Things are going sub-optimally for Reform in Scotland – politicalbetting.com

System · April 4

Things are going sub-optimally for Reform in Scotland – politicalbetting.com

I am not surprised by this poll given the utter poop show Refrom Holyrood candidate vetting has been, I will need to see some more polls to see this is an outlier or a harbinger.

Read the full story here

No_Offence_Alan · April 4

First? Now I need to think of something to say...

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

Reform despite its promises to the contrary only seems to be vaguely competent in England.

viewcode · April 4

From the article

"...There’s an independence question in the poll, Yes leads No by 52% to 48%..."

The Devil's Ratio...

bondegezou · April 4

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/

“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

Sean_F · April 4

FPT, I think the answer is, the human mind is able to see out- groups (such as chattel slaves), as not being human.

TheScreamingEagles · April 4

bondegezou said:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/

“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

One thing I need to mention to PBers is that if you post what Vanilla thinks is AI then Vanilla is blocking people as spammers.

So don't post AI stuff generated comment.

Big_G_NorthWales · April 4

SNP Green Holyrood

Scotland and Wales will not be good news for either labour or the conservatives

ThomasNashe · April 4

How are Alba getting on?

TheScreamingEagles · April 4

A reminder that Lord Ashcroft is not a BPC registered pollster, so don't read too much into his polls.

Am told there's a humdinger of a poll coming out tonight by him, but as I said, he's not BPC registered.

Malmesbury · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform despite its promises to the contrary only seems to be vaguely competent in England.

I’ve not seen any evidence of competence from Reform, anywhere.

A queue of people who Want To Believe, yes.

But Reform are doing their best to disappoint those who Want To Believe.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

TheScreamingEagles said:
A reminder that Lord Ashcroft is not a BPC registered pollster, so don't read too much into his polls.

Am told there's a humdinger of a poll coming out tonight by him, but as I said, he's not BPC registered.

Why does he not become registered?

AnneJGP · April 4

It really amuses me how often that 52-48 balance crops up.

TheScreamingEagles · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
A reminder that Lord Ashcroft is not a BPC registered pollster, so don't read too much into his polls.

Am told there's a humdinger of a poll coming out tonight by him, but as I said, he's not BPC registered.
Why does he not become registered?

Because he cannot.

He uses different pollsters, and sometimes he uses more than one pollster, so we cannot see the house effects.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

TheScreamingEagles said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
A reminder that Lord Ashcroft is not a BPC registered pollster, so don't read too much into his polls.

Am told there's a humdinger of a poll coming out tonight by him, but as I said, he's not BPC registered.
Why does he not become registered?
Because he cannot.

He uses different pollsters, and sometimes he uses more than one pollster, so we cannot see the house effects.

But why does he do that? There must be a reason.

ThomasNashe · April 4

Malmesbury said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform despite its promises to the contrary only seems to be vaguely competent in England.
I’ve not seen any evidence of competence from Reform, anywhere.

A queue of people who Want To Believe, yes.

But Reform are doing their best to disappoint those who Want To Believe.

They've been touched by the hand of Donald

bondegezou · April 4

ThomasNashe said:
How are Alba getting on?

They’re in the process of disbanding. Because they ran out of money.

ThomasNashe · April 4

bondegezou said:

ThomasNashe said:
How are Alba getting on?
They’re in the process of disbanding. Because they ran out of money.

Yes, it was not an entirely serious question. The most prominent members have deserted or died.

dixiedean · April 4

FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm

OnlyLivingBoy · April 4

No_Offence_Alan said:
First? Now I need to think of something to say...

Are you new here?

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

HYUFD · April 4

Disastrous poll for the SNP, losing 7 seats on those they got in 2021. Of course Starmer will easily refuse indyref2 on that but he has made clear he would do so regardless anyway.

Given Reform currently have 0 seats at Holyrood, 16 MSPs is still by far the biggest projected gain for any party in Scotland

TheScreamingEagles · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

That's the Lord Ashcroft poll, doesn't count for example for the PB prediction competitions.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

Reform Greens Tories all on 21% in that poll

HYUFD · April 4

Big_G_NorthWales said:
SNP Green Holyrood

Scotland and Wales will not be good news for either labour or the conservatives

Labour are projected to gain 2 Holyrood constituencies on this poll

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

No idea if Reform is up or down since Ashcroft’s last poll. I’m assuming Greens are up and so are Tories

Nigelb · April 4

bondegezou said:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/

“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

Some might argue recent PB postings offer similar evidence.

RochdalePioneers · April 4

Evening all! Remember that the trend is your friend. The fukers are refuked. Add in tactical voting and I wouldn't be surprised to see them do worse even than this.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

And yet another article saying Reform and the Tories simply need to unite to win.

But that’s clearly absurd. I’d have Badenoch but not Farage on his support for Trump alone.

At one point I would have considered Reform as a break from the Tories but they’ve just become the part of the Tories I hated.

kle4 · April 4

viewcode said:
From the article

"...There’s an independence question in the poll, Yes leads No by 52% to 48%..."

The Devil's Ratio...

Yes and No support has been pretty consistent for the last 10 years.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

RochdalePioneers said:
Evening all! Remember that the trend is your friend. The fukers are refuked. Add in tactical voting and I wouldn't be surprised to see them do worse even than this.

I thought the trend had levelled out

Stuartinromford · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
No idea if Reform is up or down since Ashcroft’s last poll. I’m assuming Greens are up and so are Tories

Though with Ashcroft's approach to methodology, it's probably not even sensible to try to compare one Ashcroft poll to another.

Labour, for what it's worth are on 17 percent. Normally, you would say that a government that was only 4 points off the lead at this stage in a Parliament was wasting the opportunity to do more necessary-but-unpopular stuff. And RefCon on 42 doesn't feel like enough for the right to be on track to win next time, however efficiently they arrange themselves.

But a) events, and b) Ashcroft.

MarqueeMark · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
[Reform have] just become the part of the Tories I hated.

Me too!

HYUFD · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

Great poll for Kemi and Polanski, the Tories and Greens tied for first with Reform.

Terrible poll for Starmer with Labour 4% behind them effectively 4th and not great for Davey either with LDs on 9%

kle4 · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
And yet another article saying Reform and the Tories simply need to unite to win.

But that’s clearly absurd. I’d have Badenoch but not Farage on his support for Trump alone.

At one point I would have considered Reform as a break from the Tories but they’ve just become the part of the Tories I hated.

Simple unification would be tricky as you'd lose probably 25-40% support from both if they did, but it's still probably true neither will win outright so long as the other is still a significant force (though Reform's national leads in the last year have suggested they could manage it).

The problem I'd see is neither side has incentive to back down and accept a subordinate position ahead of the next GE, nor are they sufficiently geographically distinct in support to have some kind of pact of equals situation. They need the next election to see if the Tories truly are scewed, and if Reform can take prime position.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

MarqueeMark said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
[Reform have] just become the part of the Tories I hated.
Me too!

In all honesty I won’t vote for them but Restore are at least trying to be a break.

StillWaters · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

TheScreamingEagles said:
A reminder that Lord Ashcroft is not a BPC registered pollster, so don't read too much into his polls.

Am told there's a humdinger of a poll coming out tonight by him, but as I said, he's not BPC registered.
Why does he not become registered?
Because he cannot.

He uses different pollsters, and sometimes he uses more than one pollster, so we cannot see the house effects.
But why does he do that? There must be a reason.

Presumably cost

kle4 · April 4

bondegezou said:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/04/research-finds-ai-users-scarily-willing-to-surrender-their-cognition-to-llms/

“Cognitive surrender” leads AI users to abandon logical thinking, research finds

I got out ahead of the AI rush by abandoning logical thinking years ago.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

It is intriguing to me that I seem to have ended up in a similar position on Reform as @MarqueeMark as I believed we were from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Such is the current position I guess.

MarqueeMark · April 4

Great news for Kemi.

She has done what was thought improbable - reeled in Reform. If she can poll ahead of them, she will have done what was thought impossible.

Could she win the locals? Unlikely, but...

SandyRentool · April 4

HYUFD said:
Disastrous poll for the SNP, losing 7 seats on those they got in 2021. Of course Starmer will easily refuse indyref2 on that but he has made clear he would do so regardless anyway.

Given Reform currently have 0 seats at Holyrood, 16 MSPs is still by far the biggest projected gain for any party in Scotland

A disastrous poll for the party projected to retain power.

I wish Labour had some similarly disastrous Westminster polling.

Stuartinromford · April 4

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:
SNP Green Holyrood

Scotland and Wales will not be good news for either labour or the conservatives
Labour are projected to gain 2 Holyrood constituencies on this poll

The baseline flatters Labour- 2021 was the year of Vaccine Hero Boris and Keir Getting Nowhere- but Scotland has a decent chance of looking sort-of OK for Labour. The Conservatives' likely fate is the one described by Private James Frazer of the Home Guard.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

MarqueeMark said:
Great news for Kemi.

She has done what was thought improbable - reeled in Reform. If she can poll ahead of them, she will have done what was thought impossible.

Could she win the locals? Unlikely, but...

If Tories can get ahead of Reform consistently a straight Labour-Tory fight has to be extremely likely IMHO.

kle4 · April 4

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform going full Christianity nonsense. Urgh
As a low key Christian I agree it is very niche and speaks to a minority

Far more important issues

Pleased he is in his natural home of far right nonsense
Obviously you've not seen Kemi Badenoch's tweets this evening.

Britain is a Christian country.

The Conservative Party will always celebrate our Christian heritage with deeds, not just words.

This Easter, we want to ensure local churches are properly maintained and repaired so we’re announcing a plan to restore funding for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme which the government has recently placed caps on.

Churches matter. They aren’t just important places of worship, in many towns and villages they are the centre of the community and the pride of local people, often steeped in hundreds of years of history. It is critical we maintain them properly, because when they’re gone, this history and heritage could be lost forever.

@Conservatives believe we have a responsibility to protect our churches and make sure they endure for future generations. What are we for if not to conserve the very best of our country and our society for those yet to come?

Conservatives will protect our heritage and build a stronger country.

https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2040463204841566431
No I hadnt and I do not agree the taxpayer should fund the wealthy COE estate
The Church of England does not unfortunately have the money to maintain all of England's parish churches. It can help cathedrals, but not others. I don't think it's altogether understood how many they are or how much money they cost to run. Tewkesbury Abbey, for example, calculates its costs to survive at £10 per minute. OK, that's an extreme case, but even for Linton Parish Church in Herefordshire it was £300 a week 15 years ago.

Let's say a reasonable average would be that a church costs £50,000 a year to keep open. It's probably on the low side, but let's see what that gets us.

There are 27,000 of them.

I make that £1.35 billion a year.

They would need a rather more than 10% return on their assets to stay afloat without drawing on capital to manage that. They're getting more like 3.5% and an income of £430 million. Not negligible, but not sufficient.

Or, to put it crudely, they would need to find just under £1 billion from capital every year to survive on their investments alone. So it would all be gone in around 10 years on current figures.

In Wales, they are squaring this circle by rapidly closing parish churches, especially in your diocese (which is in colossal financial doo-doo anyway). I would not like to think the same will be true in England, although it already is with the Nonconfromist chapels precisely because they don't have endowments, but if we want to save parish churches even just as architectural landmarks we will need to think about where the money comes from.

Is that an argument for or against VAT on church repairs? No. The argument against VAT is it's a stupid tax designed by stupid people and tinkered with usually for stupid reasons. Far better to get rid, or radically reform it so it's a much lower rate but on absolutely everything. But Hyufd isn't talking total nonsense on this.
The Church of England gets just over £1 billion in income a year once investments and share and rental income is added but that still only gets close to break even. As does the tourist income for cathedrals
If you cannot live within your means then you have to cut your cloth accordingly

Do what any business does and cut costs
The church is NOT a business you complete philistine, it is the cultural heritage of the nation!!

It has cut costs but it should certainly not have to do so more than required because the hopeless Reeves removed the VAT exemption on church repairs
I'm happy as an atheist to contribute to preserving the cultural heritage of the nation, including churches in some cases, but ultimately faiths have to stand on their own two feet and ensure their relevance to the people of the current day and age. Many churchgoers make efforts to do just that in some admirable community and other works, but there isn't an inevitability that every part of the vast heritage can be maintained without the active faith element being significant enough to do so.
45% of grade 1 listed buildings in England are churches and cathedrals and 75% of grade 1 listed churches are in rural areas, they are the nation's heritage, even for non believers
I outright said I'm happy as a non-believer to support them as part of the cultural heritage of the nation. Indeed, I welcomed that many believers are trying their best to remain and even increase the relevance of their faith to the wider nation.

The point was that people in general will only support something so much, and if the base level of true believers is reduced the rest are at some point not going to be willing to step in to fill the gap from reduced numbers of true believers forever.

Spouting off platitudes about cultural heritage will lose in the face cold reality about money and other priorities at some point, and that can be tackled through difficult conversations about priorities, hard work to demonstrate the continued relevance of such historic structures to the modern culture, or whinging about how everyone else needs to step up and tough if they don't like it.

I'm on the side of the hard work crowd.
No you are weak and appeasing to the atheist left and all we are talking about anyway is restoration of the VAT exemption

That's a rather aggressive reaction to what I think was a pretty reasonable position from me that atheists can support maintaining culturally significant buildings but that religious faiths have to improve their position if they want to maintain the kind of prominence they held historically, so that they are not subject to the whims and support of non-beleivers.

Take that kind of aggressive attitude and perhaps people like me, an atheist who has been supportive of helpng to maintain old churches, will instead tell them to stuff it and oppose measures like restoring VAT exemption.

Would that make you happier? More importantly, does it aid your cause?

ETA: What you seem to be doing is deriding those of non-faith, whilst demanding they support your faith - even when they (I) have conceded that support can be given for cultural reasons. Which is fine, you are seeking charity, but tactically a softer approach might work better.

dixiedean · April 4

dixiedean said:
FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm

And rugby too. Hence Wakefield Trinity amongst others.

kle4 · April 4

HYUFD said:
Disastrous poll for the SNP, losing 7 seats on those they got in 2021. Of course Starmer will easily refuse indyref2 on that but he has made clear he would do so regardless anyway.

Given Reform currently have 0 seats at Holyrood, 16 MSPs is still by far the biggest projected gain for any party in Scotland

I'm sure they'd be delighted with such an outcome, rightfully so, even if it is down on what the heights might have suggested.

I'd love if the SNP faced such a situation, but I'm wary of expecting such an outcome.

kle4 · April 4

dixiedean said:
FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm

Presumably not the Red Devils though.

Though in fairness I don't know they last time I heard anyone call them that.

MarqueeMark · April 4

HYUFD said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

Great poll for Kemi and Polanski, the Tories and Greens tied for first with Reform.

Terrible poll for Starmer with Labour 4% behind them effectively 4th and not great for Davey either with LDs on 9%

If and when the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph end their love-in with Reform, we will see them go for the Greens as Corbyn-Max. Pointing out how thoroughly bonkers their policies would be. Then the Tories will be seen as the way to stop them.

I have said here before, the Tories will poll north of 30% at the next election. There are a lot of naturally small C conservatives in Britain. They just need to see that still voting Reform will deliver everything they hate - in the form of the Greens.

Sean_F · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

RochdalePioneers said:
Evening all! Remember that the trend is your friend. The fukers are refuked. Add in tactical voting and I wouldn't be surprised to see them do worse even than this.
I thought the trend had levelled out

Reform have been averaging 30% in by elections, since the beginning of March. May 7th will be very good for them.

SandyRentool · April 4

kle4 said:

dixiedean said:
FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm
Presumably not the Red Devils though.

Though in fairness I don't know they last time I heard anyone call them that.

Newton Heath Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway F.C.

A works team.

dixiedean · April 4

kle4 said:

dixiedean said:
FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm
Presumably not the Red Devils though.

Though in fairness I don't know they last time I heard anyone call them that.

Salford RL you mean?
A little known fact is that Man United stole that name from Salford who were one of the first RL teams to tour France. Their great side of the The Thirties were dubbed "Les Diables Rouges" by the French media.

MattW · April 4

kle4 said:

dixiedean said:
FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm
Presumably not the Red Devils though.

Though in fairness I don't know they last time I heard anyone call them that.

Checking, they were founded by Railway Workers.

"Red Devils" was a new nickname given by matt Busby in the 1960s (it says here).

MarqueeMark · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

MarqueeMark said:
Great news for Kemi.

She has done what was thought improbable - reeled in Reform. If she can poll ahead of them, she will have done what was thought impossible.

Could she win the locals? Unlikely, but...
If Tories can get ahead of Reform consistently a straight Labour-Tory fight has to be extremely likely IMHO.

And if so, Labour are going to have to massively pull up their socks to avoid Buggin's Turn.

The next year is not looking great, on international events. Which will give them just a couple of years to turn it around. Against the Greens and Reform - so against left and right. I have no idea which potential Labour leader can pull off that trick.

Carr · April 4

dixiedean said:
FPT.
There are a great many of our major football clubs rooted in churches. Muscular Christianity was booming at the same time as professional football got going.

https://spartacus-educational.com/FreligionG.htm

See what was called "rational recreation", pushed for successfully by churches as organised labour and increasing productivity brought about a reduction of the working week and workers increasingly got Saturday afternoons off. Sundays the churches already dominated. Better than going on the bevvy and beating each other up!

MarqueeMark · April 4

In March, the Ukrainians claimed to have killed or wounded 35,300 Russian troops. Of those, 34,000 were by drones - 96%. That beats the stated replenishment rate - if that rate can even be achieved by Putin.

Just 1,363 killed/injured by artillery, mines, aircraft munitions. The changing shape of war.

Which has not been factored in to US planning for Iran.

Carr · April 4

dba

LostPassword · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
No idea if Reform is up or down since Ashcroft’s last poll. I’m assuming Greens are up and so are Tories

As TSE said earlier, though, since Ashcroft uses different pollsters for each poll, you're not comparing like with like when looking at the changes between his polls, so it would be kinda pointless to do so.

Leon · April 4

Why do people say “passed away”? Or even just “passed”

It’s pathetic and gay. They DIED

viewcode · April 4

https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ashcroft poll

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%

LostPassword · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
And yet another article saying Reform and the Tories simply need to unite to win.

But that’s clearly absurd. I’d have Badenoch but not Farage on his support for Trump alone.

At one point I would have considered Reform as a break from the Tories but they’ve just become the part of the Tories I hated.

I don't think it's that absurd. There's support from actual elections to suggest that most Tory voters are willing to vote tactically for Reform to stop a leftwing victory.

Sure, there are a few never-Farage Tory voters, well represented on PB.com, but they seem about as numerous as never-Trump Republicans among the voters.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

Wanting to subsidise energy bills is crazy!

For the most needy sure. But I don’t need my bills subsidising!

Scott_xP · April 4

Rumours flying that Trump is at Walter Reed

carnforth · April 4

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%

Poor Ange.

Dura_Ace · April 4

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%

Old mate Nige looks haggard beyond his years there. Micah Richards has kept himself in shape though.

isam · April 4

TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories

Carr · April 4

MarqueeMark said:

HYUFD said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

Great poll for Kemi and Polanski, the Tories and Greens tied for first with Reform.

Terrible poll for Starmer with Labour 4% behind them effectively 4th and not great for Davey either with LDs on 9%
If and when the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph end their love-in with Reform, we will see them go for the Greens as Corbyn-Max. Pointing out how thoroughly bonkers their policies would be. Then the Tories will be seen as the way to stop them.

I have said here before, the Tories will poll north of 30% at the next election. There are a lot of naturally small C conservatives in Britain. They just need to see that still voting Reform will deliver everything they hate - in the form of the Greens.

Agreed the Greens won't stand up to attack. Deep down, most of us detest them and see them as a bunch of bullshitting tossers, even if the preachiness of their spiel distinguishes them from the various parties that aren't named after colours. There's no way the Greens will win 18% in the next GE or 13 seats in the next SGE.

But I don't agree with the other part of your argument. It boils down to sufficient numbers thinking don't split the rightwing vote by voting Reform instead of Tory. If Reform are thought to be far enough ahead, they're the ones who can benefit from this kind of line. They can say don't split the rightwing vote by voting Tory instead of Reform.

isam · April 4

carnforth said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
Poor Ange.

Cons as the biggest party with Reform junior party in the coalition would be my choice. Farage deserves a ministerial role after all his effort over the last fifteen years

kle4 · April 4

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%

I feel like the breasts thing is going to hover over Polanski his entire political career. I'm sure supporters can ignore or laugh it off, but it's sufficiently odd and, ahem, titillating, as to activate the inner 14 year old of politics.

BatteryCorrectHorse · April 4

kle4 said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
I feel like the breasts thing is going to hover over Polanski his entire political career. I'm sure supporters can ignore or laugh it off, but it's sufficiently odd and, ahem, titillating, as to activate the inner 14 year old of politics.

He’s clearly worried about it. He had to change his story this week

HYUFD · April 4

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:
Disastrous poll for the SNP, losing 7 seats on those they got in 2021. Of course Starmer will easily refuse indyref2 on that but he has made clear he would do so regardless anyway.

Given Reform currently have 0 seats at Holyrood, 16 MSPs is still by far the biggest projected gain for any party in Scotland
I'm sure they'd be delighted with such an outcome, rightfully so, even if it is down on what the heights might have suggested.

I'd love if the SNP faced such a situation, but I'm wary of expecting such an outcome.

Given Swinney has been going on all year he needs 68 seats for an SNP majority and a mandate for indyref2 it would be a terrible result for him actually!

solarflare · April 4

kle4 said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
I feel like the breasts thing is going to hover over Polanski his entire political career. I'm sure supporters can ignore or laugh it off, but it's sufficiently odd and, ahem, titillating, as to activate the inner 14 year old of politics.

Surely the all-important endorsement by the Sunday Sport will carry him to power.

kle4 · April 4

LostPassword said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
And yet another article saying Reform and the Tories simply need to unite to win.

But that’s clearly absurd. I’d have Badenoch but not Farage on his support for Trump alone.

At one point I would have considered Reform as a break from the Tories but they’ve just become the part of the Tories I hated.
I don't think it's that absurd. There's support from actual elections to suggest that most Tory voters are willing to vote tactically for Reform to stop a leftwing victory.

Sure, there are a few never-Farage Tory voters, well represented on PB.com, but they seem about as numerous as never-Trump Republicans among the voters.

Slightly more numerous, but I wouldn't put it above a quarter at the very best.

kle4 · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

kle4 said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
I feel like the breasts thing is going to hover over Polanski his entire political career. I'm sure supporters can ignore or laugh it off, but it's sufficiently odd and, ahem, titillating, as to activate the inner 14 year old of politics.
He’s clearly worried about it. He had to change his story this week

What's his story on it now? Hard to think of a non-silly explanation, being a fool or a liar the only options?

Carr · April 4

Scott_xP said:
Rumours flying that Trump is at Walter Reed

Steven Cheung sounds as though he's about to bust a blood vessel. He has reposted someone else's message saying

"BREAKING: Speculation is rising that multiple retards on 𝕏 are just making shit up by posting that Donald Trump is at Walter Reed Medical Center"

https://xcancel.com/StevenCheung47

LostPassword · April 4

kle4 said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
I feel like the breasts thing is going to hover over Polanski his entire political career. I'm sure supporters can ignore or laugh it off, but it's sufficiently odd and, ahem, titillating, as to activate the inner 14 year old of politics.

It's an interesting one as it most annoys women, and the Greens have their strongest support among women, so which will win out?

viewcode · April 4

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories

Seal/Adamski, Vanilla Ice, EMF, "Take me dancing naked in the rain", "Dub be good to me", EN VOGUE! KLF! SINEAD!

viewcode · April 4

BatteryCorrectHorse said:

kle4 said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
I feel like the breasts thing is going to hover over Polanski his entire political career. I'm sure supporters can ignore or laugh it off, but it's sufficiently odd and, ahem, titillating, as to activate the inner 14 year old of politics.
He’s clearly worried about it. He had to change his story this week

(narrator: Green are 21% in the polls)

HYUFD · April 4

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform going full Christianity nonsense. Urgh
As a low key Christian I agree it is very niche and speaks to a minority

Far more important issues

Pleased he is in his natural home of far right nonsense
Obviously you've not seen Kemi Badenoch's tweets this evening.

Britain is a Christian country.

The Conservative Party will always celebrate our Christian heritage with deeds, not just words.

This Easter, we want to ensure local churches are properly maintained and repaired so we’re announcing a plan to restore funding for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme which the government has recently placed caps on.

Churches matter. They aren’t just important places of worship, in many towns and villages they are the centre of the community and the pride of local people, often steeped in hundreds of years of history. It is critical we maintain them properly, because when they’re gone, this history and heritage could be lost forever.

@Conservatives believe we have a responsibility to protect our churches and make sure they endure for future generations. What are we for if not to conserve the very best of our country and our society for those yet to come?

Conservatives will protect our heritage and build a stronger country.

https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2040463204841566431
No I hadnt and I do not agree the taxpayer should fund the wealthy COE estate
The Church of England does not unfortunately have the money to maintain all of England's parish churches. It can help cathedrals, but not others. I don't think it's altogether understood how many they are or how much money they cost to run. Tewkesbury Abbey, for example, calculates its costs to survive at £10 per minute. OK, that's an extreme case, but even for Linton Parish Church in Herefordshire it was £300 a week 15 years ago.

Let's say a reasonable average would be that a church costs £50,000 a year to keep open. It's probably on the low side, but let's see what that gets us.

There are 27,000 of them.

I make that £1.35 billion a year.

They would need a rather more than 10% return on their assets to stay afloat without drawing on capital to manage that. They're getting more like 3.5% and an income of £430 million. Not negligible, but not sufficient.

Or, to put it crudely, they would need to find just under £1 billion from capital every year to survive on their investments alone. So it would all be gone in around 10 years on current figures.

In Wales, they are squaring this circle by rapidly closing parish churches, especially in your diocese (which is in colossal financial doo-doo anyway). I would not like to think the same will be true in England, although it already is with the Nonconfromist chapels precisely because they don't have endowments, but if we want to save parish churches even just as architectural landmarks we will need to think about where the money comes from.

Is that an argument for or against VAT on church repairs? No. The argument against VAT is it's a stupid tax designed by stupid people and tinkered with usually for stupid reasons. Far better to get rid, or radically reform it so it's a much lower rate but on absolutely everything. But Hyufd isn't talking total nonsense on this.
The Church of England gets just over £1 billion in income a year once investments and share and rental income is added but that still only gets close to break even. As does the tourist income for cathedrals
If you cannot live within your means then you have to cut your cloth accordingly

Do what any business does and cut costs
The church is NOT a business you complete philistine, it is the cultural heritage of the nation!!

It has cut costs but it should certainly not have to do so more than required because the hopeless Reeves removed the VAT exemption on church repairs
I'm happy as an atheist to contribute to preserving the cultural heritage of the nation, including churches in some cases, but ultimately faiths have to stand on their own two feet and ensure their relevance to the people of the current day and age. Many churchgoers make efforts to do just that in some admirable community and other works, but there isn't an inevitability that every part of the vast heritage can be maintained without the active faith element being significant enough to do so.
45% of grade 1 listed buildings in England are churches and cathedrals and 75% of grade 1 listed churches are in rural areas, they are the nation's heritage, even for non believers
I outright said I'm happy as a non-believer to support them as part of the cultural heritage of the nation. Indeed, I welcomed that many believers are trying their best to remain and even increase the relevance of their faith to the wider nation.

The point was that people in general will only support something so much, and if the base level of true believers is reduced the rest are at some point not going to be willing to step in to fill the gap from reduced numbers of true believers forever.

Spouting off platitudes about cultural heritage will lose in the face cold reality about money and other priorities at some point, and that can be tackled through difficult conversations about priorities, hard work to demonstrate the continued relevance of such historic structures to the modern culture, or whinging about how everyone else needs to step up and tough if they don't like it.

I'm on the side of the hard work crowd.
No you are weak and appeasing to the atheist left and all we are talking about anyway is restoration of the VAT exemption
That's a rather aggressive reaction to what I think was a pretty reasonable position from me that atheists can support maintaining culturally significant buildings but that religious faiths have to improve their position if they want to maintain the kind of prominence they held historically, so that they are not subject to the whims and support of non-beleivers.

Take that kind of aggressive attitude and perhaps people like me, an atheist who has been supportive of helpng to maintain old churches, will instead tell them to stuff it and oppose measures like restoring VAT exemption.

Would that make you happier? More importantly, does it aid your cause?

ETA: What you seem to be doing is deriding those of non-faith, whilst demanding they support your faith - even when they (I) have conceded that support can be given for cultural reasons. Which is fine, you are seeking charity, but tactically a softer approach might work better.

The atheist left aren't open to persuasion, they hate our culture and Christian heritage and there is no point putting 'hard work' into even trying to appease them, they are the enemy of conservatives in the culture wars.

Given it is Labour who removed the VAT exemption and the Tories and Reform promising to restore it, neither of whom I imagine you would vote for anyway your position on this really doesn't matter.

Daveyboy1961 · April 4

Carr said:

Scott_xP said:
Rumours flying that Trump is at Walter Reed
Steven Cheung sounds as though he's about to bust a blood vessel. He has reposted someone else's message saying

"BREAKING: Speculation is rising that multiple retards on 𝕏 are just making shit up by posting that Donald Trump is at Walter Reed Medical Center"

https://xcancel.com/StevenCheung47

I've just clicked on the link from this Cheung idiot. His comments sound like they've been written by a 15 yr old boy showing off to his mates.

FF43 · April 4

Rumours the Americans have located the second pilot.

Regardless of whether this one is successful, they are really good at this stuff.

viewcode · April 4

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories

...thirty-six years ago. Damn, damn, damn

Foxy · April 4

MarqueeMark said:

HYUFD said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

Great poll for Kemi and Polanski, the Tories and Greens tied for first with Reform.

Terrible poll for Starmer with Labour 4% behind them effectively 4th and not great for Davey either with LDs on 9%
If and when the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph end their love-in with Reform, we will see them go for the Greens as Corbyn-Max. Pointing out how thoroughly bonkers their policies would be. Then the Tories will be seen as the way to stop them.

I have said here before, the Tories will poll north of 30% at the next election. There are a lot of naturally small C conservatives in Britain. They just need to see that still voting Reform will deliver everything they hate - in the form of the Greens.

I don't think current or prospective Green voters rsad the Daily Mail or the Telegraph. I don't expect it to make a jot of difference to the polling.

Indeed, they may well see it as a badge of honour to be hated by the Daily Mail and the Reformograph.

Daveyboy1961 · April 4

Daveyboy1961 said:

Carr said:

Scott_xP said:
Rumours flying that Trump is at Walter Reed
Steven Cheung sounds as though he's about to bust a blood vessel. He has reposted someone else's message saying

"BREAKING: Speculation is rising that multiple retards on 𝕏 are just making shit up by posting that Donald Trump is at Walter Reed Medical Center"

https://xcancel.com/StevenCheung47
I've just clicked on the link from this Cheung idiot. His comments sound like they've been written by a 15 yr old boy showing off to his mates.

I like the Buster Bloodvessel comment, he had Bad Manners as well...

isam · April 4

Dura_Ace said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
Old mate Nige looks haggard beyond his years there. Micah Richards has kept himself in shape though.

That’s a good photo of him, though I suppose your comment was just a segue into criticising Badenoch’s looks

kle4 · April 4

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform going full Christianity nonsense. Urgh
As a low key Christian I agree it is very niche and speaks to a minority

Far more important issues

Pleased he is in his natural home of far right nonsense
Obviously you've not seen Kemi Badenoch's tweets this evening.

Britain is a Christian country.

The Conservative Party will always celebrate our Christian heritage with deeds, not just words.

This Easter, we want to ensure local churches are properly maintained and repaired so we’re announcing a plan to restore funding for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme which the government has recently placed caps on.

Churches matter. They aren’t just important places of worship, in many towns and villages they are the centre of the community and the pride of local people, often steeped in hundreds of years of history. It is critical we maintain them properly, because when they’re gone, this history and heritage could be lost forever.

@Conservatives believe we have a responsibility to protect our churches and make sure they endure for future generations. What are we for if not to conserve the very best of our country and our society for those yet to come?

Conservatives will protect our heritage and build a stronger country.

https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2040463204841566431
No I hadnt and I do not agree the taxpayer should fund the wealthy COE estate
The Church of England does not unfortunately have the money to maintain all of England's parish churches. It can help cathedrals, but not others. I don't think it's altogether understood how many they are or how much money they cost to run. Tewkesbury Abbey, for example, calculates its costs to survive at £10 per minute. OK, that's an extreme case, but even for Linton Parish Church in Herefordshire it was £300 a week 15 years ago.

Let's say a reasonable average would be that a church costs £50,000 a year to keep open. It's probably on the low side, but let's see what that gets us.

There are 27,000 of them.

I make that £1.35 billion a year.

They would need a rather more than 10% return on their assets to stay afloat without drawing on capital to manage that. They're getting more like 3.5% and an income of £430 million. Not negligible, but not sufficient.

Or, to put it crudely, they would need to find just under £1 billion from capital every year to survive on their investments alone. So it would all be gone in around 10 years on current figures.

In Wales, they are squaring this circle by rapidly closing parish churches, especially in your diocese (which is in colossal financial doo-doo anyway). I would not like to think the same will be true in England, although it already is with the Nonconfromist chapels precisely because they don't have endowments, but if we want to save parish churches even just as architectural landmarks we will need to think about where the money comes from.

Is that an argument for or against VAT on church repairs? No. The argument against VAT is it's a stupid tax designed by stupid people and tinkered with usually for stupid reasons. Far better to get rid, or radically reform it so it's a much lower rate but on absolutely everything. But Hyufd isn't talking total nonsense on this.
The Church of England gets just over £1 billion in income a year once investments and share and rental income is added but that still only gets close to break even. As does the tourist income for cathedrals
If you cannot live within your means then you have to cut your cloth accordingly

Do what any business does and cut costs
The church is NOT a business you complete philistine, it is the cultural heritage of the nation!!

It has cut costs but it should certainly not have to do so more than required because the hopeless Reeves removed the VAT exemption on church repairs
I'm happy as an atheist to contribute to preserving the cultural heritage of the nation, including churches in some cases, but ultimately faiths have to stand on their own two feet and ensure their relevance to the people of the current day and age. Many churchgoers make efforts to do just that in some admirable community and other works, but there isn't an inevitability that every part of the vast heritage can be maintained without the active faith element being significant enough to do so.
45% of grade 1 listed buildings in England are churches and cathedrals and 75% of grade 1 listed churches are in rural areas, they are the nation's heritage, even for non believers
I outright said I'm happy as a non-believer to support them as part of the cultural heritage of the nation. Indeed, I welcomed that many believers are trying their best to remain and even increase the relevance of their faith to the wider nation.

The point was that people in general will only support something so much, and if the base level of true believers is reduced the rest are at some point not going to be willing to step in to fill the gap from reduced numbers of true believers forever.

Spouting off platitudes about cultural heritage will lose in the face cold reality about money and other priorities at some point, and that can be tackled through difficult conversations about priorities, hard work to demonstrate the continued relevance of such historic structures to the modern culture, or whinging about how everyone else needs to step up and tough if they don't like it.

I'm on the side of the hard work crowd.
No you are weak and appeasing to the atheist left and all we are talking about anyway is restoration of the VAT exemption
That's a rather aggressive reaction to what I think was a pretty reasonable position from me that atheists can support maintaining culturally significant buildings but that religious faiths have to improve their position if they want to maintain the kind of prominence they held historically, so that they are not subject to the whims and support of non-beleivers.

Take that kind of aggressive attitude and perhaps people like me, an atheist who has been supportive of helpng to maintain old churches, will instead tell them to stuff it and oppose measures like restoring VAT exemption.

Would that make you happier? More importantly, does it aid your cause?

ETA: What you seem to be doing is deriding those of non-faith, whilst demanding they support your faith - even when they (I) have conceded that support can be given for cultural reasons. Which is fine, you are seeking charity, but tactically a softer approach might work better.
The atheist left aren't open to persuasion, they hate our culture and Christian heritage and there is no point putting 'hard work' into even trying to appease them, they are the enemy of conservatives in the culture wars.

Given it is Labour who removed the VAT exemption and the Tories and Reform promising to restore it, neither of whom I imagine you would vote for anyway your position on this really doesn't matter.

You know I've voted Tory before thus the accusation I would never vote for them is provably false, so you are coming across as bitter and angry that your asking for charity from non-christians is being pointed out for the charity it is.

Particularly when I've expressed admiration for good christian works and encouraged more of it as a means of sustaining the faith you apparently support so it does not have to rely on us perfidious non-believers.

I'm not sure why my encouragement of acts of christrian community work to give that faith modern cultural relevance upsets you as much as it seems to.

Maybe try loving your fellow man, one who has already stated support for helping historic churches, rather than demanding support for your faith yet pissing on those outside who still have a positive view of it.

Edited: I'm actually genuinely surprised how low key nasty you have chosen to be on this, albeit in your impeccably polite way, turning it into a make believe partisan political fight - all I've done is offer partial support for your goal and encouragement for your faith to get more support in the country, and you slap it down as meaningless because I am not in your tribe. Call it condescending if you like, but at least I have been supportive of christianity culturally.

What would Jesus do, indeed.

isam · April 4

viewcode said:

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories
...thirty-six years ago. Damn, damn, damn

The Academy in Romford on a Friday night aged fifteen. I didn’t know it at the time, but life never got better than that

Andy_JS · April 4

viewcode said:

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories
...thirty-six years ago. Damn, damn, damn

Seems more like 5 minutes ago to me. 1990 - the height of Western Civilisation.

viewcode · April 4

isam said:

viewcode said:

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories
...thirty-six years ago. Damn, damn, damn

The Academy in Romford on a Friday night aged fifteen. I didn’t know it at the time, but life never got better than that

The thing I hate the most is that I was dumb, poor and cute then, and now I'm smart, well-off...and look like a melted candle that the cat threw up on.

MarqueeMark · April 4

Carr said:

MarqueeMark said:

HYUFD said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

Great poll for Kemi and Polanski, the Tories and Greens tied for first with Reform.

Terrible poll for Starmer with Labour 4% behind them effectively 4th and not great for Davey either with LDs on 9%
If and when the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph end their love-in with Reform, we will see them go for the Greens as Corbyn-Max. Pointing out how thoroughly bonkers their policies would be. Then the Tories will be seen as the way to stop them.

I have said here before, the Tories will poll north of 30% at the next election. There are a lot of naturally small C conservatives in Britain. They just need to see that still voting Reform will deliver everything they hate - in the form of the Greens.
Agreed the Greens won't stand up to attack. Deep down, most of us detest them and see them as a bunch of bullshitting tossers, even if the preachiness of their spiel distinguishes them from the various parties that aren't named after colours. There's no way the Greens will win 18% in the next GE or 13 seats in the next SGE.

But I don't agree with the other part of your argument. It boils down to sufficient numbers thinking don't split the rightwing vote by voting Reform instead of Tory. If Reform are thought to be far enough ahead, they're the ones who can benefit from this kind of line. They can say don't split the rightwing vote by voting Tory instead of Reform.

Except that USP of Reform is crashing down. Once the Tories lead them in polls, it dies. The messaging becomes "don't split the rightwing vote by voting Reform instead of Tory." That point is approaching, a good year ahead of my expectations. Ironically, partly because Reform has skimmed all the floating scum off the Conservative Party because Farage is so determined to kill the Tories he'll take anybody.

kle4 · April 4

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform going full Christianity nonsense. Urgh
As a low key Christian I agree it is very niche and speaks to a minority

Far more important issues

Pleased he is in his natural home of far right nonsense
Obviously you've not seen Kemi Badenoch's tweets this evening.

Britain is a Christian country.

The Conservative Party will always celebrate our Christian heritage with deeds, not just words.

This Easter, we want to ensure local churches are properly maintained and repaired so we’re announcing a plan to restore funding for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme which the government has recently placed caps on.

Churches matter. They aren’t just important places of worship, in many towns and villages they are the centre of the community and the pride of local people, often steeped in hundreds of years of history. It is critical we maintain them properly, because when they’re gone, this history and heritage could be lost forever.

@Conservatives believe we have a responsibility to protect our churches and make sure they endure for future generations. What are we for if not to conserve the very best of our country and our society for those yet to come?

Conservatives will protect our heritage and build a stronger country.

https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2040463204841566431
No I hadnt and I do not agree the taxpayer should fund the wealthy COE estate
The Church of England does not unfortunately have the money to maintain all of England's parish churches. It can help cathedrals, but not others. I don't think it's altogether understood how many they are or how much money they cost to run. Tewkesbury Abbey, for example, calculates its costs to survive at £10 per minute. OK, that's an extreme case, but even for Linton Parish Church in Herefordshire it was £300 a week 15 years ago.

Let's say a reasonable average would be that a church costs £50,000 a year to keep open. It's probably on the low side, but let's see what that gets us.

There are 27,000 of them.

I make that £1.35 billion a year.

They would need a rather more than 10% return on their assets to stay afloat without drawing on capital to manage that. They're getting more like 3.5% and an income of £430 million. Not negligible, but not sufficient.

Or, to put it crudely, they would need to find just under £1 billion from capital every year to survive on their investments alone. So it would all be gone in around 10 years on current figures.

In Wales, they are squaring this circle by rapidly closing parish churches, especially in your diocese (which is in colossal financial doo-doo anyway). I would not like to think the same will be true in England, although it already is with the Nonconfromist chapels precisely because they don't have endowments, but if we want to save parish churches even just as architectural landmarks we will need to think about where the money comes from.

Is that an argument for or against VAT on church repairs? No. The argument against VAT is it's a stupid tax designed by stupid people and tinkered with usually for stupid reasons. Far better to get rid, or radically reform it so it's a much lower rate but on absolutely everything. But Hyufd isn't talking total nonsense on this.
The Church of England gets just over £1 billion in income a year once investments and share and rental income is added but that still only gets close to break even. As does the tourist income for cathedrals
If you cannot live within your means then you have to cut your cloth accordingly

Do what any business does and cut costs
The church is NOT a business you complete philistine, it is the cultural heritage of the nation!!

It has cut costs but it should certainly not have to do so more than required because the hopeless Reeves removed the VAT exemption on church repairs
I'm happy as an atheist to contribute to preserving the cultural heritage of the nation, including churches in some cases, but ultimately faiths have to stand on their own two feet and ensure their relevance to the people of the current day and age. Many churchgoers make efforts to do just that in some admirable community and other works, but there isn't an inevitability that every part of the vast heritage can be maintained without the active faith element being significant enough to do so.
45% of grade 1 listed buildings in England are churches and cathedrals and 75% of grade 1 listed churches are in rural areas, they are the nation's heritage, even for non believers
I outright said I'm happy as a non-believer to support them as part of the cultural heritage of the nation. Indeed, I welcomed that many believers are trying their best to remain and even increase the relevance of their faith to the wider nation.

The point was that people in general will only support something so much, and if the base level of true believers is reduced the rest are at some point not going to be willing to step in to fill the gap from reduced numbers of true believers forever.

Spouting off platitudes about cultural heritage will lose in the face cold reality about money and other priorities at some point, and that can be tackled through difficult conversations about priorities, hard work to demonstrate the continued relevance of such historic structures to the modern culture, or whinging about how everyone else needs to step up and tough if they don't like it.

I'm on the side of the hard work crowd.
No you are weak and appeasing to the atheist left and all we are talking about anyway is restoration of the VAT exemption
That's a rather aggressive reaction to what I think was a pretty reasonable position from me that atheists can support maintaining culturally significant buildings but that religious faiths have to improve their position if they want to maintain the kind of prominence they held historically, so that they are not subject to the whims and support of non-beleivers.

Take that kind of aggressive attitude and perhaps people like me, an atheist who has been supportive of helpng to maintain old churches, will instead tell them to stuff it and oppose measures like restoring VAT exemption.

Would that make you happier? More importantly, does it aid your cause?

ETA: What you seem to be doing is deriding those of non-faith, whilst demanding they support your faith - even when they (I) have conceded that support can be given for cultural reasons. Which is fine, you are seeking charity, but tactically a softer approach might work better.
The atheist left aren't open to persuasion, they hate our culture and Christian heritage and there is no point putting 'hard work' into even trying to appease them, they are the enemy of conservatives in the culture wars.

Given it is Labour who removed the VAT exemption and the Tories and Reform promising to restore it, neither of whom I imagine you would vote for anyway your position on this really doesn't matter.
You know I've voted Tory before thus the accusation I would never vote for them is provably false, so you are coming across as bitter and angry that your asking for charity from non-christians is being pointed out for the charity it is.

Particularly when I've expressed admiration for good christian works and encouraged more of it as a means of sustaining the faith you apparently support so it does not have to rely on us perfidious non-believers.

I'm not sure why my encouragement of acts of christrian community work to give that faith modern cultural relevance upsets you as much as it seems to.

Maybe try loving your fellow man, one who has already stated support for helping historic churches, rather than demanding support for your faith yet pissing on those outside who still have a positive view of it.

Edited: I'm actually genuinely surprised how low key nasty you have chosen to be on this, albeit in your impeccably polite way, turning it into a make believe partisan political fight - all I've done is offer partial support for your goal and encouragement for your faith to get more support in the country, and you slap it down as meaningless because I am not in your tribe. Call it condescending if you like, but at least I have been supportive of christianity culturally.

What would Jesus do, indeed.

Lesson learned on this one - if you vote the wrong way, or might vote the wrong way, then your view is meaningless...even when someone is begging you for charity (or rather demanding it).

viewcode · April 4

Andy_JS said:

viewcode said:

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories
...thirty-six years ago. Damn, damn, damn

Seems more like 5 minutes ago to me. 1990 - the height of Western Civilisation.

Thatcher gave way to Major, the Soviet Union melted faster than an ice cream, peace dividend, Gulf War I was won so comprehensively we had to stop it early, the West had won everything, PCs, internet in its infancy, a Netscape "browser" in the class PCs...

MarqueeMark · April 4

viewcode said:

isam said:

viewcode said:

isam said:
TOTP 90 on BBC2, the happiest days of my life, what memories
...thirty-six years ago. Damn, damn, damn

The Academy in Romford on a Friday night aged fifteen. I didn’t know it at the time, but life never got better than that
The thing I hate the most is that I was dumb, poor and cute then, and now I'm smart, well-off...and look like a melted candle that the cat threw up on.

Clever is the new hot. Must be true - The Guardian said so:

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/mar/22/living-period-political-anti-intellectualism-pop-culture-clever-new-cool

If you are well-off too - you'll be fine!

Andy_JS · April 4

The pollsters ought to be telling us how much support Reform are losing to Rupert Lowe's party but they don't seem to be very interested in that,

viewcode · April 4

...

HYUFD · April 4

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

kle4 said:

HYUFD said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

HYUFD said:

ydoethur said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Reform going full Christianity nonsense. Urgh
As a low key Christian I agree it is very niche and speaks to a minority

Far more important issues

Pleased he is in his natural home of far right nonsense
Obviously you've not seen Kemi Badenoch's tweets this evening.

Britain is a Christian country.

The Conservative Party will always celebrate our Christian heritage with deeds, not just words.

This Easter, we want to ensure local churches are properly maintained and repaired so we’re announcing a plan to restore funding for the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme which the government has recently placed caps on.

Churches matter. They aren’t just important places of worship, in many towns and villages they are the centre of the community and the pride of local people, often steeped in hundreds of years of history. It is critical we maintain them properly, because when they’re gone, this history and heritage could be lost forever.

@Conservatives believe we have a responsibility to protect our churches and make sure they endure for future generations. What are we for if not to conserve the very best of our country and our society for those yet to come?

Conservatives will protect our heritage and build a stronger country.

https://x.com/KemiBadenoch/status/2040463204841566431
No I hadnt and I do not agree the taxpayer should fund the wealthy COE estate
The Church of England does not unfortunately have the money to maintain all of England's parish churches. It can help cathedrals, but not others. I don't think it's altogether understood how many they are or how much money they cost to run. Tewkesbury Abbey, for example, calculates its costs to survive at £10 per minute. OK, that's an extreme case, but even for Linton Parish Church in Herefordshire it was £300 a week 15 years ago.

Let's say a reasonable average would be that a church costs £50,000 a year to keep open. It's probably on the low side, but let's see what that gets us.

There are 27,000 of them.

I make that £1.35 billion a year.

They would need a rather more than 10% return on their assets to stay afloat without drawing on capital to manage that. They're getting more like 3.5% and an income of £430 million. Not negligible, but not sufficient.

Or, to put it crudely, they would need to find just under £1 billion from capital every year to survive on their investments alone. So it would all be gone in around 10 years on current figures.

In Wales, they are squaring this circle by rapidly closing parish churches, especially in your diocese (which is in colossal financial doo-doo anyway). I would not like to think the same will be true in England, although it already is with the Nonconfromist chapels precisely because they don't have endowments, but if we want to save parish churches even just as architectural landmarks we will need to think about where the money comes from.

Is that an argument for or against VAT on church repairs? No. The argument against VAT is it's a stupid tax designed by stupid people and tinkered with usually for stupid reasons. Far better to get rid, or radically reform it so it's a much lower rate but on absolutely everything. But Hyufd isn't talking total nonsense on this.
The Church of England gets just over £1 billion in income a year once investments and share and rental income is added but that still only gets close to break even. As does the tourist income for cathedrals
If you cannot live within your means then you have to cut your cloth accordingly

Do what any business does and cut costs
The church is NOT a business you complete philistine, it is the cultural heritage of the nation!!

It has cut costs but it should certainly not have to do so more than required because the hopeless Reeves removed the VAT exemption on church repairs
I'm happy as an atheist to contribute to preserving the cultural heritage of the nation, including churches in some cases, but ultimately faiths have to stand on their own two feet and ensure their relevance to the people of the current day and age. Many churchgoers make efforts to do just that in some admirable community and other works, but there isn't an inevitability that every part of the vast heritage can be maintained without the active faith element being significant enough to do so.
45% of grade 1 listed buildings in England are churches and cathedrals and 75% of grade 1 listed churches are in rural areas, they are the nation's heritage, even for non believers
I outright said I'm happy as a non-believer to support them as part of the cultural heritage of the nation. Indeed, I welcomed that many believers are trying their best to remain and even increase the relevance of their faith to the wider nation.

The point was that people in general will only support something so much, and if the base level of true believers is reduced the rest are at some point not going to be willing to step in to fill the gap from reduced numbers of true believers forever.

Spouting off platitudes about cultural heritage will lose in the face cold reality about money and other priorities at some point, and that can be tackled through difficult conversations about priorities, hard work to demonstrate the continued relevance of such historic structures to the modern culture, or whinging about how everyone else needs to step up and tough if they don't like it.

I'm on the side of the hard work crowd.
No you are weak and appeasing to the atheist left and all we are talking about anyway is restoration of the VAT exemption
That's a rather aggressive reaction to what I think was a pretty reasonable position from me that atheists can support maintaining culturally significant buildings but that religious faiths have to improve their position if they want to maintain the kind of prominence they held historically, so that they are not subject to the whims and support of non-beleivers.

Take that kind of aggressive attitude and perhaps people like me, an atheist who has been supportive of helpng to maintain old churches, will instead tell them to stuff it and oppose measures like restoring VAT exemption.

Would that make you happier? More importantly, does it aid your cause?

ETA: What you seem to be doing is deriding those of non-faith, whilst demanding they support your faith - even when they (I) have conceded that support can be given for cultural reasons. Which is fine, you are seeking charity, but tactically a softer approach might work better.
The atheist left aren't open to persuasion, they hate our culture and Christian heritage and there is no point putting 'hard work' into even trying to appease them, they are the enemy of conservatives in the culture wars.

Given it is Labour who removed the VAT exemption and the Tories and Reform promising to restore it, neither of whom I imagine you would vote for anyway your position on this really doesn't matter.
You know I've voted Tory before thus the accusation I would never vote for them is provably false, so you are coming across as bitter and angry that your asking for charity from non-christians is being pointed out for the charity it is.

Particularly when I've expressed admiration for good christian works and encouraged more of it as a means of sustaining the faith you apparently support so it does not have to rely on us perfidious non-believers.

I'm not sure why my encouragement of acts of christrian community work to give that faith modern cultural relevance upsets you as much as it seems to.

Maybe try loving your fellow man, one who has already stated support for helping historic churches, rather than demanding support for your faith yet pissing on those outside who still have a positive view of it.

Edited: I'm actually genuinely surprised how low key nasty you have chosen to be on this, albeit in your impeccably polite way, turning it into a make believe partisan political fight - all I've done is offer partial support for your goal and encouragement for your faith to get more support in the country, and you slap it down as meaningless because I am not in your tribe. Call it condescending if you like, but at least I have been supportive of christianity culturally.

What would Jesus do, indeed.

Your insistence time is wasted on 'hard work' trying to appease the atheist left who have no interest in our Christian heritage or preserving any of it is of course absurd. They are the enemy in the culture war.

I am not getting at you particularly, the LDs for example also back removing the VAT exemption for places of worship and maybe you could support them but trying to appease the atheist left is a waste of time and effort, they have to be fought not given in to

Richard_Tyndall · April 4

MarqueeMark said:

Carr said:

MarqueeMark said:

HYUFD said:

BatteryCorrectHorse said:
Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage neck and neck: Poll reveals unprecedented three-way tie between the Tories, Reform and Greens... will the Right unite to save us from a coalition of chaos?

https://x.com/dailymail/status/2040535190053753258

Great poll for Kemi and Polanski, the Tories and Greens tied for first with Reform.

Terrible poll for Starmer with Labour 4% behind them effectively 4th and not great for Davey either with LDs on 9%
If and when the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph end their love-in with Reform, we will see them go for the Greens as Corbyn-Max. Pointing out how thoroughly bonkers their policies would be. Then the Tories will be seen as the way to stop them.

I have said here before, the Tories will poll north of 30% at the next election. There are a lot of naturally small C conservatives in Britain. They just need to see that still voting Reform will deliver everything they hate - in the form of the Greens.
Agreed the Greens won't stand up to attack. Deep down, most of us detest them and see them as a bunch of bullshitting tossers, even if the preachiness of their spiel distinguishes them from the various parties that aren't named after colours. There's no way the Greens will win 18% in the next GE or 13 seats in the next SGE.

But I don't agree with the other part of your argument. It boils down to sufficient numbers thinking don't split the rightwing vote by voting Reform instead of Tory. If Reform are thought to be far enough ahead, they're the ones who can benefit from this kind of line. They can say don't split the rightwing vote by voting Tory instead of Reform.

Except that USP of Reform is crashing down. Once the Tories lead them in polls, it dies. The messaging becomes "don't split the rightwing vote by voting Reform instead of Tory." That point is approaching, a good year ahead of my expectations. Ironically, partly because Reform has skimmed all the floating scum off the Conservative Party because Farage is so determined to kill the Tories he'll take anybody.

Sadly I think this is wishful thinking. There are simply too many now on the right who consider tory, Labour and Lib Dems as part of the Uniparty.

Certainly I can see Reform falling back enough to prevent them gaining a majority. But I don't see their soft vote going anywhere but not voting and I think their hard vote will be enough to scupper the chances of both Labour and the Tories. I think the next decade is going to be chatic as far as UK politics is concerned with Reform trying to be Kingmakers but no one wanting to let them make them King.

Richard_Tyndall · April 4

MarqueeMark said:
In March, the Ukrainians claimed to have killed or wounded 35,300 Russian troops. Of those, 34,000 were by drones - 96%. That beats the stated replenishment rate - if that rate can even be achieved by Putin.

Just 1,363 killed/injured by artillery, mines, aircraft munitions. The changing shape of war.

Which has not been factored in to US planning for Iran.

The rather good Emergency Podcast, of which I believe @RochdalePioneers is one of the hosts, was highlighting this very point a couple of days ago. If you want to see the likely fate of a US attempt to force open the Straits of Hormuz, look no further than the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Drones are rapidly changing the whole nature of warfare.

HYUFD · April 4

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%

On Ashcroft's poll according to Nowcast Kemi would likely be PM with most seats in a hung parliament, though she might have to make Nigel her Deputy PM.

Conservatives 172
Reform 151
Greens 116
LDs 61
Labour 58
SNP 45
PC 18

https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast/custom

AnneJGP · April 4

Andy_JS said:
The pollsters ought to be telling us how much support Reform are losing to Rupert Lowe's party but they don't seem to be very interested in that,

Maybe because Restore aren't fielding many candidates in the upcoming elections.

williamglenn · April 4

Good news if confirmed

https://x.com/jackmurphyrgr/status/2040563822784647473

Good news for once.

F-15 WSO recovered alive. Was escaping and evading. Massive fire fight on tgt. Iranians were actively looking for him in the area.

Andy_JS · April 4

HYUFD said:

viewcode said:
https://x.com/LordAshcroft/status/2040534128118861856#m
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-15706755/One-thing-voters-wont-tolerate-politicians-deliberately-make-things-worse-LORD-ASHCROFT.html
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15706729/Kemi-Badenoch-Nigel-Farage-poll-unprecedented-three-way-tie-Tories-Reform-Greens-Right-unite.html

ref 21%
gre 21%
con 21%
lab 17%
lib 09%
On Ashcroft's poll according to Nowcast Kemi would likely be PM with most seats in a hung parliament, though she might have to make Nigel her Deputy PM.

Conservatives 172
Reform 151
Greens 116
LDs 61
Labour 58
SNP 45
PC 18

https://electionmaps.uk/nowcast/custom

It definitely makes sense to say the Greens' vote would be more concentrated in certain areas than Tories and Reform. So they'd win fewer seats on the same share of the vote.

Things are going sub-optimally for Reform in Scotland – politicalbetting.com

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