It’s easier being a Green MP than a Labour MP? – politicalbetting.com
It’s easier being a Green MP than a Labour MP? – politicalbetting.com
Ladbrokes have a market up on Labour MPs defecting to the Greens this parliament. I am not keen on betting on the next MP market simply because there’s over 400 Labour MPs and only a fraction are listed by Ladbrokes.I do think backing a Labour MP to defect this parliament at 2/5 represents value.
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Britain preparing for food shortages as Iran war bites
Secret government analysis sets out ‘worst-case scenario’ whereby a lack of critical carbon dioxide supplies would hit farming and the hospitality sector
Britain could face shortages of chicken, pork and other supermarket goods this summer if the war in Iran continues, a secret government analysis has found.
Officials have drawn up contingency plans for a “reasonable worst-case scenario” amid fears that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will lead to shortages of carbon dioxide, which is critical to the food industry.
Senior officials — including from No 10, the Treasury and Ministry of Defence — have secretly rehearsed scenarios looking at the potential impact on British industry in an event codenamed “Exercise Turnstone”.
The Times has been told the reasonable worst-case scenario prepared for the session, run by the government’s emergency committee, Cobra, was set in June 2026 and assumed that the strait had not reopened and a permanent peace deal had not been reached.
Farming and hospitality would likely be hit earliest and hardest, given CO2 is used to help increase the shelf life of food such as salad, packaged meats and baked goods.
CO2 is used in the process of slaughtering nearly all pigs and more than two thirds of chickens and the sector is not thought to have much by way of surplus supplies. While the government does have stockpiles, this was said to not be a long-term solution.
Breweries would also be hit because the gas is used to make drinks fizzy. Concerns were raised about the shortages coinciding with the Fifa World Cup, which begins on June 11.
While there are not expected to be critical food supply shortages, officials expect there could be a lack of product variety in shops. Officials discussed unease that the impact would be highly visible and risk undermining wider government campaigns stressing security of supplies in other areas.
Officials plan to prioritise healthcare and civil nuclear disruption, believing that a collapse in CO2 supplies could cause a risk to life through a lack of dry ice to cool blood supplies, organs and vaccines, as well as to Britain’s national electricity supply.
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/iran-war-hormuz-uk-supermarkets-food-shortages-chicken-g620j8xrg
Especially tempting if you are an ambitious backbencher with no realistic chance of a Government job, when you can be catapulted into regular Question Time appearences as the Green spokesman for something or other.
Grim.
May as well have given it to Peston.
The GOP would be screwed at the mid-terms as the economic impact would spill into the autumn .
Leaking stuff to Preston is a great way of convincing us that it's nonsense.
No pork though, Rupert Lowe is going to say it is all a plot to implement Sharia law.
https://pigeonsarentreal.co.uk/
They are a government surveilance system, and the covid lockdown was so the batteries could be changed. Hence the need for a new lockdown to change the batteries again.
https://www.9news.com.au/world/pete-hegseth-pulp-fiction-bible-verse-pentagon-sermon-usa-politics-news/1ffd64d4-628f-49ec-be6f-51e32c83bfea
As the violence continued unabated, Thatcher confided her concerns in US President Ronald Reagan during a secret meeting in Washington DC. Sensing the importance of this, the American leader divulged his own tactic for getting dirt on suspected communists, jihadi terrorists, anti-war protesters, and anyone else who were thought to threaten the US order. The answer, pigeons.
But not real pigeons. Biotechnology surveillance drones, harnessing the power of the pigeon, designed by the government to look, walk and squawk, just like real pigeons.
Let's hope we can do enough of this across the domestic sector:
BBC News - UK CO2 plant to reopen in Iran war contingency plan - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cew7xrj4497o?app-referrer=deep-link
EDIT: Sandy's CCS comment certainly demonstrates the principle here.
When a fossil fuel is burned, and CO2 released, the carbon in that carbon dioxide had been buried for millions of years and removed from the carbon cycle. So its release is a net addition to carbon dioxide levels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjBiWiB4NLc
In normal times, it's a cheap (consider the price of off-brand fizzy drinks) chemical, and Britain doesn't want to do low-value stuff like that.
In normal times.
In future, when CO2 capture plants are operating to reduce emissions, a side stream of the captured CO2 could also be polished for Industrial use at low incremental cost.
My guess is that the CO2 from the Middle East is also a byproduct of some other process, and so it's not remotely economical (in normal times, natch) to set up a plant solely to produce CO2, and so then it's a question as to whether there are the manufacturing processes in Britain from which you can take CO2 as a byproduct.
One of the lessons I took from the pandemic was that we've traded too much resilience for efficiency. Is this another example?
First he was a Tory councillor, before switching to Labour. Then came a stint in Ukip, followed by a return to the Conservatives that ended in ignominy amid a row over trees. And now, the much-travelled Richard Bingley is representing Reform.
If Bingley is elected to Thurrock council in Essex on 7 May, it will represent something of a resurrection for the man with a case for being Britain’s most ideologically free-ranging politician, coming three years after he quit as leader of another council – Plymouth.
Bingley, then in his second stint as a Tory, resigned after the authority cut down 110 mature trees in the centre of the city under the cover of darkness, having fenced them off and deployed security guards.
[...]
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/apr/15/tory-and-labour-councillor-richard-bingley-joins-reform-may-elections-thurrock
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crl19dzdd38o
Not one id jump in on with cold hard cash because with defections, who knows?
That said, my pre November MP Clive Lewis was muttered about being green adjacent in Norfolk turnip bars pre Zack and pre GE 24 and Norwich South is quite a likely green gain as it stands. It would probably be a shoo in with Green Clive as he has plenty of fans in Norwich who would likely jump with him. DYOR etc.
But for everyones' interests this needs resolving.
The scandal is the involvement, if true, of the legal profession in arranging it. It is of course entirely proper for legal advisers, at our expense, to advise clients what the possible routes to a successful claim are, but the great legal tradition is that in the end the client has to do the leg work, fix and pay his own alibi witnesses, concoct his own story and amend it as new evidence comes to light.
Remember bog roll at the start of the pandemic?
That sort of irrational panic buying could cause problems.
If the UK starts having supply issues with certain foods I would hope the country just knuckles down and adapts rather than endless bleating. If it’s the latter then I would just give up on the country.
If there's a lack of investment in new technology and new equipment, then facilities in Britain will obviously become relatively less efficient compared to those in other countries where there is more investment, producing more efficient facilities. if Britain had invested more over the last many decades, then it would enjoy greater efficiency and greater resilience.
The tradeoff is between immediate consumption, and investment to generate a return that allows for greater consumption later. Britain has made itself poorer, less efficient, more vulnerable to global shocks, and generally more miserable, by prioritising consumption today.
Even Britain's experience of austerity was in some respects a case of spend today and austerity tomorrow, certainly in comparison with some other European countries, and that's the current framework that the Treasury employs.
(Confused by the lack of screaming outrage about that. Imagine if they’d been wearing orange)
On that subject, weeks into this crisis and living in a very car/van dependent rural area I have not yet seen a single queue for petrol/diesel and only once seen an out of action pump (two out of eight).
He’s an idiot, one of many in the media as we discovered during the pandemic. They all like the sound of their own voices way too much, and don’t understand that it’s sometimes better to shut up.
At least give the government and industry time to get their plan together, then talk about the plan when it’s announced.
My impression is that he couldn't care less about the electoral prospects of Vance, Rubio, or whoever succeeds him as Republican presidential candidate.
We did this before - what about Councillor Alan Amos? When I brought him up before several people mentioned similars or even more exotic station clocks.
Alan Thomas Amos (born 10 November 1952) is a British politician who sat as Conservative Member of Parliament for Hexham from 1987 to 1992.
After serving as a Labour Party Councillor for both Tower Hamlets and Worcester, he defected back to the Conservatives and was elected as a Conservative member on both Worcester City Council and Worcestershire County Council. He later resigned from the Conservatives and was re-elected as a member of Reform UK in the 2025 Worcestershire County Council election. *
I'd say that Bingley is an ultimate self-server. His main achievement was cutting down 110 trees on Armada Way in Plymouth in the middle of the night when he was Council Leader in 2023. I'm sure some remember.
There does seem to have been a tactical conversion to Faragism around 2014, but 2014 Faragism is relatively central imo in the 2023 to present Conservative Party.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Amos
I'm never sure about this "British farming self-sufficiency / productivity" thing.
The Dutch have a similar climate, about 1/4 or 1/3 as much agricultural land as us per person, yet manage to be one of the most significant food exporting countries in the world.
I think it is about investment, with a nod to planning, and economic culture.
If you look at the way he is trying to use the Justice Department to go after his enemies, and his belief in the omnipotence of Presidential power, it seems a bit fanciful to imagine that he would be relaxed about the possibility of an enemy becoming President and cancelling his Presidential pardon. These are the sorts of thought processes that convince autocrats to carry on indefinitely, and Trump thinks and acts a lot like an autocrat.
The one thing that makes this all moot is that he appears to be becoming increasingly mentally incapable, so his ability to act on his autocratic instincts is hopefully becoming more limited with every day.
He's dead now, so I won't name him.
I'm going to assume we'll fare a bit better in the countryside than the city folk...
But yet again we are confusing security for autarky. Do we really need to be entirely self-sufficient? That’s not been the case for hundreds of years.
Hyper local production / retail can avoid some of this. But everything they buy will be paying +27% for the fuel alone, to say nothing of the price of the actual product (feed, fertiliser etc) which is also rocketing.
Let’s assume that China now intervenes and some kind of deal is done. The straight reopens partially in a few weeks with Trump personally taking a cut of the passage tax. That doesn’t instantly fix this. The damage is already done nd the effects of that means prices will rise through the year regardless.
As for availability, less stuff is being planted. Which means what for crop yields later this year?
The other problem is a bit more fundamental - Britain imports too much and borrows to pay for those imports. Sure, autarky isn't the answer, but Britain does have to work out how to make and export more, simply to pay for continuing imports.
On the other side, large swathes of the Netherlands are like a single huge suburb - albeit far better designed suburbs for facilities than we have done.
I’ve encountered a non-trivial percentage of senior people who adamant that there isn’t a problem and won’t be a problem. So discussing possible mitigation is bad.
The reason that this concerns me is that if this attitude is present at the top of government and industry, then preparations won’t be made.
There has been an opportunity to fix up long term agreements, but I don't think that SKS and Co think other than mainly tactically around industry.
I went for the haircut (holding up my jeans). Chatty barber. I told him my predicament. He called his friend and said “where can you buy a belt in Ballycastle”. He then got an answer and walked me to the nearby charity shop which had a big box of belts for £1 each and the nice Irish lady seemed pleased with an early start to trade. And my jeans stopped falling down
Everything good. A heartwarming tale of multicultural harmony except that as we parted the Turkish guy realised I live in london. And he said london has “too many foreigners now” and then, warming to his theme, he said “Dublin is even worse, much worse, where have all the Irish gone?”
There may be food but how is it to be delivered?
It is also, of course, why we had a large navy – to protect trade routes.
The Ukrainians managed to reopen their trade route through the Black Sea, despite Russia having access to plenty of drones.
(((Dan Hodges)))
@DPJHodges
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55m
Whisper it. But Wes Streeting is doing a good job as Health Secretary, and Labour MPs are starting to notice. Was a narrative that his proximity to Mandelson had killed his leadership chances. I'm not so sure.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/2044695958546448793
As is life we are having a few health issues, especially my wife, who sees a consultant next week and it does put things into perspective
Been into Llandudno this morning and Asda is completely out of petrol as are a couple of other local garages
It does bring it home that this is very real and I did notice a couple of days ago the speeds of vehicles on the A55 were quite a bit slower
What a time we are all living through
Thomas (77, appointed 1991 by Bush Sr) or Alito (76, appointed 2006 by Bush Jr) are the obvious resignations, after the summer so replacement(s) can be confirmed ahead of the mid-terms.
Kalshi has a market up on next judge, their favourite is a guy called Andrew Oldham, who I’ve never heard of!
https://kalshi.com/markets/kxscourt/next-scotus-justice/kxscourt-29
Edit: they actually have a few markets up on courts.
https://kalshi.com/category/politics/scotus-courts
Amy Coney Barrett.
On September 26, 2020, shortly after U.S. Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, Trump nominated Barrett to succeed her.
Her nomination was controversial because the 2020 presidential election was only 38 days away and Senate Republicans had refused to hold hearings for Merrick Garland during an election year in 2016.
The next month, the U.S. Senate voted 52–48 to confirm her nomination, with all Democrats and one Republican in opposition.
So if he wants to orchestrate a young Trumpist in, it is sensible to do it now.
Best thing about diesel? We send the oil we get from the north sea abroad to be refined, and then bring in actual diesel. So that's diesel on ships two ways plus trucks to and from the refinery etc etc etc.
Have read a few things on MAGA twitter that they are doing the blockade to force the world to buy oil from Trump (US/Venezuela) in dollars and thus protect the petrodollar.
This is The End. If the war doesn't end with American dominance of global energy supplies then the petrodollar is finished. And that means the US economy is finished.
So yeah, we're caught up in a giant shell game. And its going to significantly damage us.
Retired = 32
Died = 14
Resigned = 6
Still in post = 1
I think the distinction between resigned and retired is that Justices that resigned from the Supreme Court continued to serve as Federal judges, while those who retired gave up on the judging job entirely. So, only 27% died in post, though perhaps some of the retirements were due to ill-health, and so nearly as involuntary in their timing as death.
Report - not as dramatic as the title.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jj--DQq64I
There's a longer video later on the Talking Feds channel.
Biden was happy to mime a bit at front of stage, and though things seemed off and there were cracks in the curtain, Debbie Reynolds and her microphone were not on full show.
Trump, if he sees someone dancing round the draw ropes is just as likely to join in. There is no way that curtain is staying closed.