reform win most seats but otherwise just vote bill by bill
https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Internal_Favourability_260211.pdf
https://www.terrapower.com/
Incidentally, the US Defense Department has been pioneering very small reactors for US bases, here in the US.
https://www.npr.org/2026/02/21/nx-s1-5721761/us-military-airlifts-small-reactor
But the point is that other factors create the environment where the bullies feel empowered to commit the abuse. I am pretty sure you (and I for that matter) are happy to blame the rhetoric on asylum seekers, potential terrorists and foreign invaders promoted by the right wing parties and commentators, for the attacks on said asylum seekers and anyone else who looks the 'wrong' shade. Yet for some reason you do not want to extend the same logic to abuse handed out as a result of the demonisation of petrol retailers.
The Ring is 14 hours total. But after Tristan The Ring feels like a medley of popular favourites.
IMHO if you don't warm to Act 1 of Die Walkure, (the second of the Ring cycle) and if the last 20 minutes of Act III doesn't move you, perhaps to tears, then don't bother. It isn't for you. There is, or at least recently was, on YouTube a super Opera North complete Ring Cycle, which is modest and unpompous, conducted by the modest and unpompous Richard Farnes It is best followed with an English text in front of you, Andrew Porter's version being the best around.
Incest and a house with a tree growing in the middle of it. It's laugh a minute.
In a mad world we’ve reached rock bottom !
That was a cheerful experience.
Centre right like Cleverly or Mordaunt would I'm sure have respect for the democratic decision and act for the Country.
I cannot imagine for one minute that any leader if any Party would want to have any agreement with the current Toty Leader
There would be arguments morning noon and night 4 days a week.
1) I orate
2) You use inflammatory language
3) He/She/They/It has been charged with incitement
Kemi would certainly throw a big strop though if Farage did not make her Deputy PM or give her a great office of state in return for her support and there would be a regular clash of egos between her and Nige
https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast
I understand but a King's Speech is a confidence measure - IF you abstain and the King's Speech falls, there will likely be a second election. In 1974, the opposition had the numbers to defeat Wilson's Queen's Speech but the Conservatives under Heath abstained and went on to lose in October when Wilson went for a second snap election.
I don't know how the polls would move in the event of a minority Reform Government - it could well be the Conservative position would improve but that's not certain and indeed Labour could advance and having a second election might mean a majority Labour Govenrment being returned for four to five years.
Comparatively.
If there were 53 Tory MPs after the next election Kemi Badenoch would not be the leader of the Party.
Nobody else is going to join his Cabinet.
Farage will have to hope he doesn't do anything stupid to stop Kemi supporting him measure by measure.
Chances of that? With 300 Reform MPs? Zero.
"Demonisation of petrol retailers". It's not the government you need to worry about in that respect - it's millions of comments across the BBC, Mail, callers into Radio Scotland... and PB. it's hardly the government that has instigated this - they were late to the game.
I guess it depends who are the other 52.
In fact. The closer it gets to an election in which the Tories look to have any possibility of falling to fifty odd MPs, then Badenoch won't be fighting that election.
- Don’t build a seat base on tactical voting against a party, and then go into coalition with that party
- don’t loudly proclaim a popular (or populist) objection to a policy during an election campaign then drop the objection in coalition negotiations, no matter how intellectually persuaded you become of its merits
- don’t allow the governing party to take the credit for your good policies and blame you for their bad ones
I think the party would suffer electorally from a bilateral coalition with Labour or the Conservatives (and would be destroyed forever if they went in with Reform) but could actually make good political progress in a 3 or 4 way coalition with say Labour and Greens or Labour, Green and Plaid. That would allow them a more distinctive and differentiated role. Or in a grand coalition with Labour and Tory for similar reasons. They could play the plucky outsiders.
https://www.rohcollections.org.uk/performance.aspx?performance=15736
That a member can actually be arguing that a Conservative Party leader might stay on after an election with 53 MPs.
Can we start calling it a war yet?
That is. If you have, say, the Education Secretary, then all Junior ministers in that department are your Party too.
The success or failure of Education is then yours.
NEW THREAD
So what do you, or they, do when the decision goes the other way?
Say what you like about Wagner being a raging anti-Semite, he was great at real estate. The location of his house is absolutely stunning, gazing over the lake to the Alps
Probably the "best located" of any "famous artist's house" I've ever visited. And I've visited lots
😮.
I am also aware of how the Rotterdam spot markets work.
I was admonished on here for suggesting fuel at the pumps would be up by teatime Tuesday (on a Monday Morning). I was told that wouldn't occur until the new stock was delivered. But it did.